A Clockwork Orange

While reading A Clockwork Orange, some terms like "ultraviolence" sounded familiar. After reading it, I discovered I had read it a decade ago. I didn't remember many of the plot details from then. And even when reading it now, much of the details escaped me. A quick summary: a teenager and his friends dress fashionably, love music and commit heinous crimes. The government tries to reform him through some treatment. He is repulsed by crime. However, he is still subjected to it. People don't believe he is reformed. He tries to commit suicide. He fails. However, he does significantly injure himself. He is "cured" and now has the ability to commit acts of violence. He tries to go hang out with the old gang. However, he realizes that he just doesn't like it as much anymore. He has "grown up" and longs for a more peaceful life.

In the intro, Burgess complains that he is upset with the novel. It is by far his most famous, yet it was written quickly and does not represent his writing. The final chapter was removed from the US edition, violating the symmetry and changing the outcome. (Without the last chapter, the narrator is just an unchanged criminal.) However, Burgess appeared resigned to this. The audiobook concluded with him reading the first chapters.

Burgess was a linguist and the book shows it. Much of the novel consists of a made-up slang. Many of the words are repeated enough to enable understanding the meaning without a glossary. This helps the depravity seem a little more distant while giving the novel some otherworldliness. The narrator also has a strong attachment to classical music. (Burgess was an accomplished musician.) The classical music is strongly linked to violence in the book. The narrator suffers when he hears music while "controlled". He is relieved afterwards to finally be able to appreciate the classics. It is an interesting combination of art and violence. The result of the mind control remains ambiguous. The narrator really did change on his own afterward. Did he need to have change forced upon him first? Or would he have changed on his own?

Clockwork Orange

The narrator is a 15 year old who gets his kicks committing all kind of murder and mayhem with his friends. He also enjoys classical music. One woman they attack dies - but not until after calling the cops. He gets locked up in jail, where he generally acts the good guy - until he is provoked. One of these provocations results in him killing a new prisoner. This leads him to receive a treatment that will end his will to do violence. However, most of this treatment involves watching violent scenes accompanied by classical music. This, alas, results in classical music giving him the same ill feeling as violence.

After being set free, he returns home, only to find his room rented to a border, and all his stuff sold for restitution. He visits his old stomping grounds, only to get beat up by a bunch of old men he bullied earlier. The cops (who include one of his former buddies) take him away and beat him more. He eventually finds refuge with an author, who wants to use him as part of an anti-government propaganda. (He later learns that the author's wife had died to a beating from he and his friends.) He eventually tries to commit suicide, but survives, and finds the existing government trying to use him as a tool. Eventually, he ends the book as a mellower, older "man".

In the forward, the author complains that it is one of his inferior works, and that he doesn't like the movie which excluded the final chapter (which was excluded in the original American version of the book.) The book makes heavy use of a made-up slang (Nadsat). This adds to the flavor of the book and helps to tone down the violence. You can tell that he lives a life of all sorts of nastiness. However, you (as a reader) don't feel sucked in to it as you would with vivid modern language descriptions.

The message that is trying to be made is somewhat muddled. It seems to say that freewill is all important. Trying to reform society by restricting freewill is only replacing one evil with a worse one. However, the people that advocate this have their flaws - and attempt to restrict his freewill as a means to help bring about the downfall of the government. This muddling is seen in the modern society of today. People will often advocate "freedom of expression" for some issues, but on others attempt to regulate away others' freedom (because they think they know best.)