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A review by halfmanhalfbook
Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Burgess
3.0
Alex is 15 years old, and with his three other friends, they roam the streets looking for opportunities to attack unsuspecting and innocent people. They start in the Korova Milk bar, drinking a milk plus, with added extra drugs. On their way home their period of ultra violence begins. They attack people, rob a store and fight with a rival group. After stealing a car they breaking a cottage, and attack and rape the residents. After more random attacks of violence, and tension in the gang, an attempt at a robbery fails and Alex is arrested.
As the woman has died, Alex is convicted of murder, and is given 14 year sentence. He is blamed for the death of another inmate, and is chosen to undertake the Ludovico Technique, a method of behaviour modification. This involves being injected with a substance that makes his nauseous and being made to watch violent films. One of the films has music by his favourite composer, Beethoven, and he ends up hating that as well. The treatment is deemed to be effective, and he is released.
Unable to return home, he wanders the streets. Whilst wandering he meets various people from his former life, who try to repay some of the pain he caused them. After a failed suicide attempt, the government don't want bad publicity about his treatment, and place him in mental home. As he considers if he has been cured or not, a chance encounter with one of his fellow gang members who now has a child, he reflects that he may have children who are far worse than he was.
Even though this book is uncompromising in its violence and brutality, it is tempered by the language that Burgess has used. The English & Russian slang hides a lots of the worst aspects of it, whilst ensuing that the intent is fully understood. There is as much in here about the stance that the government has taken to cure these destructive youth, as there is on Alex's bleak future. Burgess does take a moral stance in this book, but setting you against what Alex and his gang of 'droogs' are doing, but then asking he question over the brainwashing by the government, and asking another when people extract revenge on Alex.
I couldn't get on with the language in the book, there was almost too much of it; thankfully the glossary was quite handy. But i do like the way that he did predict the future, in the way that violent London gang culture has a patois of its own now. it is a seminal book in lots of ways. Can't say I liked it. But I am glad that i have read it.
As the woman has died, Alex is convicted of murder, and is given 14 year sentence. He is blamed for the death of another inmate, and is chosen to undertake the Ludovico Technique, a method of behaviour modification. This involves being injected with a substance that makes his nauseous and being made to watch violent films. One of the films has music by his favourite composer, Beethoven, and he ends up hating that as well. The treatment is deemed to be effective, and he is released.
Unable to return home, he wanders the streets. Whilst wandering he meets various people from his former life, who try to repay some of the pain he caused them. After a failed suicide attempt, the government don't want bad publicity about his treatment, and place him in mental home. As he considers if he has been cured or not, a chance encounter with one of his fellow gang members who now has a child, he reflects that he may have children who are far worse than he was.
Even though this book is uncompromising in its violence and brutality, it is tempered by the language that Burgess has used. The English & Russian slang hides a lots of the worst aspects of it, whilst ensuing that the intent is fully understood. There is as much in here about the stance that the government has taken to cure these destructive youth, as there is on Alex's bleak future. Burgess does take a moral stance in this book, but setting you against what Alex and his gang of 'droogs' are doing, but then asking he question over the brainwashing by the government, and asking another when people extract revenge on Alex.
I couldn't get on with the language in the book, there was almost too much of it; thankfully the glossary was quite handy. But i do like the way that he did predict the future, in the way that violent London gang culture has a patois of its own now. it is a seminal book in lots of ways. Can't say I liked it. But I am glad that i have read it.