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Summary: Read this Book!!!!
Review: What a compelling read! There are so many themes and commentaries in this book from criminal rehabilitation to the wrecklessness of youth. Even more amazing is that though tongue-in-cheek, all of these themes are very thought provoking. To me the most compelling theme was the most prominent: is it a greater crime to be bad by choice or to be compelled to be good? Though Alex and his droogs' crimes are shocking, the reader is prompted to ask if the state has committed the greater crime in negating Alex's right to choose. It is an interesting reversal of the Orwellian view of the future, in that the state wields no power over society. Apathy by the citizenry and the state seem to permeate Burgess' view of the future. One senses that the statement at the heart of the issues in A Clockwork Orange is that apathy, rather than totalitarianism, is the greatest danger society must face.
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Summary: this book is my Bible
Review: My all time favorite book. Burgess's novel beats the movie 100 x's more (and Kubrick's film happens to be my #1 favorite movie as well so that means I really love this book). The book is alot more sickening and explicit than the film , you really get a feeling of nausea while reading it...and that hasn't happened with any other book i've read. While the film loaded it with artsy filmaking and a bizzare musical score. The book is an energetic bleak look into sadism and ultraviolence. Droogs who violently rape and pillage their community without sympathy and care..just for the sick pleasure of it speak in nadstat style of slang that is very difficult to understand while reading , but it contains a handy glossary. Alex leads this group as the humble narrarator is sent to be reformed by the government in which he can no longer choose violence , but his victims can. Burgess ask "what cost?" and "whats the price we pay for conformity". However unlike the movie , the film's final and until the reissue was ommitted ending features Alex looking back on his life and wanting a family of his own. Through all his tolchoking and nastyness he is human afterall which was the message all along. Alex was human and if he stayed "reformed" he would have been nothing more than "A Clockwork Orange" ripe and healthy on the outside , mechanical and programmed on in the inside..leaving him freedomless and without choice..which the government has no right to do. Very thought provoking work.
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Summary: Mindblowing
Review: After reading all of the other reviews, I'll probably sound redundant if I were to write my own. So with that said, all I have to say is that, this is a must read for everyone!!! This has to be the greatest book I've ever read. I have just recently finished this book for the second time. That in itself should tell you how good this book is. On a side note, the movie is also excellent as well.
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Summary: Possibly the best book I've ever read
Review: Since there are hundreds of other reviews, I'll keep mine brief. This book really makes you think. Even if you didn't enjoy the movie (I personally thought it was rather dull), this book may surprise you. I think it blows the movie out of the water. The made-up language that Alex uses may be confusing at first, but through context you can usually learn what it means and your mind will immediately register "droogs" as friends.
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Summary: heavy, heavy--light, light
Review: I don't wish to repeat other's already well-articulated praise on style and language and brilliance. The narrative flow and the story itself are confoundedly magnificent. Yes, I too love A Clockwork Orange.Here is a story of free will versus society; a devastating critique onindividual human nature and an even harsher attack on the ultimately Fascist attitude of any organized system of justice. In a mildly Science-Fiction-style plot we go forward to the parallel near future where politics have taken over ever aspect of human life. Even thoughts can be controlled and the punishment shall always fit the crime. We, the reader, are forced to choose sides between a violent, anarchist, sociopthic rapist-murder, and the oppressive State Government that will force the mind to suppress thoughts, to suppress all human desire in an effort to make certain that everyone will be safe in their homes, out-of-sight-- The arguments are beautifully placed and here, ten years after I've read it, the passion and power of the debate still lingers, fresh. (On a brief side-note in relation to Kubrick's wonderful film adaptation: I love Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange is, depending on my mood at the time, perhaps my favorite of his flicks; but the book diverges into even more decadent and intense realms, and forces one to actually experience the events in your mind, not transposed on a visual plate, and you experience the horror even more viscerally than the romanticized extravagence of the film)
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Summary: "As uncanny as a clockwork orange," but well worth the time
Review: To be frank, this book changed my life. I have never seen the film, but from what I had heard about it I was a bit apprehensive about picking this piece of literature up. But for whatever reason, I did, and I am sure glad of it.
This is the bleakly futuristic tale of Alex, a young droog who loves doing the ultraviolent, razdrazzing others, peeting milk-plus in seedy mestos and slooshying Beethoven. He and his three other droogies wander the streets when the sun goes down, looking for a chance for some twenty-to-one, and rarely are they without a decent find. One fateful noche, however, he is taken by the millicents to the staja where he gets by on his oddy knocky day in and day out.
What?!
