The most important features of post-modernism:

1. Eschewing absolute meaning

The author uses litota in Miranda's characterization of Caliban to prove his lack of
individuality. The philosophical concept of the "new person", which is
characterized by impersonality, sounds in the girl's thoughts. Her words prove
that the kidnapper could not have developed love for the captive. In addition, the
existence of Beatrice has not been proven, and her image is most often perceived
as the image of Dante's muse. The technique of playing with the reader, used in
this case, once again proves the postmodernist feature - multivariate
interpretation, avoidance of absolute meaning.

This novel is not just the story of the confinement of a girl-artist, but the story of a
sick society that does not perceive the creative, original, real because of its
obsession with the typical and artificial.

2. Fusion of genres

The vector of temporal orientation is located in a special way in the novel. Thus,
the relevance of part 1 of the novel belongs to the past and is constructed as a
memory; the fourth part is aimed at the future (the next "replenishment of the
collection" is planned, and it is not known whether it has already happened or is
still only in the plans). Thanks to the spiral organization of the text, parts 1 and 4
acquire an extraordinary temporal cohesion, which gives the story additional
dynamics. Now the story of the Collector connects the past with the present, and,
most frighteningly, aspires to the future: the exit from the work becomes the
entrance to it, the end - the beginning. This effect of spatial compression of the
composition remains unnoticed by the reader after "entering" the text until the
attempt to "exit" it.

3. Indeterminance

The very title of the novel "The Collector" is thought provoking. In our country it
was translated as "Колекціонер", emphasizing the analogy between Miranda and
the butterfly, Clegg and the collector. And the heroine of the novel herself spoke
about it. But the point is that in the artistic world of Fowles, this is a clear sign of
playing with the reader, testing him to repeat a ready-made decision.

4. Blending of genres (low-brow literature = high-brow literature)

The novel "The Collector" reproduced the opposition of the individual to the spirit
of social collectivism. The work is based on a dynamic, tense, almost detective
plot.

The novel is written in the form of diaries of the heroes.

If a first-person narrative, compared to an "omniscient" narrator using the 3rd

person, always characterizes subjectivity, then in diary entries that do not
anticipate the reader, there must be present not only the subjective point of view
of the author of the language on what is happening, but his deep experiences,
reflection of thoughts and feelings, internal monologues, perhaps even "stream of
consciousness" - all that characterizes the subject of linguistic activity as a unique
individuality.

The vocabulary of the characters' language varies considerably in stylistic

richness. Miranda, depending on the situation and the communicative goal (to
impress, shock, command, request, express emphasis, convey an emotion) speaks
freely in any - both "high" and "low" - functional style, while in Clegg's speech it is
obvious a stiffness visible to Miranda at the most cursory glance

5. Ambiguity as a common practice

It was no accident that Fowles made Clegg a collector of butterflies: among the
ancient Greeks, the same word meant butterfly and suffocate. Collectors do not
like live butterflies. Therefore, Clegg cannot bring the ideal created by him into
line with reality: Miranda is alive, her world is the world of movement, search,
creativity. She is a type of "anim" - "soul" - inspired beauty. Clegg's world is the
world of the underground, a closed space in which a creative personality cannot
live. When devising the plan to kidnap Miranda, Clegg borrowed his technology
from the book "Secrets of the Gestapo".

The metaphorical title of the novel is correlated in Fowles with questions of life,
art, and freedom. What gives life to art? Does it bring freedom? - one of the
accents of his metaphor. According to the novel, it turns out that not all art helps
others to live, survives itself, brings freedom.

6. Collapse of grand narratives

Clegg perceives the world as a hostile environment, this feeling has been formed
in him since childhood, by the end of the novel he takes on menacingly paranoid
forms. For Miranda, the world is a riot of shades and colors, a whirlpool of
emotions and experiences, a pulsating thread stretched between him and all
other people. And although she also consciously renounces her own environment,
this renunciation has a different character - it is another step in self-knowledge.
This is a stage of a new perception of one's own Self, one's loved ones and
relatives.

7. Truth as a matter of respective

The rejection of logocentricity is expressed in the form of presenting the same

situation from opposite points of view, expressed in first-person narratives, which
allows the characters to express their "personal truth", as well as in a
hyperbolized illustration of the situation of arbitrariness, which demonstrates the
power of money, which despises the main human rights, including the right to
freedom. The impression of virtuality, in our opinion, is created especially in the
part of Miranda, where she gradually goes more and more into the world of inner
experiences and delusions, which is no less real than the basement.

