Rating: 
Summary: We all know Alex
Review: Anthony Burgess rips open our minds, throws in an entire imaginary universe and sews it back together, leaving the universe with us forever in his style-driven novel, "A Clockwork Orange." Burgess weaves the English language with Russian slang to create a fictional teenage dialect for our protagonist, Alex and his gang of "droogs." These characters shock us with their extracurricular activities of raping women, beating up bums and exploring hallucinogenic drugs at the age of 15. The crimes catch up to this villain that we want to hate, but can't. Alex takes the fall for his droogs and receives a 15-year prison sentence. However, Alex's doctors have been working on a case study, "Ludovico's Technique." They offer Alex an alternative of reducing his prison sentence to less than a year by participating in the experiment. Alex does what any 15-year-old would do and takes what seems the less painful choice. Ludovico's Technique is an experiment designed to condition its subject to lose their evil tendencies and become the "perfect Christian." This technique comes right out of Psychology 101. Dr. John B. Watson first conducted the experiment with a rat and a child in the "Little Albert" case study. Although Burgess creates a new world, he leaves our imaginations to fill in our own world. "A Clockwork Orange" will have the reader questioning the dangers of conformity, the roles of society and their own existence. "A Clockwork Orange" should be read with an open mind. It took me two weeks to get past the first chapter, but once I did, I never wanted to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: A Dystopian Masterpiece
Review: Anthony Burgess' finest work is not only a disturbing look into the future, but also asks intruguing ethical questions. I found Burgess'use Nadsat Language intresting, athough it is difficult to understand. Espically disturbing is the dystopian world Burgess invents. The book's combination of a socialist society and decayed western culture makes it an intresting read
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Summary: Tremendously powerful, agressive and enirely honest.
Review: This book was beutifully written, and not in a flowery or traditional way. It was angry, it ws brutally honest, it was somehow endearingly disturbing. The author makes you think, reason, listen and question. I am so glad that I was able to get the edition with the last chapter not previously published in the US- but a word of advice: either get the book with a glossary or download the vocabulary from the internet because it makes the book that much more enjoyable. Although at first, the dialog is a bit puzzling- if you look up a few key words you are able to easily follow it and somehow get caught up in the author's speak. A malenky bit of beuty my friends!
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Summary: Read Clockwork again
Review: I just moved and happened across my copy of CO. I sat down and read it again only to be mesmerized by Burgess once again. In his introduction, he is very self-deprecating, but this is one fine work.Holden Caulfield, this is what teenage angst is really all about. The use of language (nadsat talk) is truly an amazing literary feat. Read it again or read it a first time...it is so worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant little book
Review: A Clockwork Orange is a conceptually simple but potent allegory bringing up questions of free will and the nature of good and evil. Two things about the book may be stumbling-blocks to some readers: its extensive use of invented slang (based mostly on Russian), and the violent content necessary to portray Alex's depravity. The former actually tends to suppress the latter. Philosophically ACO seems to be a parable praising free will, but the book raises more questions than it answers. So do many great books. This edition fortunately includes the controversial last chapter, which I agree with the author is essential to the work. But whether this is really so, along with the social lessons to be gleaned by this effective story, is for the individual reader to decide. After all, as Burgess said, "you are free".
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Summary: Fruits of Redemption
Review: After following a few violent days in the life of Alex, the anti-hero of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, and his friends (his 'droogs' in the slang of the time), we're obviously supposed to be shocked when we he declares, after murdering an elderly woman, "And me still only fifteen.." Yawn. Maybe when written in 1962 this was shocking. Post-Columbine High School, most people have become numb to violent acts committed by children. The fact that Alex and his gang's favorite pastimes are spreading terror, theft, and rape, may even seem tame by today's standards. Yet we should be appalled, none the less. Not at his age, but with the cavalier attitude towards death and the destruction of the lives of others. It is a well known fact that Burgess was dismayed at the success of A Clockwork Orange. In the introduction to the 1986 reprint, which included the "missing" 21st chapter, never published in the United States before (more on that later), Burgess says he would "be glad to disown it for various reasons, but that is not permitted." While ACO survives, other works of his that he values more, "bite the dust." Such is the life of an artist. Our humble narrator is a 15-year old leader of a small gang of droogs. The four spend their after-school hours wreaking as much havoc as they can muster. Of course, boys being boys, someone has to lead the pack. As the result of a power struggle within the little group, during a bungled robbery attack, Alex takes one across the glazlids, and is left blinded for the police to pick him up. Though sentenced to spend 15 years in prison, a stroke of luck gives Alex the opportunity to participate in a new experimental aversion treatment for violent criminals. He emerges from prison a changed, if not particularly new, man. The violent impulses are still there, but he is overwhelmed by nausea whenever they rear their ugly head. Enter Politics. Now a "victim" of the state, the opposition political party that is fighting the government's recent crackdown on violent crime seizes upon Alex's plight. He becomes their poster child for overthrowing the oppressive regime in the next elections. Tormented by his present condition, Alex attempts suicide by leaping from a window. His failure only draws attention to the issue (the opposition is delighted) but prods the government into righting its previous "wrong" by changing Alex back to his old self. "I was cured all right," the original American version ended. So now our little droog is back to the way he was; violent, chaotic free will and hormones raging. Ready to prey on society once again, only now with a good paying government job from his new friends. The new version or, perhaps I should say, the original version (now available in the U.S.) has an entirely different ending. In the final chapter, our "young thuggish protagonist grows up. He feels bored with violence and recognises that human energy is