ခြင္႕ျပဳခ်က္ အၾကာၾကီး ေတာင္းခံခဲ႕ရတဲ႕ " ျငိမ္း " ရဲ႕ ေကာလိပ္ အက္္ေဆး တစ္ပုဒ္ပါ ။
Poe Nyein
English 4
Professor Homeira Foth
November 7th, 2013.
" The Real Prisoner "
Imagine being kidnapped, stuck in a
room for a long period of time without anyone’s notice, with no absolute
daylight, no one to share the conversations with, and no hope of escape; the
madness is intolerable. Being imprisoned in an unknown place is unbearably
suffocating but getting trapped in one’s own mind is beyond incurable. Once a
person gets drowned in his/her own mind and delusions, it is almost impossible
to survive. The same concept applies to Frederick Clegg in the book, The Collector by the author John Fowles.
Frederick, a lower class young man who is very fond of collecting butterflies,
suddenly gets very rich after winning in the pools. After winning that money, he
kidnaps a young beautiful girl named Miranda who he has never even spoken to
before and keeps her in his basement as a prisoner. Although Miranda is
physically being trapped by Fred, no differences are made between them since
Fred is also getting immersed in his dark thoughts and self-centered
perspectives. Miranda maybe physically imprisoned but she is the one in
possession of her freedom in her own mind; however Fred, who is in possession
of his physical freedom, is a prisoner of his own mind.
Fred’s
limited mind on women is one of the main reasons of why he is getting trapped
in his mind. As a child, he didn’t have a loving childhood; his father died
when he was two and his mother abandoned him shortly after. All he knew about
his mother was that she was “a woman of the streets” (5). Lack of motherly love
and family warmth has shaped Fred to become the way he is and behave such
insane actions. His mother being a street woman has restricted his sentiment
upon women and sex. He neither has a high admiration nor has a stable
relationship with any other woman, not even his aunt Annie whom taken care of
him ever since his mom left. In his opinion, women are filthy creatures willing
to do anything just to obtain what they want. But it is all different when it
comes to Miranda. Fred highly respects Miranda, in fact she is the only girl who
he ever truly values and cares about. He says, “She was not like some woman you
don’t respect so you don’t care what you do, you respected her and you had to
be very careful.” (36) He compares her with other women and talks about how she
is different from them. He has a belief in him that a girl like Miranda, who
holds high dignity in his opinion, won’t involve in sexual acts which he
considers as obnoxious actions. He doesn’t want to put Miranda in the same
level as his mother. When Miranda seduces him to have sex with her with the
hope of it will make him free her, everything has changed; Fred no longer put
her on a pedestal, he now feels contempt towards her and sees her as “common”.
He explains, “I wanted her to see I could do it, then I would tell her I wasn’t
going to, it was below me, and below her, it was disgusting.” (105) The sexual
action of Miranda has made Fred feel disgusted towards her. He continuously
keeps on saying that he doesn’t hate sex but when the time comes, he refuses to
do it. He sees sex as something people with high decency won’t commit and has
restricted his mind upon that idea.
Money also plays as an important
factor in the reason of why Fred acts out such insanity. His dark fantasies
have been awakened only after he gets the power of money in his hand. He is
consistently convincing himself that money is the main cause behind his actions
of kidnapping Miranda. Instead of admitting that it is his unethical behavior,
he finds an excuse and makes it seem like it is not his fault for committing
such crime. He states, “. . . I’ll never do it, this is only pretending. And I
wouldn’t have pretended even like that if I hadn’t had all the time and money I
wanted.” (20) He wants to believe that kidnapping her isn’t his sick idea, that
he only did it because he had money in his hands from winning pools. The way he
keeps on mentioning, “I had the money.” (17), “After all, I had the money.”
(82), also shows the fact that if it wasn’t because of money, he wouldn’t have
done what he did; as if money is a supporter for his wrongful actions. By stating, “Money is Power.” (20), he has
proven his belief upon the power of money; money classifies the class among
people and people tend to act under the power of it.
His hatred upon the discrimination
among the class of people is also one of the logics behind him getting trapped
in his own mind. He thinks that it is the divergence of classes among people
which keeps him away from getting closed to anyone, when in fact he is the
criminal of his own; he is the one responsible for his own actions. He lowers
his status, thinking that he will never fit in the upper-class and thus
bitterness starts developing in his mind. He bears a grudge against upper-class
people for treating people depending on the amount of money they have or their
living standards. He explains to Miranda, “I want to know you very much. I
wouldn’t have a chance in London. I’m not clever and all that. Not your class.”
(37) He has no confidence. He has drowned in his own delusions that no matter
how rich he is, he can never be the same class as Miranda. He has an assumption
in his mind that he will never get closed to Miranda by normal approach due to
his “class”, so he acts out such madness, trying to get closed to her by
kidnapping her. Fred is a very narrow-minded person; he doesn’t try to
understand the distinct perspectives and refuses to accept them. When Miranda
explains that there is no use to think about the inequality among people, he
replies by saying, “Like a rich man telling a poor man to stop thinking about
money . . . There was always class between us.” (39) He feels insecure about
his status even though he doesn’t need to. His own assumptions have parted him
away from others.
Fred wants to think that he is
simple-minded, that he is a flat character but his mind is all twisted up
inside, more complicated than a tangled knot which shows that he is in fact a
round character. Compared to Miranda who has a broad artistic mind, wide
perspective on people and knows how to appreciate the beauty of life, Fred sure
is living in his own world of mess. His mind is restricted only on the concepts
that he wants to believe. He is so immersed in his delusional beliefs that he
is unwilling to accept the truths and refuses to change. Getting drowned in his
own soul is what makes Fred the real prisoner. A person who is physically
imprisoned can have at least a slight hope of escape for his/her freedom but
there is no absolute hope of breakout for an emotionally trapped person; just
like there is no faith of freedom for Fred.
ကိုညီညီ - ေတာင္ၾကီး
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