1962; 152 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Dystopian Fiction; British Literature;
Movie Tie-In; Banned Books. Overall
Rating: 9*/10.
You gotta hand it to the droog,
Alex. That’s because if you don’t hand
him everything you’ve got, Alex will thrash you to within an inch of your life.
Come to think of it, Alex
might beat you up even if you do give him everything you’ve
got. He's one of those malchicks who
thoroughly enjoys being a gangland thug.
The police are aware
of Alex’s misdeeds, of course. They’d love to throw
him in jail, but finding witnesses willing to testify against him, and who are
still alive, has been impossible so far.
Also, the jails are getting
crowded due to gangland thuggery running rampant. If only there was some magical
way to reform hardened criminals.
What’s To Like...
The initial book version of A Clockwork Orange came out in 1962, followed a decade later by the blockbuster movie version. Both of those releases thoroughly irritated the book’s author,
Anthony Burgess, because both chose to delete the entire last chapter
in his book. A ”complete” version,
including that final chapter, was published in 1986 in the UK, and that’s the
version I read.
The story is told in the
first-person POV (Alex’s), which means you get to read it in punk
gangland slang language called “Nadsat”.
In most cases, I could suss out the meanings of the Nadsat words; with Anthony
Burgess also providing translations of a few of the more obscure words in the
text. Still, I kept a list of the
Nadsat-to-English vocabulary, and am very glad I did. And you can also Google the Nadsat word to get
its translation. Ain’t 21st-century
technology amazing?!
Outside of the absent/present
last chapter, the book and the movie versions match up rather well. I’d seen the film twice when it first came
out, so I pretty much knew how the storyline went. If you haven’t seen and/or read this tale, be
forewarned that there is an abundance of violence in it. The enigmatic title is referenced several times in the
text, and the first excerpt below, which comes from the author’s Introduction, not
the story itself, will clue you in.
The ending is both logical and
twisty. It appropriately answers “What
is Alex’s ultimate fate?”, both in the immediate future (Chapter 20), and later on in life (the initially deleted Chapter 21). I felt that it left the door open for a
sequel, but that never happened.
Kewlest New Word ...
Droog (n.)
: a young, violent gang member; a ruffian (Nadsat
slang)
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 11,014 ratings
and 1,556 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.00*/5,
based on 781,357
ratings and 26,306 reviews.
Excerpts...
If {a human being} can only perform good or
only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the
appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a
clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly
replacing both) the Almighty State. It
is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order
that moral choice may operate. Life is
sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. (loc. 74)
“I’ve been out of the rookers of the
millicents for a long time now.”
“That’s just what worries me,” sighed P.R.
Deltoid. “A bit too long of a time to be
healthy. You’re about due now by my
reckoning. That’s why I’m warning you,
little Alex, to keep your handsome young proboscis out of the dirt, yes. Do I make myself clear?”
“As an unmuddied lake, sir,” I said. “Clear as an azure sky of deepest
summer. You can rely on me, sir.” And I gave him a nice zooby smile. (pg. 30)
“There’s the
mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness.” (pg. 5)
The amount of profanity in A Clockwork Orange is surprisingly small—I noted
just six instances in the first 50% of the book. Of course, this is offset by several assaults
and rapes. It should be noted, however,
that those violent scenes are less graphic in the book than on the screen.
My e-book gave the story’s
length as 152 pages, but I wouldn’t call it a quick read. There are a slew of gangland slang words
used, and it takes some time to remember which means what, even if you’re
keeping a list.
Overall, reading the book
version fifty years after watching the movie was a great experience. Yes, there's a flood of sex and violence, but the
reader is also given much to think about. Is
there a way to cure violent behavior in thugs like Alex? If so, is it a godsend or a curse? If the choice of what we do is taken away,
have we been dehumanized? And so on.
Based on Amazon and Goodreads
reviews, readers of A Clockwork Orange seem very divided on its merits
or lack thereof. Some think it’s a
brilliant novel, others claim it’s the worst book they’ve ever read. I’m in the first camp.
9 Stars. One last thing. A group called PEN America monitors what books are being removed from library shelves in public schools on a yearly basis. For the 2024-2025 school year, the book banned the most times, with 23 bans total, was A Clockwork Orange. Google it for details.
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