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A Clockwork Orange
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A Clockwork Orange - Week 4 (April 2016)
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All finished. :) I'm not sure where to start... ;) This book was very shocking, and I did not care much for the main character. He was very violent and seemed to get off on that violence. But, despite that, I liked the book, because of that 7th chapter. I can't believe the author let it be removed in some versions (despite his editor wanting it to end at chapter 6). It brought the book full circle, at least to me. :) (view spoiler)
Ok, those are just my opinions. :) I'm excited to know what others think. :)
Kimberly wrote: "All finished. :) I'm not sure where to start... ;) This book was very shocking, and I did not care much for the main character. He was very violent and seemed to get off on that violence. But, desp..."I pretty much agree with you here almost completely.
Kimberly wrote: "This book was very shocking, and I did not care much for the main character. He was very violent and seemed to get off on that violence. But, despite that, I liked the book, because of that 7th chapter."I absolutely agree. I can't understand why the publisher would want to truncate the book, removing the last chapter. To me, it was the books only saving grace. By that, I mean my rating came up from a 1 star to a 2 star rating ... Oh well, this book is clearly not for everyone.
I personally would have preferred the book without the last chapter. Yes I agree it was the one saving grace, but I feel like it was too easy of a way out.
This is part of my 2017 Catch Up Challenge. I appy polly loggy for the length of my enthusiastic review.(SPOILERS) This is an astounding story in so many ways. I first read it in college, and re-reading it just magnified my initial reaction. I have broken down the complexity of this story into major themes that helped me work through it, as follows:
1. Manipulation. Everyone seems to manipulate everyone else in this story. It is the source of most of the abusive behavior in many of the characters. Alex manipulates his droog pals and many of his victims; he even enjoys manipulating Dim out of sheer disdain for his intellectual shortcomings. Then the dissident group that F. Alexander forms also manipulates Alex to make him the best case for their cause, especially when they drive him to attempted suicide. Even Alex's parents indulge in some manipulation by the insertion of Joe in Alex's place at home. But for me, the biggest manipulator is the government, and all of its various officials and contractors. Dr. Brodsky helps to implement Ludovico's Technique with Alex, by using on him behavior modification, specifically associative learning. This is little different from many behavior modification treatments we know today, such as treatments for OCD or ADHD. But the key is that Ludovico's Technique is performed under duress, with the only inducement for Alex being the deal to shave time from Alex's confinement. Yes, it is true Alex agrees to this willingly, but he has no intention to become a better citizen under coercion. He has no clue that he will become a cog in the government's plan to empty the prisons to make room for political dissidents.
2. Good and Evil. I think this story is a kind of modernized morality tale, but with an important distinction; it is really about the battle between forced good and chosen evil. The choice is between someone incapable of doing evil (hence only good), or someone who has the freedom of choice but decides to commit evil. Another way to express it is whether a "clockwork Christian" or "clockwork Jew" or "clockwork Buddhist" is more interesting than Alex. And maybe evil Alex is more human than a doer of good deeds who operates mechanically. My own question relates to the prison chaplain's statement to Alex that "The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within...." My own perspective is human beings are good by nature simply because we are born as social primates that look to preserve our social communities as a safety net for ourselves and our families. With that socialized genetic background come defaults that create mental and emotional boundaries between "self" and "not-self." We all live with preferences between the people we know and those we don't. Those preferences are often prejudices that impose higher standards of proof before we confer trust. That is the moment when social and cultural contracts are needed (for minority rights, etc.). Having said all that, I think Burgess gives us no clue what a true, freely chosen act of goodness might be. Maybe F. Abraham's offer to assist Alex after the beating by Dim and Billyboy is an example. But, as we know, F. Abraham eventually turns on Alex to create a victim out of him, all to advance his group's political objectives. So what starts as a genuinely good deed morphs into a selfish, manipulative act.
3. Power. The government is the one entity that exerts the most power. It uses physical, psychological, and emotional suppression against its citizens, all to increase the state's stability and to ensure its own survival. It will distribute propaganda, censor publications, and use morally doubtful techniques to "cure" so-called recidivist criminals. It decreases the number of street patrol cars at night, even though that time is the most dangerous, all to enhance its need to exist. It seems to thrive upon the fear of its citizens to enhance its status as the last resort for law and order and to minimize the complaints of those with civil rights complaints. Furthermore, this story presents its evolution from a standard law and order culture to a "reformative" culture to even become a repressive totalitarian state that throws all political dissidents in prison. To me, the government is the primary "Clockwork Orange."
4. Transformation. I think I saw somewhere that Burgess said, in effect, that a book without some hint of moral progress has no reason for being written. I certainly see a hint of that moral progress when Alex gets bored and starts to think of higher goals such as raising a son in some kind of family of his own. And his choice is very free, considering all that has happened to him. He may also have reached a level of maturity that was totally absent earlier, and this is why I doubt the sincerity of his motivations in the last chapter. Alex's transformation seems sudden and superficial to me, and definitely not natural. But I have considered whether the book could end without that last chapter and still maintain the hope for moral transformation that Burgess wanted. I think so, simply from two other examples of transformation we see in the book. One is F. Alexander, who is transformed by circumstances from an aspiring gifted writer with a loving wife into a bitter, vengeful political dissident. He will likely die in prison. The other transformation is the government itself, when it realizes that it can maintain its strength by adopting different crime-fighting methodologies. This is all for cynical self-preservation, of course. So the transformations in the story (without Alex) are kinds of degradation, not aspirations. But to me this a normal consequence of the way life can harden anyone over time. So these other transformations are not good or bad, but merely a normal consequence. Yes, I want Alex to emerge from the horrors of his own life as a better man, but I question his motive as being bored with his existing life, mixed with a bit of jealousy at the stable love life that Pete has. Maybe others can see his motive more clearly. But for now, I think we can lose the last chapter.
5. Music. Burgess was a musician before he starting writing books. His father was a pub-pianist, so he was exposed to music from the beginning, going to concerts all the time, and writing symphonies, concertos, operas, musicals, chamber music, choral pieces, and film music. He even said once, “I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.” I see many ways that he creates a musical structure in the story and the language. For example, it begins with the words “What’s it going to be then, eh?” and concludes it with the same words, as though we the readers have finished listening to a sonata with its typical structure of introduction, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. The use of Nadsat is also a brilliant verbal foray into the beautiful sounds of distorted language, such as “eggiweg,” “appy polly loggy,” “oddy knocky,” “skolliwol,” “jammiwam,” “guttiwuts,” and many others. The internal alliterations of those words capture a sense of harmony and unity in the thought, plus a child-like repetition that brings a kind of charm to all the savagery in the book. In fact, it is difficult for me to find a passage that does not included a sounded event, such as this from Part 2, Chapter 1: “Then he picked up the big book and flipped over the pages, keeping on wetting his fingers to do this by licking them splurge splurge.” Music also infests Alex in his most violent moods, almost as though Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is an afterburner to accelerate his actions. Finally, don’t forget the name of his brainwashing treatment: “Ludovico’s Technique.” For me, it is no accident that it draws its name from Ludwig von Beethoven. The correlation is frightening but quite deliberate by Burgess.
Overall. I rate this story very highly as both a tremendous dystopian world view and a source of some hope to bring the fight to the “Clockwork Orange.”
For anyone with an interest in Burgess' extensive musical career, take a look at this online link to a page from the International Anthony Burgess Foundation: https://www.anthonyburgess.org/about-...
This week's reading is about:
Chapters 17-21
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