Name: Matthew Jackson's review of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Item: A Clockwork Orange
Rating: 3
Author: Matthew Jackson

Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange

Avarni B

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

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

Stephanie 

Matthew Jackson

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.

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

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. 

Tobi

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.

lily

absolutely the worst book i’ve ever read i don’t even want to expend my energy on writing a review for it. it baffles me that everyone seems to revere this thing. i’m not even going to get into my complaints about the plot but the absolute worst feature of this book is the pretentious english/russian slang that makes this already insufferable book nearly unintelligible. perhaps i would have found myself expending more brain power to use context clues and knowledge i’ve already gained in life to understand the dialogue but as this book already made me want to throw myself off a roof that was out of the question.

Emelie

Alejandro AR

I (sadly) saw the movie before reading the book, and I fought to avoid picturing the actors from the movie in the book. I really liked the style, there are a couple of chapters that the movie did not integrate but once you're done with this book, you can acknowledge the great work the writers did for the movie. The book itself is awesome, and liked every bit of it.

Kirsten Simkiss

** spoiler alert **
           2.5 stars out of 5, leaning toward three stars.

I have to say, this book really doesn't put in any events that are purely fluff. From the very start of this novel, they get right down to the important events. Everything you see is necessary to drive the plot forward - nothing is really pointless.

I'm definitely not a fan of the violence, or of the main character Alex. But I don't think you're really supposed to be as a reader, even though you're referred to as his "Brother" the entire book. It kind of irks me that Alex never learns that doing these terrible things is wrong on his own. He decides that he wants to get a girl, and to do that he has to stop being an absolute piece of shit. It's not because he's physically harming people. He just gets tired of it and wants something more than being a horrible person. I just don't quite buy it, to be really honest with you, that someone would decide to turn on a dime from beating the life out of people and loving it to wanting to get hitched and have a baby before they even had someone they had an interest in.

The discussion of taking the choice of morality away from the convict is, obviously, an interesting one - though obviously they hadn't thought through all the smaller repercussions of the thing. Morality isn't exactly a black and white thing, unfortunately. That was something they hadn't counted on, which was a silly oversight. I don't buy that nobody said that there was going to be a problem when it came to a moral dilemma. For instance, if violence makes them sick, what happens if they themselves are assaulted. They can't protect themselves effectively if they can't move offensively. It just seems like they didn't really think things through well enough. Perhaps it was desperation. Who knows.

And, finally, it could have done without all the unnecessary slang. It really didn't have that much of a purpose other than to make you feel like you're in a brand new society. But I would have just preferred to read it in our slang. I don't think it was necessary to the story line.

Gulshan Hasanzada

Hi, hi, hi there...
Nadsat language - deyə təsniflənən danışıq tərzində oxuduğum ilk kitabdır, filmi də bildiyim qədər birə-bir kitabla səsləşir, tək fərq 14 yaşlı əsas qəhrəman Aleksi əməlli bir day-dayın oynamasıdır. Yəqin film də kitab qədər möhkəm səbr və iradə tələb edir, yoxsa o şiddəti asanlıqla oxumaq gücünə sahib deyildim) amma niyəsə çox həzz aldım.

Nia Chin

this book kinda hurt my head, but it was good i think

Trever

I didn't think it was possible to write a book with a transgressive, amoral protagonist without glorifying moral transgression. But Alex is not someone who Burgess seems to hold in high regard. This book is kind of like a dystopian  The Catcher in the Rye-style bildungsroman with a transgressive twist. I wouldn't classify it as "transgressive fiction" in the traditional sense because Alex's immorality is not the main theme. The focus is on how the government tries to "reform" him. For some reason this proved to be a real page-turner towards the end. Also: Burgess definitely has some smarts when it comes to language.

I asked @morallyblack for a recommendation that’s deep, self-destructive, meaningful and makes me feel like I‘m not the only insane person on earth. This is what she made me read. And having finished, that’s exactly how I would describe this book as well. 

I love it when books make me think and question life, morals and concepts of good and evil. The story made me extremely uncomfortable at some parts and made me feel calm and understood at others. 

The one thing I have to criticize is the writing and style, which was hard to get into - even if Burgess is a master of playing with languages and I liked his style in general. BUT it gave me a major throwback to 9th grade French class when I forgot to catch up with the vocabulary and didn’t understand what was going on in the textbook. I like the idea to exchange brutal words on purpose but there were also so many unnecessary replacements that made it hard for me to completely enjoy the ride. 

Nevertheless, it feels like a book you should at least have read once in your life. 

