| Variations, the "working title" of The Ebony Tower, would be an appropriate title for the assembled fiction of John Fowles, for his central theme of the individual's struggle to arrive at existential authenticity appears in various guises in all of his fiction, and his stories and novels display a wide variety of technical experimentation in the treatment of this theme. While this study deals with Fowles's thematic concerns, its primary objective is to examine Fowles's variations in narrative technique, especially his experimental manipulations of point of view. This analysis seeks an understanding of the rationales for Fowles's technical decisions and how those decisions diminish or contribute to his fiction's effectiveness, both thematically and stylistically. The novels and stories are considered in order of composition.; Nicholas Urfe's first-person narration of The Magus is the best choice of point of view, but because the novel does not end in a traditional way, the question of Nicholas's transformation is ambiguous, and the reader's commitment to him becomes morally questionable. Conchis's autobiography, the narration within the narration, is that of an unreliable narrator, and the conflict between Conchis's philosophy and his actions is unresolved. Neither mystery is explained in Fowles's revision of The Magus.; In the dual, written narration of The Collector, Clegg's account succeeds, for Clegg proves himself reliable though mad and condemns himself more thoroughly than Miranda can through her diary. When Miranda's narration is not vitiated by cant, shrillness, or flashbacks, her lively humanity is an effective contrast to the lifeless Clegg, but her voice is finally too immature to convey Fowles's message.; In The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles uses the Victorian narrative conventions to make statements about that past and our present while also dealing with the technical issues of character autonomy and point of view that face modern writers. The narrator, who denies his omniscience and omnipotence, should not be confused with Fowles. Saying characters are "free" is a metaphor for describing the role of inspiration during the creative process. The real power of the novelist is illustrated in the dual endings, which are intended as true alternative conclusions. The flaw of ambiguity in The Magus is corrected through the Victorian convention which allows the narrator to intrude and offer his opinion of the meaning of Charles's suffering and the reality of his transformation into an authentic man.; The technical experiments of The Ebony Tower demonstrate Fowles's increasing mastery of point of view. The major experiment of "The Ebony Tower" concerns "scaling," creating distance in the condensed scale and immediacy in the expanded scale, allowing Fowles to overcome the limitations of third-person narration while taking advantage of its strengths. In "Poor Koko," first-person narration dramatizes the differences between those who command language and those deprived of it. A detective story, "The Enigma," combines traditional omniscient narration with the scaling experiments of "The Ebony Tower." "The Cloud" employs the "point of view of the hidden bird" to explore, exploit, and call attention to the oddity of third-person narration. The complexity of the story does not preclude understanding.; Fowles's self-conscious technique works against him in Daniel Martin, whose purported author and narrator is the title character. The frequent shifting from first to third person, intended to dramatize the separation of narrator and experiencer, ironically emphasizes their single identity, reducing distancing and objectivity and suggesting equivocation. Too, the shifting pronouns weaken the strengths of both first and third-person points of view by combining them.; Fowles's experiments succeed more often than they fail, and he is among the best of the self-conscious fictionists. |
