Name: A Clockwork Orange
Rating: 3.904362416107383 (596 reviews)
ISBN: 9780141182605

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess reads chapters of his novel A Clockwork Orange with hair-raising drive and energy. Although it is a fantasy set in an Orwellian future, this is anything but a bedtime story. -The New York Times

A Clockwork Orange

Stephanie 

avarni

That was everything. I’d done the lot, now. And me still only fifteen.

roro

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the 

 of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They dont go into what is the cause of 

, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop.

Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

Still dazzling and transgressive, this groundbreaking novel remains a frightening fable on morality and the meaning of human freedom.

Midveil

I first read A Clockwork Orange 30 years ago in high school, when some of the cool alternative kids started dropping nadsat words in their speech: horrowshow, bezoomy, in out in out, pee and em. Desperate to join in, I somehow acquired a copy and dug in for myself. The writing style knocked me out — it reminded me of my hero Kurt Vonnegut if he wrote Shakespearean style. But after I acquired enough nadsat to be proficient with my peers, I lost interest in finishing, and then I saw the movie and I was glad I hadn’t finished the book.<br /><br />30 years later, the writing style still knocks me out. I appreciated the storyline a bit more. I got into the dystopian elements of this universe that Burgess created and semi-ignored the heavy-handed good versus evil theme. And I loved the infamous last chapter as a statement on how a lot of teenage rebellion is just something we grow out of. 

думала, что будет очередной kal, а оказалось неплохо, бллин 

SONYA

A clockwork orange

This was a really hard read. Both it's content and language make it challenging. 

What is amazing about this book is that this dystopian world is frequently reduced to an inconsequential backdrop compared to the heinous activity of the protagonist. 

Asks some serious questions about the nature and meaning of good and I definitely think there's value in this book for everyone. 

Liam Richardson

This was a really hard read. Both it's content and language make it challenging. 

What is amazing about this book is that this dystopian world is frequently reduced to an inconsequential backdrop compared to the heinous activity of the protagonist. 

Asks some serious questions about the nature and meaning of good and I definitely think there's value in this book for everyone. 

Klerri

I picked this book as it well known among many people. I haven't seen the movie but I definitely will after the book. 

Coming from a russain speaking background it was a struggle at first to switch between the slang and the actual plot. Some parts were horrid to read, that if it was in a movie I would have looked away. 

Overall, I liked the use of continous presence of music and the deeper questioning of good vs evil and if evil can ever be cured, and at what cost does it get cured. The ending tied in well with the story and it was a nice closing moment.

Ksenija 

I picked this book as it well known among many people. I haven't seen the movie but I definitely will after the book. 

Coming from a russain speaking background it was a struggle at first to switch between the slang and the actual plot. Some parts were horrid to read, that if it was in a movie I would have looked away. 

Overall, I liked the use of continous presence of music and the deeper questioning of good vs evil and if evil can ever be cured, and at what cost does it get cured. The ending tied in well with the story and it was a nice closing moment.

Molly M

Clockwork Orange

Amna A.

The tale tell the story of the hero -or anti-hero, depending on how you look at it- Alex, our humble narrator himself. Alex, a common teenager with a perfectly normal childhood, had turned out, like most of the youth his age, an addict of ultra-violence. The chaotic actions of his were put at an end when he was captured and sentenced for 15 years in a state jail. A state jail which had agreed to shorten Alex's sentence to a couple of days if he consents to undergo a governmental experiment, which supposedly tuns bad people into good people. What they didn't tell him, however, was that an outcome of the experiment would be that he would not have the choice of being a good person, therefore, he would have no morals. 
 As they unleashed poor Alex onto society after being exposed to torturous scenes of violence(as part of the experiment), the mere thought of anything the society would define as "bad" sent him weeping with pain and anguish. At this point, members of the government opposing society had decided to use Alex as an example of how far the government would go to maintain order within the community. Anyways, the main point that they had is that a person who has no choice but to be good, is worse and a person who can, but chooses to be bad. Good needs to come from within. 

This book was real horrorshow.

Sarah Sammis

Not bad; better than I was expecting. It also has to be the most straight up book to film adaptation Kubrick ever made.

I didn't think it did the teen parlance as well as Catcher in the Rye or the numerous Georgia Nicolson books do but it was still entertaining reading Alex's version of things and him not realizing just how stupid he sounded. The plot line is a bit like Flowers for Algernon so the ending didn't really suprise me. I did enjoy Alex running into one of his old droogs and finding him all grown up.

Penguin Essentials a Clockwork Orange

maitha mana

The symphony of mass destruction: the aspired malchick takes us through endless journeys and movements that take place in his very own ultra-violent mind. Alex, the mad genius in my opinion, has been ruthless towards the Nadsats. Only to have the wheels turned around, and forced to have good forced upon him. It is most ironic that a malchick like himself, who is into arts, literacy, and the bible, to be fueled with the need to drat and poison innocent lives for the sake of his own urge. Unfortunately, Alex is a clockwork toy that has been wound up by the devil rather than God (and all that cal)

Real horrorshow groodies

As for my opinion on the ending - Americans are whack, the positive rehabilitation of Alex IS believable and utterly preferable. I'm not a fan of retributive violence, as it happens.

