The Existentialism Thoughts Of John Fowles’s Works Are Reflected From His Seeting Of Situation

Freedom and imprisonment、resistance and obedience、choice and responsibility are fundamental themes in John Fowles’s novels, which is mainly caused by his intoxication: of the nature and deep thinking of the Existentialism. Fowles who devoted all his life to explore that how to survive in the society and break through all kinds of social pressure to establish individual uniqueness was living in the so called "wasteland" world of post World War Ⅱ. Originated from his love for freedom, he had establised a close relationship with Sartre’s existentialism while he was a student at University of Oxford. Throughout Fowles’s novels, we can find that he is always putting his heroes (or heroines) in the smothering or embarrassing situation, where they have to make a choice to show their inner anxiety and helplessness, thus to mold them into a real existential practicer. Thanks to his distinctive situation setting, Fowles’s novels show strong sense of existentialism, especially in his three earlier novels, which also present the writer’s continual exploration for the freedom of our people in the world. The formation of Fowles’s existentialism was not groundless, but had a lot to do with his living environment and his inner desire for freedom.In his first novel The Collector, the setting of the double metaphor of the "claustrophobic basement" aims to clarify that Glegg’s claustrophobic heart is the result of social confinement and Miranda’s imprioment by him is actually his own imprisonment by himself, as Miranda says "he is a real prisoners who is finally imprioned by his own world :which is full of hostility and parochialism".Also, it not only clearly reflects Fowles’s existential view as "freedom needs the social justice, the freedom of will is closely linked to the freedom of the living circumstance", but also presents his criticism of social reality. In The Magus, the setting of the "God’s game" provides a platform that full of freedom for Nicholas’s self growth, from what he established the right view of freedom and get rid of the sense of nihility caused by this world where is absurd and rich of contingency. Nicholas’s final self realization exactly explains the writer’s view of "relative freedom", that is "true freedom exists only in between two people, but could never exist in a separate person." In his third novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the existentialist view of time which is called the "misplaced of the time" and the three uncertain endings show Charles’s anxiety and hesitation when he is facing difficult choices and the process of resistting his "Nemo", which also illustrates people’s efforts while confronting all kinds of social oppressions. Thus, this novel actually realizes the writer’s philosophy conception that proposed in his nonfictional work of The Aristos, where he pointed out that he aimed to "preserve the freedom of the individual against all kinds of oppressions that threating to the world and forcing our people to comply with the conventional standards and rules". In this way, the special setting of situation in Fowles’ novels is so directly involved in his expression of his extentialism thought of art.