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Summary: A real horrorshow piece of literature, like.
Review: Anthony Burgess is my new favorite British author. I picked this book because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie, and I enjoyed it more than any other book whick I've read recently. Once you get used to it, the slang which Burgess concocted out of Russian and English makes A Clockwork Orange an infinitely more enjoyable read.One thing which I found somewhat disturbing is that when this novel was published in the early 60's, the ultra-violence which was depicted in it was beyond anything that existed in society at the time. But if you make the setting the inner-city ghettos of the mid nineteen-ninteys, you're not all that far off. The last sentence of Part One, "And me still only fifteen," doesen't have as much of an impact on readers today as it was originally meant to. Is this really a tale of the future any more? I highly, highly, highly reccomend this book to anyone who is mature enough to really appreciate it.
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Summary: A Clockwork Orange
Review: I think that the book is all about the life of living.The way the words are used and the deatails of the fights and sex suff was written down.I would say with my rot that this is a book for peolpe that like diffrent stuff in thier life.I'am one of those peolpe,i get tierd of the same stuff over & over again.Well if no one likes what i say,(if you read the book) ill turn off in the most horrorshow you'v never been in.
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Summary: One of the best books ever written!
Review: 'A Clockwork Orange' tells the story of Alex, a vicious criminal in a future England. Arrested for murder he is sentenced to a surreal form of aversion therapy which removes his capacity to commit violence. The book is written in a strange slang, 'nadsat', a combination of English and Russian. Despite his many violent acts, Alex emerges as a sympathetic character. He is intelligent and articulate. However after his brainwashing, he becomes little more than a machine (his favourite music, Beethoven's 9th, ends up making him sick). This is a very disturbing and thought-provoking book and is definiteley recommended.
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Summary: One of the most effecting novels ever written.
Review: Certainly affected by reading plenty of Nineteenth century Russian Lit. (see also F. Dostyevsky and L. Tolstoy), right down to the language (although not perfectly accurate), Burgess' "ultraviolent", ultra-philosophic and -prophetic vision is much more readable than most of the novels which he based the framework on. I would recommend Dostyevsky's "Notes from Underground" (the Vintage Paperback edition, trans. Pevear and Volhinsky) for anyone who liked "A Clockwork Orange." Not for the weak stomached, though.
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Summary: A very good book about the power that the government has.
Review: It was a very good book, which shows a human being put through numerous tests in which he encounters the one most important question this type of person could face: What have they done to me? I'm not capable of moral choice anymore. The language that he (Burgess) uses in the book is efective, although it gets confusing sometimes. For this, I would recommend searching for a "dictionary" of his vocab (NADSAT) and keeping it handy when you read. Once you get used to it, however, it is effective and backs up the moral of the story.
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Summary: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE READ
Review: THE BOOK TAKES YOU INTO THE MIND OF ALEX...IT FORCES YOU TO THINK LIKE HIM...TO BE HIM FOR AWHILE. IT LETS YOU GRASP THE CONCEPT OF BEING INSANE..OF BEING VIOLENT..OF BEING INCOMPLETE.
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Summary: Glossy, sexy, testosterone fest
Review: I'm not crazy about Anthony Burgess, but I hate this book in particular. Yes, the invented English dialect is clever, and the questions about the nature of free will are dealt with literary flair, but this story leaves me asking 'so what?'. Burgess has written a glossy, sexy, faced paced novel that appears to dazzle teenage boys especially. I don't feel, however, that there is much meat to the book once you get past all the titillating aspects of the language and the violence. The ideas about free will are not original, nor are they approached in a new way. You could find the exact same questions and concepts in countless other works, many written much better(like Milton, Shakespear, Godwin,& Byron). This is just one of many novels written by a white Brit or American guy that has lots of cool testosterone driven imagary and a sort of limpid simplistic philosophical lesson about big government and/or human nature. These books came out in abundance from about the 1930's up through the 1960's, and cannot be properly understood with out taking who wrote them and when into context. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a good book and worth reading, but I don't like it. Mabey because I'm a girl, I can't relate to it. Alot of other girls I know don't like it either, but every guy loves it. Perhaps it should be presented as a story about men; men's choices, men's alienation, men in power. That is, white Anglo men. Not society in general.
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Summary: REAL HORRORSHOW!
Review: Great language, great atmosphere, great story. A MUST for everybody.
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Summary: What's it going to be then, eh?
Review: As a future lingustics major, this book fascinated me to no end. I began talking in Nadsat while I read the book, which wasn't a very long time, because it held my attention so raptly that I finished it within a few days. While the language is the main highlight of the book (in my humble opinion), the point of the book is also interesting and important. The concept of the clockwork orange as Burgess explains it snared my mind and made me "think outside the box" if only briefly. Keep this one in a glass case, don't let it slip away, read it frequently. & love your droogs, o my brothers.
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Summary: Excellent. What else could it be then, eh?
