I may have started out reading A Clockwork Orange because my friend told me how good it was. And then I continued to read it because it was engaging, disturbing, and thought provoking. Even though the book was written over 30 years ago, I believe it is still as powerful today as it was back then; perhaps even more so. Alex, the protagonist, is almost innocently committing violent crimes with his friends; for he isn't -trying- to be bad, he just is. He likes violence, and that's the way he is.

When Alex's friends gang up on him and leave him to be arrested by the police, Alex is sentenced to 14 years in prison. But then the opportunity to change presents itself to Alex, and he can't help but take the offer. Without ruining the story as so many previous reviewers have already done, I can say that when everything is said and done, important questions arise: is being good truly good if it is not by choice? Is it good to be bad, if that is what one chooses?

The book first came out in the 60s, and the American version lacked the last and 21st chapter from the original story. When it was republished, the book had the 21st chapter. Depending on which copy you read, with the last chapter or without it, the book will have an entirely different feel to it. The old copy represents the horrible realization that bad minds are always bad; the newer version leaves the reader with hope. Hope for Alex, and hope for oneself. Change is possible, the book says, no matter what sort of person you are.

A Clockwork Orange is truly a great work, one that will appeal to people for different reasons; and affect them in completely different ways. But it will affect them.


Not as difficult as you have heard   August 24, 2005
 42 out of 51 found this review helpful

I knew about this book way before I actually went out and bought it (of course there was a gap between buying it and reading it, but that's another, utterly irrelevant, story), being aware of most of the basic facts about it, the general plot and so forth. I've never seen the movie, although I've heard it's rather ultraviolent, which seems to be appropriate. The thing that both attracted me and made me shy away from the novel though was the prose itself . . . for those who aren't already aware, Burgess sprinkles the novel liberally with a made-up slang that the main character uses. I had seen a few pages at my local library and thought, "Crap, this isn't going to make any sense to me at all". But it does, somehow. There might actually be some editions floating out there with a glossary of sorts, giving you a clue as to what the more obscure slang terms might mean but you don't really need it. Reading the novel, it's very easy to figure out what's going on and the text isn't impenetrable at all. Most of the slang you can figure out via context and for the linguistically agile among you, I believe most of it is derived from Russian, mixed with some Britishisms and other stuff that I'm not smart enough to figure out. The end result of this is that it gives the book a weird sort of driving rhythm, half the words seem made up but it flows anyway and I never had any trouble figuring out what was going on at any given point (not that you don't have to read carefully, but it's not Finnegans Wake or anything). So that's that. But what is it about? The story is narrated by Alex, a teenager who inhabits a future Britain that has fallen into dingy decay, gangs walk the streets at night committing all sorts of violent acts, there hardly seems to be any hope and the government has become rather oppressive. But Alex doesn't care because he's quite enjoying himself. The book is a lot funnier than you might think and the violence (it's ample but not graphic) is almost slapstick. Alex and his pals spend the first third of the book (it details a typical night) basically walking around and beating up everyone they see, the narration makes it clear that Alex is intelligent enough to know what he's doing but he likes it and would like to keep doing it. One incident lands him in prison and while there and serving a long sentence, he's given a chance to get out early. All he has to do is submit to a new procedure that will make him nonviolent and he can go back into society. That procedure and its consequences drive the rest of the book, showing how things can seem to get better while actually getting worse. It's a testament to Burgess' skill that he manages to make Alex a nearly sympathetic character, to the point where I started to feel bad for him, especially in the scenes where he's denied the joy of his beloved classical music. The moral dilemma he poses is an interesting one, questioning whether society really becomes better if you take away free will. The edition I have (and most recent editions, I'm sure) restores the previously "lost" final chapter . . . it was cut from the American edition for various reasons and it and the actual final chapter end the story on two utterly different notes. I prefer the real final chapter, I think it closes the book on a reflective note, rather than the implied middle finger of the prior chapter, and I think it's more faithful to Burgess' intent. But your milage may vary and if you really disagree just stop before you get to the end. I don't know if it's the best Burgess book but it's certainly the most famous and quite the reading experience for those who prefer more experimental prose styles. It was published forty years ago but still feels contemporary and it certainly worth reading even today, in a future that Burgress might not have imagined but may be closer to his than we suspect.