better expended on creation rather than destruction." This version, Burgess believes, is a true novel as it is founded on the principle that human beings change. The old American version was a fable as are all fictional works that fail to show change in human character. The prison chaplain, who befriends Alex, puts it succinctly when he says, "When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man... It may be horrible to be good." He warns the pre-treatment Alex, "You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer. A terrible terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think." Burgess, like his jailhouse preacher, is a strong believer in free will. They are appalled that government could decide to take away one's ability to make decisions between right and wrong. If that happens, a person is no longer a person and the fact that they will no longer harm anyone else is secondary to the fact they have been harmed themselves. Then what is the point of punishing criminal behavior? Which brings us to the final, omitted (dare I say censored?) chapter. In the original novella, and the revised American version, Burgess' character has a sort of realization that maybe the life of violence he has lead is not the right way. Maybe he should even get married and have kids - not that he would be able to control them any more than his parents did him, but just maybe... Is this a true conversion in Alex? Or is it the idle prattle of a common street thug? Burgess intends for us to believe that it's the beginnings of a true change. Suppose it is. That's not a hard thesis to support. Alex himself recognizes that something is changing. "There is something happening inside me," he says, "and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me..." But Burgess fails to take the cue from his own character. Perhaps out of resentment for the original omission of his last chapter, Burgess refuses to even recognize that maybe it was the punishment he received that has lead to the new Alex. Instead, he gives all the credit to Alex's free will. Perhaps. After all, as he says, "The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate." And so it must.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Brilliance
Review: What amazes me most about A Clockwork Orange is not the literary pretensions that Burgess set out with in creating it, but how quickly and easily he draws you into the world he creates. Two things allow him to do this. The first is the flow of his language, a thing that is doubly amazing when you consider that he had to invent a fairly complex slang vocabulary which can be more than a little off-putting to readers at first. I say at first because within a few pages I barely noticed that I was reading words like "rooker" and "litso" instead of hand and face. In fact, the language has a cadence and rhythm all its own once you become used to it that actually guides you through the story. The second reason is Alex, the narrator of the novel. Alex is a 15-year-old leader of a gang of droogs who has equal love for Beethoven and "the old ultra-violence". Something about this character makes him completely appealing, even as his actions make you want to turn away. Or maybe appealing isn't the best word. Fascinating, perhaps. And Burgess doesn't have to do THAT much to make him that way. Contradictions. Simply things like contrasting violent tendencies with his effete nature. Singing showtunes while beating a man to a bloody pulp. I wish I could explain better, but maybe there isn't more to explain. For whatever reason, I simply find myself pulled in by Alex and his antics. Speaking of antics, though, I refuse to discuss the specific plot of the book (I think it's rude and a bit juvenile; besides, Amazon has that information already if you want to read it), but I WILL say that Burgess' book deals with many themes. It is in ways a social critique, a "fable about good and evil" and a philosophical text that questions what "the self" entails and what freedom means. ACO is alternately bitingly funny and horribly frightening, and Burgess manages to paint a portrait of a dystopic future in which street punks rob, rape and cause general havoc to everyone they can, parents are mostly useless and ignore their children because they cannot deal with the horrors in which they participate, and the government concerns itself only with good public relations rather than the welfare of its people. Moreover, Burgess manages to do this with seeming ease. Please do not think that if you have seen the movie you do not need to read this book. While similar in plot, Burgess intends certain thematic differences than Stanley Kubrick completely dropped the ball on in his movie. This will become crystal clear if you read this version of the novel, which contains the much debated 21st chapter that was not originally released in the United States. My personal feeling on this chapter is that Burgess did not understand his own novel enough if this is the way he intended to end it. I say this because there are certain things that happen in this chapter that I cannot find any evidence for in the rest of the book. I feel like Burgess began to write one book and then just decided that he couldn't follow through with it. For this reason I call ACO flawed brilliance. But don't let the first word draw your attention away from the second. This book is brilliant, and well worth a read or two. I am even glad for the inclusion of the last chapter, because it is what Burgess originally intended and opens up interesting lines of discussion. Others books would be so lucky to have a flaw as wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: this is truly a classic
Review: this book is a celebration of language. the creativity of slang and youth combine to challenge the reader to decipher and diagram every sentence. once some repitition has been established, new words are introduced and the adventure continues. the storyline revolves around violence, both physical and mental. the 21st chapter of the book is not included in some editions so this is the one to buy.
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Summary: A Real Horrorshow Book
Review: Well, I, viddied this book at the store some years ago. I've since read it three or four times. A peer into the mind of a clockwork orange: our vicious 15 year old droog Alex. He's vicious, he's terrible, he's a threat to society, and its all his fault...or is it? Has society made him this way by not disciplining him? What happens when society tries to undo its mistake? Is our malchick here any better or worse off? Enjoy! Read! Have fun with it! Try not to let the more graphic scenes turn your stomach!
Rating:
Summary: brilliantly disturbing
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. I don't like gratutitous violence, but this novella is justified in including everything it does. Burgess has an incredibly funny writing style and I often found myself laughing out loud at his descriptions then subsequently becoming horrified at the situation at which I was laughing. It isn't a pretty book, or a pleasant one, but it does make you think hard about humans.
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