I'm not sure what to think after finishing A Clockwork Orange. I believed that Alex more than paid for his crimes in part two when he was being brainwashed and tortured. The misery that followed this showed the consequences of being a clockwork orange. When I say, "the misery that followed" I am referring to the beatings that occurred after leaving prison. There were times during part three that I found myself wishing he could hit the people that would cause him harm, not to be violent, but just to defend himself. I think that this wish is what the author wants. Burgess wants the reader to feel empathetic towards Alex. Just like a reader would wish for any other victim to be able to defend themselves, we are suppose to want this for Alex. I feel that this role reversal is very important. It reminds me of one of my earlier posts when I was talking about the quotation, "What's it going to be then, eh?" and the different ways it can be looked at. By making Alex the victim, all power is out of his hands. This becomes more and more evident as part three goes on. He is forced out of his home by someone else, he wants to commit suicide, but the violence that it entails makes him sick, he is beaten up at the library while unable to defend himself, he is beaten up in the countryside by police while unable to defend himself, he is taken advantage of and used as a pawn by a political party, he is tortured once again in an attempt to make him try to commit suicide. Everything is completely out of his hands. If the book had ended when he jumped out of the window with him dying, the message would be much clearer to me. It would simply be telling us to be weary of the control of modern government, but the book did not end there. Alex lived. I never wanted the brainwashing he endured to have a lasting effect on him, but I think that I was hoping that the violence that he endured, in the form of both the torture during the brainwashing and the beatings that resulted from it, would somehow change him. Beethoven's 9th is a very victorious sounding symphony. Alex has won back his ability to choose for himself, and so this is a very fitting piece.

I found it interesting that no one really cared for Alex. It says something about mankind. I suppose someone could argue that his parents cared for him in the end, but they only did so because their name was in the paper and it was their integrity that was threatened. The only other people that showed true kindness towards him were only doing so to gain his trust so they could use him and eventually betray him. It makes one wonder, do the ends justify the means? There are two major parts in this book where the reader can ask that. The first is after the brainwashing. Does having a miscreant of the street justify the torture that had to occur to do so? Different people could probably give different answers to that question depending on how totalitarian they are. The other major part I mentioned above, about the people gaining his trust. Is it okay to sacrifice someone to get out an idea? I am talking about sacrificing Alex in order to point out that a Totalitarian regime is wrong. This might be a noble cause, but is it really worth someone's life? I suppose with no hope of a cure at the time, his life meant very little, but when he jumped, it was not of his own accord which is what makes it wrong. He was forced to jump by the music.

I'm now going to talk about the last chapter. My book says that some copies don't actually have the last chapter, so feel free to ignore this. This chapter changes the whole meaning of the story for me. It goes from being a statement about control and the ability to make a choice for yourself to saying something about age. First of all, I find it strange that he changes so suddenly, almost as if someone had flipped a switch. It has crossed my mind that when they were "curing" his ailment from before that made him sick at violence they were also making his mind more mature, but what happened immediately following his awakening made me discard this theory. The last chapter looks at this idea of young verse old, and I honestly don't know which side I am suppose to like more or less. On the side of the young seems to be the ability to choose, which seems to be almost a necessity if one is to admire it. Some people may argue that adults can still make choices, but Alex seems to contradict this. Dostoyevsky talked about being able to plan out the next however many years of one's life, and that seems to be exactly what Alex is doing. He talks about having a child, finding a wife, getting married, having a job, and being frugal. All of which seems to be a consequence of him maturing. The one thing that is making me perhaps like adulthood more is the talk of the ultra-violence that Alex seems to believe every teen must feel.

