CASA Nederland en Scholieren.com reiken dit jaar de CASA Werkstuk Award uit. Het allerbeste werkstuk wint een reis voor 2 personen t.w.v. €500, een snuffelstage en eeuwige roem! Dit jaar is het thema abortus. De redactie bedacht alvast 13 invalshoeken, klik hier en stuur je werkstuk op.
geef je mening
Tjeerd pleit tegen internetdaten. Heb jij al eens een date (of meer) gehad met iemand die je online leerde kennen?
ff n studiebreak
Bankhangende Justine steekt loom haar duim op voor niet-sportende jongeren. Want wie sport er tegenwoordig nou nog?
Boekverslag John Fowles
The collector
Geschreven door: | Céline [meer] |
Datum ingestuurd: | 18 mei 2008 |
Taal: |  |
Woorden: | 1.000 |
Bekeken: | 3868 keer (30 deze maand) |
Waardering: | |
Deel op: |
|
(1965)The character ‘Miranda’
I am going to discuss the character Miranda because you get to know her very well, while reading The Collector. In the first chapter of the book Frederick gives a long-winded description of his obsession: Miranda. The second chapter is a diary of Miranda. She writes about her fear, her sense of helplessness and her hate against her collector Frederick.
Miranda is a very beautiful student at the art academy. Frederick’s admiration for her was so big that he kidnapped her. She becomes the purpose of his life. ‘Her hair was very pale, silky, like burned cocoons. It took my breath away, she was so beautiful, like a mermaid.’ (p.9) Miranda herself doesn’t realize she’s that beautiful.
Miranda and Frederick are two opposites of each other. Miranda is very social and has a lot of friends. She wants and tries to understand Frederick, which is impossible. He is a lonely young man, who doesn’t know about love. He kidnapped Miranda because he wanted to have a decent conversation with her, he wanted to talk to her, but when he had her in the cellar it’s almost impossible to communicate with each other because they are so different. ‘I felt I would do anything to know her, to please her, to be her friend, to be able to watch her openly, not to spy on her. To show her how I was.’ (p. 18) Frederick keeps her as a prisoner to observe her, to look after her, to have her safe with him.
‘I know it’s pathetic, I know he’s a victim of a miserable social class’ (p.157) Miranda has a lot of changing of moods. On one side she really hates Frederick, because he keeps her in his basement. (She even calls him Caliban as in a play from Shakespeare.) But on the other hand she feels sorry for him and tries to communicate with him. She really wants to help Frederick, which doesn’t go pretty well because he isn’t such a talker at all. They both have a very different attitude towards live. At the end of her live she even forgives him for keeping her as a prisoner.
It seems that Miranda isn’t afraid at all, she is slightly arrogant. ‘Her eyes seemed very big, they didn’t seem frightened, they seemed proud almost, as if she’d decided not to be frightened, not at any price.’ (p. 29) But this was only surface calm. When we read her diary, it’s clear that she gets more and more frightened. She looks at herself as a butterfly Frederick has always wanted to catch. She is his madness. Miranda likes to be free, and tries to escape several times. She wants to be free like normal butterflies are supposed to be. That’s why she can’t understand why Frederick wants to collect butterflies.
After a while Frederick understood that they would never be together and that she would never understand him, that they are too different from each other. He realised this when he reads her diary, which shows that she never loved him, she only thought of herself and this other man, G.P, who she’s actually in love with.
Miranda tries to be strong, she doesn’t want to be dependent on Frederick ‘I’m not going to die for him.’ (p.231) She keeps thinking that she can escape, till the end of her live she still believes that Frederick will get a doctor to rescue her. When she writes in her diary, her sentences become shorter and shorter. You can see her weakness in the end of the story.
Appreciation
The book wasn’t very difficult to read, I understood almost every part of the book. When I didn’t know the meaning of a word, I could conclude it from the context. In the first part Fowles didn’t use a difficult language. The second part, where Miranda writes her diary it’s more difficult, you can notice she is from a higher social class then Frederick is. Fowles tells the story with a lot of details, so that you can make a picture of it easily.
The characters were described in a lifelike way: they were very realistic. But still I thought it was difficult to understand them. I could never imagine myself to be that obsessed of a person that I would keep him/her as a prisoner in my basement, like Frederick did. When I would be in the position of Miranda, I absolutely have no idea how I would react. I don’t know if I would try to escape, or obey to Frederick, or be aggressive, etc.
I liked Miranda the most because I could understand her feelings, this in contrary to Frederick. In the beginning I kind of felt sorry for him, because he is mentally ill and he doesn’t really know what he is doing. He even thinks he is doing the right thing by locking up Miranda. He tried to treat Miranda with respect, because she was his special girl. But when he realises she is just like every other girl, he thinks she doesn’t deserve his respect anymore and his behavior changes in a bad way.
I would recommend the book to others, because the story makes you think. It isn’t just a story that the author invents, such things happen in real life (look at the newspaper article). Some parts of the story were shocking: the way he kidnaps Miranda, how angry he gets at the end against Miranda, etc.
The theme ‘abduction’ keeps the tensions in the story, e.g. every time Miranda tries to escape. I liked the first part, when Frederick describes Miranda and abducted her. But the second part is a little bit boring, when Miranda gives her vision of every situation. Even that the two parts are the visions of two totally different people; it still is a little bit boring, it’s a repetition of what you already have read.
Dit verslag is bedoeld als naslagwerk, niet om plagiaat mee te plegen. Gebruik geschiedt op eigen risico. De verslagen op Scholieren.com zijn ingestuurd door middelbare scholieren (tenzij anders vermeld) en worden niet gecontroleerd op fouten. Heb je in dit verslag een fout gevonden of heb je een aanvulling? Laat het dan weten door een reactie te geven.