8. Reader as co-author

The principle of text-centricity, according to which everything that happens is

perceived as a text, as a kind of coded message that can be read, is preserved
(blending of generes). The events of the novel are retold in the form of diary
entries - confessions from the first person. From this follows the form that the
story takes and which at the same time creates and complements the images of
the characters.

The creative activity of the reader is woven into the meaning and construction of
the plot (another characteristic feature of postmodernism is the involvement of
the reader in co-creation, since it is the reader who gives meaning to what he has
read in his mind)

9. Blurring the oppositions (Old vs new, good vs bad, male vs female, east vs
west, presence vs absence, truth vs lie)

Clegg's worldview is characterized by infantilism: like a child, he divides the world

into black and white, bad and good, right and wrong.
A complete identification with Clegg's empty and dark inner world can be served
by the atmosphere of semi-darkness that reigns in his house and the poverty of
the environment.

Based on the characteristics of the character, it is possible to talk about the

limitations of Ferdinand's nature. His language is not figurative, ordinary, it
reveals his inner limitations and ignorance. Although his image begins to be read
in a different way and acquires new colors and shades, if considered together
with the heroine of the novel.

Miranda is the complete opposite of Clegg, she is a creative individual, her image
is complex and multifaceted. Fowles complicates the character of the heroine,
shows it in dynamics, which certainly indicates the internal development of the
main character's personality, which we observe at all levels of the linguistic
personality. Even her portrait characteristics allow us to talk about the beauty of
her nature. Appearance reflects her inner state. She is beautiful both externally
and internally.

10. Playfulness (=game): with the text, with the reader, with the author

The author builds the novel "The Collector" as a novel-game, directs the
recipient's attention to the multiplicity of interpretations. It is not for nothing that
his characters - both Caliban and Miranda - perceive their own lives as a game.
Frederic even equates the process of abducting Miranda with a game. Miranda
also mentions the game, which resembles a puppet theater.

A special reality of the author's creative world is modeled, where any behavior is
a "language game". Many images contained in the metatext do not have
denotations. Signs without denotations turn out to be "simulacrum" that are
neither true nor false: a butterfly (Miranda), a collector (Clegg in relation to girls),
a cellar (the room where Clegg places Miranda).

The very title of the novel "The Collector" is thought provoking. In our country it
was translated as "Collector", emphasizing the analogy between Miranda and the
butterfly, Clegg and the collector. And the heroine of the novel herself spoke
about it. But the point is that in the artistic world of Fowles, this is a clear sign of
playing with the reader, testing him to repeat a ready-made decision.

11. Relativity of truth (truth depends on the respective)

when the story is told on Miranda's behalf, not only the point of view changes,
not only the narrative style, but also the narrative method: the diary is an internal
monologue, reminiscent of the stream-of-consciousness method. By the way,
such a sharp change of point of view, as well as the type and style of the story, is a
typical postmodern technique: after all, the reconstruction of different opinions is
of great importance for facilitating intercultural and interpersonal interaction and
understanding, that is, the realization of one of the urgent tasks facing members
of modern society.

Together with the heroine, we follow back in time, rethinking her life experience,
we think about the concept of art and bad taste, the role of the artist and the
thinking person, about life values and the fate of the world, about the world as a
whole - the free world that is now inaccessible to Miranda, together with with it,
we hope for salvation, make escape plans, "experience" their collapse, illness, and
the pain of their descent into nothingness.

In the third part, the reader has to experience the shock of waking up against the
background of the tragedy as a fact that has already happened. "Caliban", as we
usually call Clegg for ourselves, forces us to experience a whole complex of
emotions: along with fear for Miranda - doubt about the need to call a doctor,
selfish attempts to justify one's own inaction and the horror of realizing what
happened, regretting what happened , pain of loss, loneliness, suicide planning.

12. Globalization and multiculturalism

We come to the conclusion that Clegg's personal evaluative dictionary, which is

directly proportional to the depth of feelings and which somehow describes the
richness of the individual's inner world, is extremely poor, tautological, has broad
semantics (a feature of the spatial style) and is emotionally neutral (which is a
significant factor for the characterization of the character, confirming his
complexity, demonstrating his inability to feel, give himself an account of this, and
express his feelings adequately).

In Clegg's story, we find a tautology - the hero is unable to express the same
thought in different lexical means, which, of course, speaks equally about his
illiteracy and the underdevelopment of his mind.

Abuse of dirty words carries not a semantic, but an aesthetic load: it is obvious to
the reader that the narrator is a poorly educated person who does not know how
to use the word.
13. Total irony and infinite intertextuality

A feature of the artistic method of postmodernism is rightly considered to be the

property of intertextuality, that is, the use and reinterpretation of images of
classical literature in postmodern works.

