Clegg in "The Collector"

By DaRabbit, Student

A short piece full of quotes on the characterisation of Clegg in John Fowle's "The Collector"

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Clegg represents the ways in which a character can change depending on the circumstances in which he is placed, and how these changes can be foregrounded by an author to position the reader to endorse a particular reading of that character.

In the first few paragraphs of the text we are introduced to a character who seems to have an obsession with a certain girl he sees outside his work. However, with the somewhat abrupt introduction of the subject of his lottery winnings, she is not mentioned again for 3 or 4 pages, and we breathe a sigh of relief that perhaps he isn't crazy. And then he kidnaps her.

We are positioned to feel both pity and disgust for the actions of Clegg. He also represents the human habit of abusing power when it is thrust into them (the lottery win). This is supported by Miranda when she is drawing parallels between her “Caliban” and the Caliban written about in Shakespeare’s The Tempest:
“Stephano and Trinculo are the football pools. Their wine, the money he won.”

We originally see him as a weedy, somewhat geekish character.
“… I started to get interested with some of the books you can buy at shops in Soho, books of stark women and all that.”
However, this innocent character slowly begins to dissolve when he begins planning to kidnap her, without even planning it. Over the space of a few pages we are positioned to suddenly despise him, after lines such as:
“There were even times I thought I would forget her. But forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.”
“There was always the idea that she would understand.”
Our incredulity at the lies he spins to himself to justify his own actions increases when he starts to continually call her “his guest”:
“What I’m trying to say is that having her as my guest happened suddenly…”

In a sense, our own moods swings somewhat follow that of Miranda herself. She is sometimes angry at him…
“You’re breaking every decent human law, every decent human relationship, thing that’s ever happened between your sex and mine!”
…and sometimes pitiful of him, such as when she returns to her room after he can’t get it up. However, the lasting message she leaves us before she dies is to pity those who need it, even though they may be evil.
“The pity Shakespeare feels for his Caliban, I feel (beneath the hate and disgust) for my Caliban”.

Miranda, however, does not see the thoughts of Clegg after her death, his interest in the girl that looks somewhat like Miranda, and lines like:
“…it would just be for the interest of the thing and to compare them and…”
Whether Miranda does or not, we finally see the truth behind Clegg – he is an insane Collector, as the title states, who merely wants to capture, kill and display to himself these “specimens” of women. We end with the same uneasiness and fear that he might do something bad we had at the start, but with the previous 250 pages as a precedent to prove our fear is justified. As Clegg himself says, “What you do blurs over what you did before”.

Depending on our own viewpoints on certain issues, Clegg can be seen to be a bad character from the very start as well: “I think people like Mabel should be put out painlessly”. Some may even support his radical positions However, overall we are positioned to feel disgusted and fearful of him and people like him.