A real tolchock in the yarbles, O my brothers   March 30, 2001
 26 out of 32 found this review helpful

Fans of Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED will no doubt disagree with me here, but _A Clockwork Orange_ may be the most remarkable man-against-the-State story ever published. Anthony Burgess's approach is in one significant sense the opposite of Rand's: where she tried to project a hero (and in my opinion failed; John Galt seems to be little more than a one-dimensional abstraction), Burgess projects a thoroughly depraved teenager and forces us to root for him anyway. It's not every author who can make you watch a bunch of gratuitous sex'n'violence and _then_ conclude that even great moral depravity trumps behavioristic psychology and mechanistic determinism.

What "protagonist" (or Your Humble Narrator, at any rate) Alex does in the first half of the novel will make you ill. But what the State does to him to "cure" him makes his nadsat gang violence seem almost . . . well, "innocent" isn't quite the right word, but the fact that I'm even thinking of that word is an indication of Anthony Burgess's power.

For Burgess, the important thing is moral choice, and the possibility of choice entails the possibility of evil. Once Alex has been "reformed" by the very latest techniques of behavioristic science, it's no longer even _possible_ for him to be moral -- and that's somehow more horrible than any of his own horrible acts.

But Burgess stops short of making volition an object of idolatry. In the first place, he doesn't make any argument that Alex's actions were somehow "good" merely because he had _chosen_ them; quite the contrary. In the second place, even though Alex bears the full blame for all his depraved actions, there are hints scattered throughout the book that if he weren't living in a "socialist paradise," he just wouldn't have been acting this way in the first place. (For example, both his parents are required by law to work full-time. They also seem curiously unwilling to discipline their son, or even inquire what it is he does when he goes out at night.)

I read this book twenty years ago in an edition that had something this one lacked: a glossary. I thought I was going to miss it, but I didn't; Burgess is a fine writer and anticipates his readers' needs very nicely. If the meaning of one of his Russian-import slang terms isn't obvious from context, he works in a definition. (And there are a few glossaries available online anyway.)

The earlier edition also lacked something this one has: a twenty-first chapter. I hadn't read this before -- it was left out of the American edition of the book and therefore out of Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation as well -- but to my mind it makes a better ending for the book.

Sure, as Burgess himself admits, it's a little crude; we never actually _see_ Alex develop into an adult, we just suddenly learn at the end that he's growing up and becoming ashamed of his past actions. But the novel wouldn't be complete if Burgess hadn't introduced that final bit of irony: after all the State's torturous efforts to "reform" the poor misguided youth, in the end he just sort of, well, gets over it.

Other readers may have different opinions -- and according to Burgess's delightfully snarky introduction of 1986, that's okay with him. And he almost sounds resigned to the fact (for it probably is a fact) that of all his thirty-two novels -- not to mention his nonfiction (including a fine exposition of James Joyce released in the UK as _Here Comes Everybody_ and in the US as _Re Joyce_) and a whole bunch of music -- in the end it's this book for which he will be universally remembered.

He may be right that it isn't his best work, and he's undoubtedly right that it's a bit preachy. But it's undoubtedly the book for which I myself will remember him. And I'll make no appy polly loggies for that, O my brothers, for it's a horrorshow book with the impact of an oozy across the glazzies, and no mistake. This malchick and his droogs deserve a place in literary history.


Fruits of Redemption   February 21, 2001
 24 out of 38 found this review helpful

After following a few violent days in the life of Alex, the anti-hero of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, and his friends (his `droogs' in the slang of the time), we're obviously supposed to be shocked when we he declares, after murdering an elderly woman, "And me still only fifteen.."

Yawn.

Maybe when written in 1962 this was shocking. Post-Columbine High School, most people have become numb to violent acts committed by children. The fact that Alex and his gang's favorite pastimes are spreading terror, theft, and rape, may even seem tame by today's standards. Yet we should be appalled, none the less. Not at his age, but with the cavalier attitude towards death and the destruction of the lives of others.

It is a well known fact that Burgess was dismayed at the success of A Clockwork Orange. In the introduction to the 1986 reprint, which included the "missing" 21st chapter, never published in the United States before (more on that later), Burgess says he would "be glad to disown it for various reasons, but that is not permitted." While ACO survives, other works of his that he values more, "bite the dust." Such is the life of an artist. Our humble narrator is a 15-year old leader of a small gang of droogs. The four spend their after-school hours wreaking as much havoc as they can muster. Of course, boys being boys, someone has to lead the pack.