Review: The setting for the unusual and ultra-violent events is in the far future, as seen from the 1960s, and perhaps still so,as seen from the 1990. The time frame is never clearly specified, either to take away from the story's credibility, or to attain the opposite purpose, that of inducing the reader to see the characters as contemporaries, or able to inhabit any epoch. For those who saw the novel as a "nasty little shocker" (Time Magazine; out of context), and were afraid of the implications, there is one hope-giving detail: the main character briefly reflects about the people living on the Moon, so this future is still somewhere in the unreachable domain. The predominant impression is that of abandonment by society, alienation from the mainstream (of whose existence the reader is barely made aware) and absence of a true authority, except for the non-interactive Ministry of Interior (or Inferior, the two of which were interchangeable in the mind of the main character), and the Correction Officers, both of whom only briefly appear. The readers who get scared are comforted by the setting's anonymity. Those who search beyond the cruel reality of the time see book as moralistic, even didactic. The events portrayed are excessively dark, but their purpose is not to shock, but to show life as a dialectic interaction between good and evil, and to reflect upon human freedom, and even the cost and perhaps worth of redemption. The antihero is a fifteen-year-old boy, Alex. He is pathologically criminal, vicious, uneducated, drugged or drunk most of the time, and occasionally arrested. In addition to being the main character, he is the narrator of the story, which he tells in a brutal argot, called nadsat (a russified English). His nighttime rapes and murders are committed in an ultra-violent manner, with no justification other than fun. Alex's three droogs (friends), Pete, Georgie, and Dim, "Dim being really dim" generally surround him, and are his accomplices. Alex has a very hot temper, never takes Dim seriously, and assumes the position of leader of the group, suggesting the increasingly severe crimes to be committed. Besides torture, he has a passion for classical music (by which he feels inspired), Beethoven in particular. The book follows his evolution, which remains linear (and directed toward evil) until the very last chapter, when he becomes "cured" of his wickedness. A certain Dr. Brodsky had thought of a cure for Alex's condition, something that would redeem him. When informed that the treatment "cured" people, making them not have to return to isolation from society, Alex honestly thought that the treatment would teach him how to escape the police, and thus not have to return to prison. The treatment consisted of giving Alex "vitamin" shots, and making him watch, movies (whose soundtracks were all pieces of classical music) of various acts of violence similar to those committed by him and his friends, without the possibility of closing his eyes or moving. In a way, the treatment proves successful, because Alex's body is trained to respond to violence as any rational human being would: through fear and disgust. Later, news breaks about the treatment and it is deemed cruel by the vox populi. After a series of events at the end of which he is injured, he wakes up in a hospital and realizes that he was capable of violence again. The last chapter is almost identical to the first chapter, except that Alex is now older, and surrounded by different droogs. Alex realizes that his life had been insignificant, and that violence is a prerogative of youth, and wants to start a family. To his child he would explain what he had done, why he had done it, but he would not try to stop him from making the mistakes he had made in his youth. The point of view adopted is that of Alex. He is the narrator, and directly addresses the reader. From the beginning, he treats the reader as one of his droogs, asking, "What's it going to be then, eh?" His point of view is a very good choice for the story, because frame of reference is located in one extreme, which emphasizes the irrationality of the behavior presented. The opposite side, that of the time's society also affects Alex. The State, though never present in the reality surrounding Alex, somehow stretches an invisible hand, tries to play God, decides to save the poor droog, and of course, fails. It is hard to distinguish style in such a work, where almost every trick has been done, every artifice tried to disguise, distort, diffuse and obfuscate reality, normality, and common sense. However, there are some characteristics of Mr. Burgess' style of writing that are common to his other works and the surface in "A Clockwork Orange". The characters have slightly varied speech patterns, so that it is evident when Dim speaks, and when Alex makes fun of his intelligence. The "nadsat" used by the characters is not only inventive (making the book a little hard to understand), but also puts a barrier between the delicate mind of the reader and the very graphic violence of rape, torture and murder. There are some very British recurring phrases, such as "the old", which seems to be used for every other thing. The main symbol is the orange, clockwork, as it is. As it is clear, there are no such things as clockwork oranges, except when society creates them out of its members. A human being, a member of society is endowed with free will, with the ability to choose, to distinguish and to discriminate. The message the book tries to send is that when this will is lost, there is nothing to ensure one's humanity; it is very tightly condensed in the "clockwork orange". A person can become a clockwork orange, that only looks like an organism (human in this case), but is in fact nothing more than a machine that always responds in the same way, whether good or evil (depending on who manipulates the machine). The question of free will and goodness is debated throughout the book. It is the theme of story. The horrible crimes, and the shocking violence are presented to shake the reader's senses, and to prove that when the important questions (such as "At what cost should redemption come?" or "Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"), although about a murderer, are asked, the reader no longer has a clear-cut answer(such as :"He's guilty. Should be killed"). In the final instance, the book asks if God values more the product of oranges, or the will of humans. The subsidiary theme, that of evil as a part of life, is too directed toward the concept of free will. Moral choice would not exist if there was no evil to choose (or not) over good. The main character destroys, because destruction is easier, but more spectacular than construction. Violence is a priority of youth, because youth are not wise enough to see the potential of creativeness and the undermining that is hidden by the seemingly spectacular chaos they create. Evil is present in all of us, and that is why we find this book of interest, no matter how remote. To deny that there was some interest would be to deny humanity and to embrace a state of clockwork orangeness. Noteworthy is also the idea of continuity. After growing up as young murderers, the droogs become policemen. They enter the opposite part of society, only to let their children take their place on the opposite end. In their own, different ways, both extremes tend to become oranges, but society does not, because the oranges it contains have clocks going in opposite ways. The evil presented, which seems to be boundless and unappeasable recycles itself, and becomes good, but somehow, it doesn't balance the self-destructive tendencies of society. The proof, and the truly sad and disappointing part is that the State is removed, and it is capable of more evil than good, even when treating the most evil of men (toward which it should have a fair attitude, an example of just government).
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