Emmett

A book to read repeatedly, fantastical with starkly realist underpinnings - humorous, dark, violent and poetic.

A "Clockwork Orange"

Having read the original novel more times than I can count, I was interested in its adaptation to drama and how effectively that can be done. Burgess' experience with theatre is evident - he writes his own lyrics and music, and his stage directions evince an astonishing and enviable awareness of space, action and dialogue and expert handling of these elements simultaneously to tell a good story in real time. In essence, the play holds the novel, with modifications made for the benefit of the medium; it becomes obvious that a particular scene is less effective if it were presented in its original form; to reflect on that brings insights into his possible considerations. Certain scenes are condensed, new ones are written and dialogue is turned into stylised, snappy duets. Characters breaking into song and rhyme is highly appropriate - and, after Kubrick's film, not that surprising. The novel's and its main character's vicious playfulness carries over very well into theatre, Alex is theatrical, and the performative edition of this novel merely realises the tightly choreographed written-scenes. In books there is no beauty but language, but the aesthetics of language is, in dramatic arts, translated into the visual. I imagine the altercation with Billyboy's gang to be uncomfortably beautiful: 'a fight, very exactly choreographed to music'. In a future film remake, my director of choice is Baz Luhrmann.

However, the stage proceeds at a different rhythm from the page and nadsat might prove to be difficult for audiences watching for the first time to acclimatise themselves to the slang.

Richie B

** spoiler alert **
           4.5/5 stars 

Really loved this, I think it's one of my top 3 favourite books this year. Loved the use of the Nadsat language and thought it really made the society of the book seem more real than other books you might read . I also found it more entertaining to read. Anyways, really liked, maybe a better term is appreciated the character of Alex. I thought he was probably the best written anti-hero I've ever read. This book was really interesting and fast paced so I was never bored while reading it. The reason I docked a half star off of a 5 star rating was because I didn't really think that last chapter had to be added. It would have been fine without it, more ambiguous. Adding the 21st chapter gave it kind of a cheap ending in my opinion, one doesn't really 'grow out' of sadistic sociopathic tendencies like Alex did. But that's just my opinion.

Josefina

i have never liked classics, so i don't know why i keep doing this to myself and i know how bad this is gonna sound, but i prefer the movie.

Vanessa Egger

Alex ist ein intelligenter Teenager der auf Abwege gerät und Freude an anderer Menschen Leid empfindet. Es kommt wie es kommen muss und er wird verhaftet und eingesperrt. Nach zwei Jahren wird er für ein neues verfahren ausgewählt, bei dem es darum geht, dass sein Körper mit Unwohlsein und Übelkeit reagiert wenn er Gewalt sieht.

Freier Wille - ein immer aktuelles Thema

Nur einen Stern abzug gibt es weil viele Wörter Begriffe aus der sogenannten Nadsat-Sprache sind und es den Lesefluss unterbricht ständig diese Wörter nachschlagen zu müssen.

Flavia Louise

3.5 stars
This was interesting and quite strange at times.

Jeff Brown 

First, let me make sure that you will be reading the version with 21 total chapters to the book (Kubrick used the (unfortunately) stupid American version that the publishers felt was necessary to leave out the key 21st chapter). If you read the Overdrive/Libby version, I can guarantee the explanation for this is made by the author.

Therefore, the three sections are split in seven chapters each.

The first section is tedious and you end up hating the character and the verbiage. At best, you feel indifferent to him. 1 and 1/2 star.

Let me mention the narrator's use of a "hip" language. While it is supposed to be mostly based on Russian, and while annoying, it doesn't really seem very Russian for the most part and is easy to follow. After a few chapters, you hardly notice it.

While the first section developed the character, the last two are what make this a classic novel. The character faces a drastic confrontation in the second section, then an internal confrontation which are quite captivating to read.

I will give tremendous leeway to Kubrick, given the time, that he may not have had access to the edition the rest of the world had and unintentionally ruined and shortchanged this story.

A part of me would like to re-watch the movie and make the adjustments in my mind that are needed. Since that was about 30 years ago when I saw it and I have many other things to do, it is easier just to see how Kubrick's movie should have been completed.

The last two chapters are very strong four stars and therefore are a four for the story. Hang in there for the first section -- it's worth it.

2004

Clockwork Orange

Elena Menendez

Read it as a part of a Utopias and Dystopias in XXth century Literature course at uni - absolutely loved it, difficult to read it at first but the themes and the writing are genius

Kendall Gray

** spoiler alert **
           alex w da happy ending ‼️‼️
literally one of my favorite books ahhhh 
(i’m sure this a very helpful review um)

Matthew Jackson &
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

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