whiteartod

The first thing that hits out at you is the slang dialect that makes up most of this book. I was put off at the beginning by this nadsat slang, but a few pages later I pretty much got the hang of it. I didn't like the idea of using a guide, as it was a lot more fun to make sense of the slang through context. It wasn't bezoomny, on the contrary quite horrorshow! A Clockwork Orange is about Alex, the protagonist and our Humble Narrator, and his love for violence and classical music. Dressed in the heighth of fashion, he and his friends, walk the streets at night to quench their thirst for violence. Crime, to Alex, is another art form. He takes aesthetic pleasure in it; the satisfaction and thrill that he derives from listening to Mozart or Beethoven is similar to the delight he experiences when indulging in acts of violence. He ends up in prison and a few years later finds himself on the brink of freedom by being thrown into reclamation treatment. This is where the author's central argument takes shape regarding free will. Alex is promised freedom but prior to that he undergoes a fortnight of torturous treatments which turn him into a clockwork orange, a machine capable of only good and no evil. Burgess points out how this conditioned goodness is useless since it wasn't chosen but thrust upon Alex. The book ends on a positive note but not before you realize the complete lack of remorse on Alex's part; his excuse for giving up the life of ultra-violence is his growing up and not regret. A few scenes are explicitly violent and the nadsat lingo can be challenging at first, but it's definitely a must read.

2020-08-30 17:04