There are a few things that I would like to mention. The first is the use of repetition. I honestly have no idea if the repetition is suppose to mean something, but it is something that I have definitely noticed. The, "krovvy" is not described as red, but rather, "red red." The line, "Right right right" has been repeated a number of times. Always with the first, "R" in caps, even if it is in the middle of a sentence. In the course of two pages I see, "oh oh oh... yeth yeth... crash crash... hundreds and hundreds... Ludwig van... Ludwig van... brrrrrr brrrrr brrrrr." The repetition is endless. Perhaps it is to give more meaning to otherwise unremarkable words, I just don't know. Some other repetition is separated a little more. For example, "The old ptitsa who had all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world" and "But it was not really sleep, it was like passing out to another better world." on the page before. This one I see more as a turning point for alex. His fall from power amongst his droogs and his family is being compared to death, and more specifically, the death of the woman that he killed. Alex can only go up from here it would seem. The question, "What's it going to be then, eh?" is repeated twice in the first chapter of part two and once again at the beginning of part three. The Prison Charlie talks a lot about the importance of deciding whether or not to be good, which makes me think that when he asks this question, he is putting someone's future into their own hands. This question could also be looked at differently. Instead of the one with authority asking the prisoner, it could be the other way around, which would mean that the prisoner is giving away the right to decide his own future. This idea of choice plays a very important role in part two.

I would also like to talk more about the use of classical music. I have started listening to more classical music with the hope that I could find this fuel that Alex uses to drive his rage, but I am still completely clueless. All I have to say really is that I am really glad that I started playing violin before I read this book. If this book was my first glimpse at classical music, I'm sure it would have put a pall over the entire genre.

I was terrified by part two. Not only for the horrifying images, but also for what happened to his mind. I think that there is nothing wrong with trying to calm a patient's violent urges, but to train someone in such a horrid manor sounds unbearable, and the urges weren't just calmed, the were torn out in the most violent of manners. Before part two started, I was terrified because I expected Alex to be given a lobotomy, and I was relieved to find out that this wasn't so. This relief was very quickly replaced by more terror at what actually did happen to him. I'm not trying to justify violence, but there are instances when it may be required, self defense for example. I can't even begin to imagine being subjected to such torture. More than that though, I couldn't bear to hear someone so willing to throw away music that easily. It was painful. By the end, when they were testing Alex, I was wishing that he would just punch the actor and prove the doctors wrong, but it wouldn't happen. After part two, I am honestly unsure how to feel about him. I know what he did was horrible, but I don't think I can justify his torture by what he did in his past.

Disliking Alex

That first post I made about A Clockwork Orange was written not very far into the book, but since then, my feelings toward the narrator have gotten worse and worse. I still feel that he is shockingly unbiassed, but what he does to people and women specifically is horrible. The way he uses classical music as a fuel for his power and rage is strange to say the least. I have always thought about classical music as a way to express emotions, but not really to fuel them. I also feel that he gets a completely wrong message from Brandenburg, which I usually see as a somewhat jovial composition. I know that this post is a tad bit premature, but I feel almost sick about saying that, "I don't feel a large amount of hate for him." in my last post, so I feel that I must post this one ASAP.

A Clockwork Orange

I recently started reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and this is what I think so far. The use of language is very interesting. It is mildly difficult to understand at first, but it becomes surprisingly easy. It was an interesting decision to make the main character also the narrator, and although he is very clearly a bad person, he doesn't go out of his way to paint himself in a better light. In fact, he is surprisingly objective when it comes to narration. I get the feeling that he is speaking to the reader as if he is one of the main character's, "droogs." When he says something like, "O my brothers" It seems as if he is speaking directly to the reader. It is for this reason that I don't feel a large amount of hate for him. It is also possible that I just can't experience a book as strongly as I can experience real life. Perhaps if this were happening in real life, I would hate him more. There is no way to know.

He also does some very cool things with time. There are moments when I read and I found myself feeling almost rushed, while other moments felt dragged out and savored. In these savored moments, the narrator went as far as to even go back in time and replay what was happening to someone else. One example of this was during a fight scene and instead of continuing on, what was occurring to the wife during the scene was recounted, this contrasts with a brief scene a short time before when the group was driving around and very little detail was given, but it was clear that time passed.

Silence by Zürich Kunsthaus.