Describe a favorite literary character.

[Danik 2016]

Alex from A Clockwork Orange. I still remember when I read the novel for the first time. I had the greatest time reading it. It is indeed one of the greatest times of my life, truly. Then again I had the nadsat translator which was very helpful. Alex speaks in a street slang invented by the author Anthony Burgess. a lex (i.e. Latin for without law) Well, you have to read the novel then watch the film. It would be unfair to describe him to you.

http://soomka.com/nadsat.html

A lex= the lawless one! That defines the character but also the world he inhabits. An antecipatory book with its both sided often gratuituos violence. I wonder if the part on behaviorist therapy isn´t a bit dated today.
What I like about the book is the language. Thanks for the gloss! I din´t know that Russian was one of its inspiration!
Valeu!

[Ecurb]

My favorite film critic, Pauline Kael, hated the movie "A Clockwork Orange" (although I believe she liked the book). She hated Kubrick in general. (I don't agree with her, but I like her style.)

Here's a link to her excellent review:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html

[Pompey Bum]

A lex= the lawless one! That defines the character but also the world he inhabits.

Alexander also means the defender of Man, which may be more pertinent in the context of Burgess' humanism and anti-Skinnerism. Alex is the defender of humankind in that his exercise of will, however immoral, is contrary to the behavioral control that is forced eventually on him. Burgess' point is not that the ultraviolent Alex is good (he's not, he's a monster), but that good, to be good, requires a choice away from animalistic violence. Alex's choices are in the opposite direction, but at least they are choices; and therefore they are defiantly human.

Burgess' book is better than Kubrick's film, which is dated in what it thinks is shocking, and which never succeeds in manipulating its audience's instinctive mind (for all its bouncing t*tties and lurid reds). Malcolm McDowell had Alex's voice down perfectly, but parts of the script were dopey even for those days. The guy who played Dim was awesome, though.

[Danik 2016]

I think both definitions complete each other: Alexander defends his right to make his own choices but he is also a destroyer of humans.
http://www.behindthename.com/name/alexander
Just a curiosity for those who like the novel/film and also like rock: The album A-lex from the Brazilian band Sepultura:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Lex

[Red Terror]

Some student filmmakers/actors recreated the flat-block marina fight scene. Hilarious!!!

[Red Terror]

[Red Terror]

[Red Terror]

[El Entenado]

Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin.

Dostoyevsky already described him, so I will not.

[Danik 2016]

Lol. You are right, he didn´t make it easy for Dostoyevsky. But maybe you could explain,why he is you favorite character.

[El Entenado]

Lol. You are right, he didn´t make it easy for Dostoyevsky. But maybe you could explain,why he is you favorite character.

Well, because he isn't an idiot, and in contrary to most non-idiot characters/persons, he isn't an idiot in a good way. (Forgive the pun).

[Danik 2016]

I think you mean Prince Myshkin, the protagonist.

[El Entenado]

I think you mean Prince Myshkin, the protagonist.

But Prince Myushkin *is* an idiot, unlike Rogozhin. I meant Rogozhin.

If I were to apply such a general adjective to a character, I would say Prince Myushkin is a good character, and in a way, all other non-idiots are non-idiots because they're missing something that he has, they're worse than him. However, IMO, his character is impractical, or mythical (pardon me my limited English vocabulary). For me, Rogozhin is the non-idiot that is not worse than the idiot. This, along with the fact that he is in the same setting that has the idiot and all the other unusual characters of the work, makes him one of my favorite characters.

[Danik 2016]

I see Entenado. Unfortunatelly I read "The Idiot", as mosts classics, a long time ago, so I don´t remember the details of the novel. The one thing I remember is that Rogozhin and Myshkin get very close, in a complex dostoyevskian way, and that Rogozhin ends by killing the woman he is obsessed with. Anyway he wouldn´t stand out for me as an intelligent character.
On impulse I would rather think of the detective Porfiry of Crime and Punishment as an intelligent Dostoyeski character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment
He is not one of the main characters of the book. But he achieves his aim in making the murder confess in a very peculiar way.

[Pompey Bum]

Father: Remember that nice boy next door, Raskolnikov?
Boris: Yeah.
Father: He killed two ladies.
Boris: What a nasty story.
Father: Bobak told it to me. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers.
Boris: He must have been possessed.
Father: Well, he was a raw youth.
Boris: Raw youth, he was an idiot!
Father: He acted assaulted and injured.
Boris: I heard he was a gambler.
Father: You know, he could be your double!
Boris: Really, how novel.

--Woody Allen, Love and Death