Een heel guur en grimmig boek, dusdanig dat ik even gestopt ben om een ander boek te lezen tussendoor. Ik kan de thema's van het boek wel begrijpen en ik snap ze. Maar het voelt oneerlijk aan, de hoofdpersoon heeft geen blijvende straf voor wat hij heeft gedaan en het wordt allemaal heel neutraal neergezet, terwijl het heel wreed is. Het is wel een goed boek daarnaast is het ook vet dat er russische woorden worden gebruikt als straattaal, echter dit maakt het lezen ervan wel moeilijker. 

Bart Veldhuijsen 

Anton

** spoiler alert **
           I would agree with Stanley Kubrick and drop the last chapter from the book.

The book is well written, and the story is captivating. But was is the moral lesson here? What is the metaphor that author tried to convey?

The last chapter makes it into a "growing up" novel, but at the same time reading that chapter was nothing but painful. For 20 chapters we follow a story of someone who is a bully, thief, rapist and murder. But then he just "grows up" and decides to make a family? Grow a child? Because he got bored or beating people on the streets, stealing and raping? I feel like there is a lot missing here.

Janice

I will admit that at first I had a hard time getting into the book, mainly because of the use of Burgess' own invented language. However, after I continued reading I started understanding the idea of the book and felt like the new language really contributed to the story. There is a deep meaning behind the book, it makes one wonder about what free will really is. I believe this book is a true masterpiece. One might need a little bit of internet information to truly grasp its essence though.

A lot of conflicting ideas just being thrown around, the main two being 1) the rehab is immoral because it strips Alex of his humanity / 'the choice', 2) the rehab is necessary regardless of its morality. Also ends with the implication that sociopathy and murderous impulses are just growing pains. So my gripe w this book is that for getting through all of the violent graphics and heavy slang, you ultimately end up with a passive stance, and it's stupid to be passive about the stuff Alex got up to

sydney

Aamna

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

It seemed a bit daunting at first but once I got a hang of all that nadsat I started enjoying the book. The narrative really holds it together. This particular edition I read had an intro which gave the book a context. I suppose I would prefer the American edition which had the last chapter dropped. It feels out of place. But all in all I'm glad, O My Brothers, to have added a colourful bunch of nadsat words to my vocabulary.

Mehul Kar

I haven’t read a book in a long time, so I’m not sure if this was brilliant or if books in general are brilliant. I am still reeling in how deep this book managed to get on a relatively simple plot line.

Elizabeth McInerney 

Michael Springer

This is a dobby story about some young droogs (total prestoopniks), all the time dratsing and doing the ultra-violence. Alex, the leader, gets left oddy knocky after a botched robbery and gets picked up by the millicents, and that's when things get really bezoomny. 

A Clockwork Orange is really less about violence and more about the experience of no longer "being yourself," no longer having a choice in your actions . . or is it about what it means to have freedom, and how dehumanizing it is to give up freedom for the sake of safety? 

*SPOILERS* It's about a lot of things. And, as a reader, you have at least a little empathy for Alex, the murdering rapist who ends up having his free will taken away via Pavlovian conditioning. You see a man who physically CAN'T choose to act badly, and you see what this does to him. 

If the main character were a minor criminal and not fully evil, this book would've been something much less challenging. But Alex is an evil, remorseless sonuvabitch, which forces us to really question whether the things done to him could EVER be considered ethically permissable. 

I suspect this book was inspired in part by electroshock therapy. I could be totally off, but there it is. Umm, guess that's the end of THAT thought. 

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED THE LANGUAGE! Alex speaks with a hella lot of slang, some of it Russian-influenced, most of it simply from the strange, fucked up recesses of Burgess's brain. You read slower than usual so you can decode the language, but it is very much worth it because the slang is hilarious and brilliant. 

Burgess now dismisses this book as something he knocked out in three weeks to pay the bills, but I have a hunch he's just bitter that his other books have never matched the success of this early novel. It was one of my very favorites when I was in high school, but I can't say it's still one of those books I get teary-eyed as I ponder. It is terrific, though. If you haven't read it, and you don't get nauseous easily, and you don't mind sticking with it long enough to figure out what the crap is going on with the language, this book is totally horrorshow.

Sabanar

Recommended by Milligan and Oksana

This book is really interesting and frustrating and sad.
The end chapters tho, it’s not fair.

The books talks about if the treatment Alex undertakes is moral.
I think for cases like Alex, it’s punishment that is deserved. What annoys me is he doesn’t fully grasp or care to understand why the things he did were wrong. He gives an answer to the priest guy explaining why the crimes he committed were wrong, but it just seems like he said it cause that’s what the priest wanted to hear.
He doesn’t care to understand the pain he causes, and although there is a change in him towards the end, this part of him doesn’t change.

Anyway gg it’s a good read.

A Clockwork Orange CD

Kelly

I understand the literary value of this book

And I’m glad I listened to the edition with the final chapter. I did really like that ending. 

However - the language killed me. I was almost a third of the way through the book before I had any idea what was going on. Thank goodness for the Sparknotes dictionary. 

This was very dystopian and almost a sociological/psychological kind of book, but it was just too violent for me personally.

Gillian Rose

Absolutely LOVED this book to death - my only major gripe (and I guarantee this is a common sentiment) is that the made up slang makes this book so much more of a headache to read. 

Maya

Absolutely LOVED this book to death - my only major gripe (and I guarantee this is a common sentiment) is that the made up slang makes this book so much more of a headache to read. 



— lae

so very fun !!!! love reading ab rowdy teenage boys

aynur

Without last chapter this book deserves 5 stars.

A Clockwork Orange

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