The Collector - Fowles' Own Explanation of The Purpose Behind The Collector

Fowles' Own Explanation of The Purpose Behind The Collector

Fowles explained in his follow-up book The Aristos, that the main point behind the novel was to show what he felt to be the danger of class and intellectual divisions in a society where prosperity for the majority was becoming more widespread, particularly power (whether by wealth or position) getting into the hands of those intellectually unsuited to handle it.

In The Aristos Fowles talks about how he got the idea for The Collector from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who saw mankind as divided into two groups. The first was a moral and intellectual elite known as the aristoi, or "the good", (not necessarily meaning those of noble birth) and the second was the hoi polloi, or "the many", who were viewed as an unthinking, conforming mass. Fowles was inspired by Heraclitus' ideas and, in The Aristos, he makes a point that the reader should try to understand that "the dividing line should run through each individual, not between individuals." He also explicitly states "I tried to establish the virtual innocence of the many. Miranda, the girl he imprisoned, had very little more control than Clegg over what she was: she had well-to-do parents, a good educational opportunity, inherited aptitude and intelligence. That does not mean that she was perfect. Far from it - she was arrogant in her ideas, a prig, a liberal-humanist slob, like so many university students. Yet if she had not died she might have become something better, the kind of being humanity so desperately need."

Fowles goes on to explain that the purpose of the novel was not to say that a precious elite was threatened by the barbarian hordes. Rather, that people had to face up to an unnecessary brutal conflict based on envy and contempt, and accept that we will never be born equal until The Many can be educated out of a false sense of inferiority and The Few can understand that biological superiority is not a state of existence but rather a state of responsibility. He strongly opposes the view that the idea behind The Collector is a fascist one.