Final Exam Blog

For my final exam I read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. It was an amazing read. I grew attached to Alex, the protagonist, as the story progressed; I was extremely attached at the end of the book even though it was  just about 200 pages long.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the "nadsat," a type of slang spoken by the Humble Narrator and the youth of the book. The first chapter was hard to get through, but as the book progressed I learned the slang and it made the book a lot more fun. I think the slang served three purposes. The first, and most superficial, purpose was just to make the book more fun to read. Learning new words is fun, at least to smart, awesome people. The second purpose is to immerse the reader in the dystopian world of the book. If it were written in normal English then it would have been harder to believe it were a dystopia. The slang makes it as if the Humble Narrator was regaling us with this story. The third purpose was hard to catch, but it really is effective. When Alex is unconditioned and is "ultra-violent" he speaks in the slang. When he gets conditioned by the government he changes to a "proper" way of speaking. Then when the conditioning is reversed he reverts back to the slang. Atta boy, Alex.

I would have to say the next thing that struck me was the ultra-violence. Alex and his gang are teens and they are beating people up on the street, raping people, and Alex killed a woman. In the beginning of the story the balance of power leans towards the gangs; they rape, steal, and assault while the police do not do much. At the end of the story Alex mentions how the ultra-violence has gone down and suggests the possible reason of the police getting a lot more violent. This lends to the government being the cause of the dystopia in this story. Either the government doesn't do its job and the ultra-violence is perpetrated by the gangs or the gangs die down and the government commits the violence. Burgess here might be commenting that there is always going to be violence one way or another, it is like the Law of Conservation of Violence. Burgess exaggerates the violence to make his commentary clearer.

The last thing that was important to me was Alex's prison time and his conditioning. In the prison pre-conditioning Alex is still violent - he and some cellmates kill a man, with Alex delivering the killing blow. It is obvious that Alex isn't changed at all. Then, when Alex is forcibly conditioned he becomes a polar opposite of his former self: sniveling at the feet of someone who is threatening him, and licking the feet of a good looking devotchka. What we see here are the opposite sides of a spectrum. When the person in jail has no government interaction or help they do not get better. But when they are completely forced into "getting help" they are no better than without the governments help. I think Burgess is saying that we shouldn't just toss prisoners in jail nor should we condition them too harshly. We need to find that sweet spot to make them a better person while still making sure that they know they did something wrong.


I really liked this book. I don't know if I should recommend the movie; I haven't scene it. That being said, I don't know if I should watch the movie. In Burgess' introduction he explains how he wrote the book with 21 chapters, and that the book makes sense if you read them all. It certainly made sense to me. Burgess goes on to explain that the first prints of his book did not have the 21st chapter - the publishing companies left it out. The movie was then made without the 21st chapter and Burgess explains that there is definitely a different feeling in the movie than from the full book. Oh well.

I would give this book a 10/10. Books are awesome.