A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Synopsis (from Amazon)

A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?"


Rants & Raves

 Wow. The horrors of this book is the essence of its beauty. Burgess is a genius having written this for only three weeks!

Alex, the nadsat anti-hero, being violent in nature ended up in staja, willingly subjected himself to a state experiment with high hopes of freedom. He was forced to viddy a series of ultra-violent sinnies everyday. After the experiment, his free will was paralyzed. He can't act or think or even listen the way he used to, thus making him a victim of other lewdies violence. True, he suffered but not long after, he was back to his starry self.

I like how Alex refer to himself as "your humble narrator". I love how Burgess explores the violence in human nature and how it was suppressed by taking away the person's free will. This is quite the same with Huxley's A Brave New World, where people lived in contentment without free will. I guess I agree with this state experiment. How it can solve crime rate, lessen the number of prisoners and how those who got out of prison will never be back into the society as criminals. I don't mind if this will happen in the real world.

Anyway, I like his invented language, Nadsat. It took me quite a while to finish because I have to check on its meaning from the glossary. It's fun though learning all those zvonock, slooshy, podooshka & the obvious in-out in-out (LOL).

I'm looking forward reading its British version which has an opposite ending. Hmmm... I wonder where can I get a copy.

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