Written in a beautifully brutal dialect (something of a combination of slang english and russian), Burgess leaves the reader to figure out that Alex, a young hoodlum, loves to rape, kill, drink halucinogen-laced milk, and listen to classical music. However, when he is caught one night, he is taken to prison where he dwells for 2 years. However, he learns of a new treatment that will get him out of jail in a fortnight. This treatment is the creation a connection in his brain between sickness and violence by making him watch violent films (i.e. holocaust documentaries, interestingly enough) after given a shot that makes him yearn to vomit. The state, in all of its arrogance, releases young Alex into a world where his actions come back to haunt him.
Thus, the book asks: is it better to be bad on your own free will, or to be good without free will (a clockwork orange)?
Perhaps one of the most redeeming characteristics of this novel is the likeability of "your humble narrator." Remarkably, Alex is quite a sympathetic character, if you can put aside all of the atrocities he commits nightly. You wholeheartedly root for him until the end, although you are not sure why. I am: it's the magic of Burgess' writing.
If you can stomach a little literary violence and a great philophical quandary, packed in with a message of maturity and hope, this book is for you. And if you can't, go watch Bambi.
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Summary: The Greatest Book of the Twentieth Century
Review: You've scrolled down to the reviews, so I'm sure that by now you've read the plot. And I'm sure that by now, you've seen at least fifty other people tell you that this book was good but the language was difficult. Let me tell you what these people are really saying: This book is amazing. The plot is amazing. The themes and ideas behind it are amazing. Alex, Your Humble Narrator, is amazing. And this is one real horrorshow of a book. I read it in three days, and not once during that three day period did I ever Want to put the book down and stop reading. I was never bored or not interested.
As for the language. This book takes place in the future, where rebellious teenagers (nasdats) have taught themself a language called (and what a surprise) Nasdat. It's a mix of English and Russian (mostly English that we would understand). Sure, in the beginning, it is hard to understand, but by ten pages in, you understand the basics of it. Every word that you haven't seen before can be understood in the syntax with which it is used. For example, one of my favorite lines from the book: "Then I leaned across Georgie, who was between me and the horrible Dim, and fisted Dim skorry on the rot. Dim looked very surprised, his rot open, wiping the krovvy off of his goober with his rook and in turn looking surprised at the red flowing krovvy and at me." Think about it, read over it. Tell me you don't understand it.
If you're a person that likes to read and appreciates a good book for what it is, read this novel. It is truly extrodinary. When you're finished, if you haven't already, see the Kubrick adaptation, one of the greatest movies ever made.
One more thing: A lot of people have complained about the excessive violence in this book. Sure, it's a bit graphic, but there are two things that should put you to ease: 1) Assuming that the language is as confusing as it is made out to be, you won't be able to understand half of the graphic images. 2) This is not a book that uses excessive violence aimlessly in the hopes that it will attract those gore-loving readers. Every centimeter of violence in this masterpiece is needed to further the story, and believe me, it does.
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Summary: this book is a drug
Review: This book is crazy. Its the written version of the greatest film ever made, and looking at it on paper is quite a thing. The language is quite interesting, and you get in a real droog mindset through reading it, I've read very few things where I've felt like i was in the story, this one of them.
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Summary: as great as the motion picture
Review: when i was around 16 i saw the motion picture after been forbidden several years in my country and i was fascinated. i was shocked with all that mixed violence and sex showed in it. 14 years later ( last week ) i read the book and i was very pleased to see the fidelity related between it and the film. i was like i was watching the movie again... and i have to admit just a few books made me feel that way. is a very delightful reading not only for teenagers but adults too. from the Argentine lands
Bertrán
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Summary: This is the computer revolution's cultural backlash
Review: No book has captured the disillusionment and separation resulting from the schizm formed of technological advancement and cultural devolvement like 'A clockwork Orange' has. Quite simply put, it is a not too distant future of ours. As technology breeds increased comfort and increased isolationism, it also breeds racism, hatred and desensitization. This near 40 year old book really captures this feeling, daring to the reader to attempt to define 'free will' in a world in which all images and content are provided for you and have a singular semiotic meaning. In light of our all too common subway shootouts, our random executions and a penal system spiraling out of control (all things happening relatively recently), it is amazing that Burgess could so accurately cast a world of rave clubs, X, random abuse and Ikea furniture.
This version has the 'controversial' 21st chapter, and let me say the controversy really lies on the choice of the idiot editor who removed it in the first place. It sums up so much and adds an interesting twist to the theme of the book.
If you are between the ages of 16 and 45 and consider yourself to have a social conciousness, this is THE must read book.
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