In Daniel Martin (1977), John Fowles generates matter and manner out of oppositions like those between the perspectives of Dan and Jenny, the politics of right and left, first and third person, past and present, ka and ba….

These oppositions begin with the first sentence, a remarkable anticipation of the novel: "Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation." Posing an either/or choice, the statement divides these two alternatives into apparently irreconcilable poles, but Fowles eventually links his counterpoles, so that the desolation of Palmyra produces whole sight in Daniel Martin, and whole sight yields a compassionate understanding of desolation. Since the story concerns a marriage of opposites between the central characters, the novel itself joins oppositions in both content and form. Two contrasting principles shape the narrative: juxtaposition and recurrence. The first embodies change and difference, the second unchanging sameness. Both merge in Dan's experience, as he...