Another literary allusion is included in the fabric of the story in the form of a
direct reference of the reader and hero Clegg to the novel by J.D. Salinger "Over
the Chasm in the Rye". Miranda Gray forces Clegg to read this novel by a
contemporary American writer, openly voicing the behavioral parallel between
Holden Caulfield and Frederick Clegg.

Contextuality and intertextuality are used extremely widely. Allusions are used to
the texts of Shakespeare and Joule. Austin, as well as modern authors - Salinger,
Sillitou.

The reception of bitter irony is present, in particular, in the case of an allusive

symbolic reinterpretation of the names Ferdinand - Caliban.

14. Media + literature

So, as a result of the analysis of the work, we were convinced that the novel "The
Collector" has all the features that distinguish the literature of postmodernism,
and the principles of this artistic method were skillfully used by the author to
create a work that has impressed millions of readers with its originality and
integrity for many years. . It is impossible not to note that this work is available
both in printed form and in audio format, which equals media.

15. Unreliable narrators

A peculiarity of the artistic method of postmodernism, which manifested itself in

the composition of the novel, is considered to be the fact that the narration of the
events comes from the name of one or another hero. As a result of a
mathematical calculation, it turns out that parts 1, 3 and 4, which refer to Clegg's
story, occupy exactly 50% of the volume of the novel; the second half of the
volume is devoted to Miranda's diary. The second part of the novel directly
describes the period of Miranda's imprisonment from the point of view of the girl
herself. If the style of the first part is a dry presentation of the facts in the mouth
of Frederick Clegg, then now we look at the events we already know through the
eyes of the opposite participant in the events, which, of course, not only creates a
semiotic effect of the palimpsest, but is also an illustration of the gendered nature
of the differences between male and female types perception

The non-linear way of presenting such a story is of interest. The second part does
not continue the presentation of events from the episode where the story of the
previous narrator stopped, as required by linguistic pragmatics, and does not take
us to another chronotope at all - on the contrary, the reader "remains" in the
same basement where Clegg left him, and it is completely natural , although in an
unexpected way he begins to perceive the action through the eyes of Miranda,
following the pages of her diary, which was started a week after the kidnapping.

16. Collage style writing and dialogues with the classical literature

When Miranda talks about Caliban's aunt, she compares her to Mrs. Jo, the aunt
of Pip - characters in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Reading
"The Tempest" by Shakespeare, he turns ironically to the kidnapper. The author
seems to be appealing to a knowledgeable recipient, since in William
Shakespeare's play, Caliban is an ugly savage who seeks to possess Miranda. Such
intertextuality is a way of forming the subtext of the novel, a hint at its ideological
core. For example, Miranda calls Clegg a "new man" who ignores art and
immediately recalls Arthur Seaton, who lives closed "like in a box" from John
Brain's novel "The Room Upstairs"

17. Fragmentation

It is clear that, while the narrative on Miranda's behalf is composed as a whole in

one part, and located in the middle part of the novel, Clegg's narrative frames the
girl's diary entries. This form, of course, once again emphasizes the feeling of a
textual "closed space": in the content plan of the work, in the second part, there
is a detailed account of how the heroine endures in captivity, and the diary text is
written by Miranda (remember the key concept of literary postmodernism - "the
world as a text ") is formally "placed" in the framework of the story of her jailer.
Thus, the form enhances the meaning of the content, which is the embodiment of
one of the basic principles of postmodernism.

18. Rhyzome instead of structure

The principle of text-centricity, according to which everything that happens is

perceived as a text, as a kind of coded message that can be read, is preserved.
The events of the novel are retold in the form of diary entries - confessions from
the first person. From this follows the form that the story takes and which at the
same time creates and complements the images of the characters. Techniques of
stylistic manipulation are masterfully used by Fowles to create a bulging image of
Clegg, as well as to convey the storm of emotions of Miranda, which gradually
comes to nothing under the yoke of calibranism.

19. Desacralization of literature

Miranda Gray claims that for her a person's origin, wealth and social position do
not play a decisive role; based on all this, as well as a direct allusion in the text of
her diary, she is associated with Emma Wodehouse from Joule's novel. So when
Clegg devalues Miranda - desacralization takes place.

20. History becomes narrative (functions questions history)

It is obvious that the style of diary entries is based on language creativity, which
has a spontaneous character (since the purpose of the statement is a
conversation with oneself or memories of dialogues that took place in the
conditions of spontaneous speech). Two opposing tendencies associated with
specific conditions of communication (that is, primarily its oral form), namely
compression and redundancy, play a major style-forming role here.