Alienation Of Clegg In The Collector

John Fowles’s first novel The Collector achieved great success after it was published in1963. It also made Fowles famous overnight and an influential writer in Britain. But critics both at home and abroad do not give enough attention to Fowels’s first important work. The researches about Clegg’s character analysis, performance and causes of alienation are not thorough and comprehensive. Therefore, the author of the thesis tries to make a thorough research on Clegg’s alienation in the novel on the basis of other scholars’ studies.The thesis, based on the novel, from the view of the late capitalism, adopts alienation theory to analyze Clegg’s personalities and performance of alienation so as to disclose deep causes of Clegg’s alienation. Above all, the effects of the war make alienation in the late capitalism more special and typical, thus, Clegg’s alienation is inevitably affected by the background of that period; Lack of maternal love which aggravates Clegg’s insecurity and leads to his distrust towards women. In a certain sense, it is also one of the main reasons that he escapes away from people and society. So, it can’t be ignored on the formation of Clegg’s alienation; Otherwise, Clegg’s own character makes his alienation appear more tragic. He shuts himself in an isolated old house and refuses to contact with anyone of the world. He abducts Miranda in the name of love, tortures her by confining her in a sealed basement and threatens her to take pictures which extremely degrade her dignity. What Clegg has done make him look like that he is a madman who is totally alienated and loses emotional abilities. In Fromm’s point of view, alienation is almost ubiquitous. The thesis makes a thorough and comprehensive analysis on characters and causes of Clegg’s alienation. And via this detailed analysis, the author of the thesis wants to sum up that alienation is a predicament which the mankind all faces in the late capitalism. We should realize the seriousness of alienation, care about our own and other people’s spirit condition, and guard against the possibility of being alienated.