As the result of a power struggle within the little group, during a bungled robbery attack, Alex takes one across the glazlids, and is left blinded for the police to pick him up.

Though sentenced to spend 15 years in prison, a stroke of luck gives Alex the opportunity to participate in a new experimental aversion treatment for violent criminals. He emerges from prison a changed, if not particularly new, man. The violent impulses are still there, but he is overwhelmed by nausea whenever they rear their ugly head.

Enter Politics.

Now a "victim" of the state, the opposition political party that is fighting the government's recent crackdown on violent crime seizes upon Alex's plight. He becomes their poster child for overthrowing the oppressive regime in the next elections. Tormented by his present condition, Alex attempts suicide by leaping from a window. His failure only draws attention to the issue (the opposition is delighted) but prods the government into righting its previous "wrong" by changing Alex back to his old self.

"I was cured all right," the original American version ended. So now our little droog is back to the way he was; violent, chaotic free will and hormones raging. Ready to prey on society once again, only now with a good paying government job from his new friends.

The new version or, perhaps I should say, the original version (now available in the U.S.) has an entirely different ending. In the final chapter, our "young thuggish protagonist grows up. He feels bored with violence and recognises that human energy is better expended on creation rather than destruction." This version, Burgess believes, is a true novel as it is founded on the principle that human beings change. The old American version was a fable as are all fictional works that fail to show change in human character.

The prison chaplain, who befriends Alex, puts it succinctly when he says, "When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man... It may be horrible to be good."

He warns the pre-treatment Alex, "You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer. A terrible terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think."

Burgess, like his jailhouse preacher, is a strong believer in free will. They are appalled that government could decide to take away one's ability to make decisions between right and wrong. If that happens, a person is no longer a person and the fact that they will no longer harm anyone else is secondary to the fact they have been harmed themselves. Then what is the point of punishing criminal behavior?

Which brings us to the final, omitted (dare I say censored?) chapter. In the original novella, and the revised American version, Burgess' character has a sort of realization that maybe the life of violence he has lead is not the right way. Maybe he should even get married and have kids - not that he would be able to control them any more than his parents did him, but just maybe... Is this a true conversion in Alex? Or is it the idle prattle of a common street thug? Burgess intends for us to believe that it's the beginnings of a true change.

Suppose it is. That's not a hard thesis to support. Alex himself recognizes that something is changing. "There is something happening inside me," he says, "and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me..." But Burgess fails to take the cue from his own character.

Perhaps out of resentment for the original omission of his last chapter, Burgess refuses to even recognize that maybe it was the punishment he received that has lead to the new Alex. Instead, he gives all the credit to Alex's free will. Perhaps. After all, as he says, "The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate."

And so it must.


A Dark and Brilliant Novel   July 28, 2000
 19 out of 25 found this review helpful

Anthony Burgess warns us of what the future holds in his outstanding book "A Clockwork Orange." This book became a classic when it was first published over thirty years ago. The movie, which starred Malcolm McDowell and was directed by the late Stanley Kubrick, has developed a cult following.

Alex, the protagonist, is the leader of a small gang in his town. He lives in a world where the hell-raising kids take over the night, while the adults are at home glued to their TVs. He steals, vandalizes, rapes 10-year-olds, and much more. He gets caught eventually and is sent to prison for murder, where he hears about a new rehabilitation program which he is eager to join. However, rehab is far from what he expected, and has some serious side-effects.

Probably the most brilliant thing about this novel is it's language. Burgess invented a slang which Alex and his friends (or "droogs") use. It's called Nadsat (which means "teen"), and is widely based on Russian. It takes a while to pick up, but it's not all that difficult (there's an unofficial Nadsat/English dictionary at clockworkorange.com).

The problem is, a lot of people dismiss both the book and the movie and put them in the "violent, tasteless, shocking and corrupting" category. These people have to see beyond the violence and realize this is clearly a work of art. This edition of the book includes the 21st chapter which has a different (surprising, perhaps) ending (different from the first American release and the movie).

I truly recommend this book to anyone. It's better than that Harry Potter junk anyway.