A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

[Ryduce]

I've never read it,but I was on some movie site today and everyone was talking about how brutal the film was.So I was just wondering if this book is really that bad.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

There are a lot worse. It's hard to get into because of the invented language - I spent the first couple of dozen pages flicking back and forth to the glossary - but you pick it up after a while. I didn't find the violence to be unnecessarily graphic though - the violent events are described in a matter-of-fact way if I recall (it's been a few years since I read it).

I certainly wouldn't let fears about it's content put you off, it's a great book.

[emily655321]

*rubs hands together with joy* My specialty!

The book and the movie are different. However, they work better as companion pieces than they do as individual works. The movie gets the feeling and spirit of the book just right, but the book gets the message across much better, and is a lot darker.

Personally, I don't find the film disturbing at all. There are moments in the first half of the book that really make me cringe and squirm, though. The most marked difference to me is the movie's seemingly deliberate separation of sex and violence. It was made in the late '60's, after all, and progressives were trying very hard to persuade people that sex was beautiful and wonderful and natural, and explicit rape in film was understandably not-so-popular. Almost all of the sex in the book involves beating and blood, and the one bit I can think of that doesn't involves children. (In the movie, the girls are far less innocent, and definitely much older.) The movie also eliminates an instance of male rape.

Another point is that the movie has little more gore than a bump on the head and a bloody nose, suffered by the anti-hero himself. The book... well, the blood in the book could fill a swimming pool, frankly.

So, while many people I mention the movie to shudder and say, "Ugh... that was so... disturbing," I fail to see quite why. By contemporary standards, certainly, it seems like a colorful Disney-esque romp with loveable post-apocalyptic scamps.

[emily655321]

I spent the first couple of dozen pages flicking back and forth to the glossary

You had a glossary?? No fair! Actually, half the fun for me was slowly picking up the language from context. For a year after I read it, I annoyed everybody within earshot by bouts of speaking in pure Nadsats. The linguistics are so fascinating, you could write a book just on the logical processes by which Burgess arrived at the slang. Half-Anglicized Russian, half-rhyming slang... I think it's brilliant.

[Ryduce]

I'll definitely have to check this one out.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

The penguin edition that I read has a glossary - added by Burgess himself in later editions I believe.

[Isagel]

It was about twelve years since I read this one, but what I remember as disturbing is not the gruesome detailed violence, but the cure for it. Will not say more because that will spoil it.
I also remember the total alienation and lack of any emotion but sheer indulgence in violence or drugs becuase there is nothing else there. There is nothing for them. The world is empty, soulless. I might remember that part wrong, but that is the impression it made.

So yes, this is a disturbing book, in many different ways.

[genoveva]

It has been quite a few years since I have read this book, and of course, snap shots of the movie (a classic as well!) are what are left in my mind. The book is supposed to be disturbing! Of course, compared to today's violence and destruction it may not seem as disturbing. But, if you read this book and aren't disturbed, I think you need to read it again....or ??? maybe some of us are becoming desensitized to violence due to the amount of it in the media, etc. these days???

[Countess]

The violence wasn't gratuitious but I nevertheless found it disturbing. Watching rape and murder like that - it just gave me the shivers.

The interesting thing is SOMEHOW the writer manages to turn Alex into a sympathetic character, albeit like Satan in Paradise Lost if you consider Lucifer a sympathetic character.

I felt the inclination towards sympathy, but fought it back by remembering the brutality of Alex.

BTW- I dressed up like him one Halloween many, many EONS ago. (--:

[Koa]

You had a glossary?? No fair! Actually, half the fun for me was slowly picking up the language from context. For a year after I read it, I annoyed everybody within earshot by bouts of speaking in pure Nadsats. The linguistics are so fascinating, you could write a book just on the logical processes by which Burgess arrived at the slang. Half-Anglicized Russian, half-rhyming slang... I think it's brilliant.

If I get to do my MA about English and Russian languages, I intend of find a way of fitting this as the topic of something I'll have to write - there must be a way to make it relevant and make it work.
I would love to read the original (the language was distinctive but not that hard to pick up in the translation I read, if I remember correctly, it's been a few years), though I had a look at it at a bookshop and it seemed quite hard.

[Koa]

Oh Isagel reminded me, in the movie the part I found most 'disgusting' was when they cure him and [SPOILER] what they do to his eyes to make him watch that.. you know.

I don't think its disturbing in the way of 'oh my god this is horrible', even when it is... it's disturbing in the way it makes you think about things, and that's one of its great sides.

[emily655321]

[SPOILER] what they do to his eyes to make him watch that.. you know.

It was quite tough not to fall in love with Malcolm MacDowell in that role. The eye thing, plus what must be some kind of record for holding one's breath under water... mmm...

Okay, I'm done.

[Isagel]

I felt the inclination towards sympathy, but fought it back by remembering the brutality of Alex.

Why fight it? To me one of the disturbing parts that I spoke of was the total lack of sympathy for anyone. We can feel sympathy for someone that hurts becuase he suffers, not becuase he deserves our sympathy.
If we can´t I guess we are getting closer to be like Alex.

Isn´t the sympathy and growing understanding of Alex also one of the main points of the book? I thought the book left alot of questions about the nature of evil. Is Alex evil becuase he is born like that, or are his brutal personality partly an effect of something else? Could we be Alex? Could we be evil? If not, why? If we could then why? Look at how we all are seduced by the costumes, the style, the wit and even interested in all the violence, all the disturbing parts. Nihilism appeals to alot of us.

[Stanislaw]

heh, it is really not bad compared to sin city.

[emily655321]

Isn´t the sympathy and growing understanding of Alex also one of the main points of the book? I thought the book left alot of questions about the nature of evil. Is Alex evil becuase he is born like that, or are his brutal personality partly an effect of something else? Could we be Alex? Could we be evil? If not, why? If we could then why? Look at how we all are seduced by the costumes, the style, the wit and even interested in all the violence, all the disturbing parts. Nihilism appeals to alot of us.

A brilliant post, Isagel. I think you've put it perfectly.