The Collector

In The Collector by John Fowles, Obsession plays the key role in both characters, Clegg and Miranda. One can see that obsession is present in Clegg's point of view as he stalks Miranda around London. Miranda's obsession is found in her diary about a man she loves. Both obsessions between Clegg and Miranda differ significantly.

At the beginning of The Collector, the reader is introduced to Clegg as he is watching over Miranda in the Town Hall Annexe, where he works. Days that Clegg worked he would gawk over Miranda; "When I have a free moment... I stood by the window and used to look down over the road... I would see her." What makes Clegg's obsession over Miranda more disturbing is that he mentally knows that he can never win Miranda over without the money he has won in the pools. When Clegg read in the newspaper that Miranda has won a scholarship to an art school in London he said, "It seemed like we became more intimate, although of course we still did not know each other in the ordinary way." Clegg constantly daydreams about how he will meet Miranda and do things that she would admire from him and then marry him and that dream repeats throughout the course of the book. Clegg gets a lot of his personality traits from his obsession with his butterfly collection and the reader can see that same obsession he has with Miranda.

Miranda's obsession is over a man named George Paston, also know as G.P. He is an artist that she is introduced to through her aunt. The reader first recognizes this obsession when Miranda officially introduces his name in a journal entry, "When I draw I always think of someone like G.P. at my shoulder." She talks about G.P. in three fourths of her journal entries. Most of them are about how Miranda spends her lovely time with G.P. She spent much of her time with G. P. that she fell in love with him. Although she desperately wants to be with G.P. she knows that she can never have him because she consciously recognizes the age difference between them. To show her obsession with G.P.,