A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
This was a very violent and dark book to read. Also mildly difficult to read as Burgess basically invented a slang language that the book is written in. So it takes some time to get used to that.
Somehow the slang terms are of Russian origin, but I never bothered to research to what extent. But here is some examples. If the book said the word “Viddy” it means “see”. Veck = man. Litso = face. Glazzies = eyes. There are hundreds of invented words. Most are fairly intuitable based on how he writes and once they repeat enough you begin to understand. Definitely unique.
The story is about a young kid named Alex. Alex lives in a totalitarian society that has become kind of blind to the ever growing problem of violence among its youth. Alex and his gang of three others basically walk around town and do messed up stuff. They will beat someone senseless, rob people, rape people or kill.
A particularly brutal scene is when the boys decide to drive to the country and rob a cottage. There is a man and woman living there. The boys break in, heavily beat the man and rape his wife in front of him and kill her.
Alex gets sent to prison and learns he will be part of an experimental treatment called “Ludovico’s technique”. This treatment subjects Alex to having his eyes propped open and watching grotesque images of violence and torture on a screen while being given drugs that make him very sick.
After two years in prison being subjected to this, Alex can not participate in any violence or crime of any sort without becoming paralyzingly sick due to the brainwashing treatment.
As he is released back into society, his past victims begin taking revenge on him, and he is powerless to fight back due to him getting sick. Alex gets beat up badly in the country and goes to a house begging for help. The man living there provides him with food and shelter and helps him rest up. It turns out this is the man that Alex killed the wife of earlier in the story. This man is involved in a group of political dissidents. They are trying to use Alex to expose the governments harmful treatments like the one Alex received.
Alex gets overwhelmed with being used however and yells at the man again using the slang he used to use as a youth. This sparks a memory in the man who then remembers that Alex was the one who killed his wife.
They then lock Alex up and blast classical music hoping to drive Alex to suicide. (Alex used to love listening to classical music while imagining committing violence, so now he can’t stand it due to the treatment).
Alex attempts suicide by jumping out a window but survives. While Alex is being treated for his fall in the hospital, their is a power struggle among the dissidents and the government, and the government prevails. They negotiate with Alex to undue his treatment as long as he endorses them, which he agrees.
Alex goes back to his life of crime. However he starts to get tired of crime and at the end of the book runs into one of his old gang members who happens to be married and have a kid. Alex decides he has grown out of the crimes he committed as a kid, and decides he wants to turn his life around, behave like an adult and ends the book imagining himself having a kid.
So there is a modestly redemptive ending to an otherwise very brutal and dark book. It was a fairly captivating book. I hesitate to use the word “enjoyed” as it doesn’t feel like the right word given the content, but I thought the book was good.
I have no desire to see the movie despite it being consistently rated one of the best of all time. Sounds like it is just as graphic which I have no interest in seeing visually and sounds like the director opted out of the slightly redemptive ending meaning its full on depressing the whole way through.