Title: A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
ISBN: 9780393312836
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Copyright: 1995 (1963)
Genre: Science Fiction
Age
Range: 17+
Reader’s Annotation: Alex, a fifteen year old juvenile
delinquent, narrates his rampage of ultra-violence and reformation.
Plot Summary: Alex is a fifteen year old juvenile delinquent
that lives in the not so distant dystopian England. He pals around with his
gang of friends, or droogs, Dim, Georgie, and Pete. Alex is an intelligent,
witty sociopath with a taste for violence and Beethoven. They all meet at the
Korova Milk Bar to drink what’s called milk-plus, a concoction of milk and a
choice of drugs. They drink it with a drug called “knives” because it keeps
their senses sharp. That evening, the gang beat up a scholar, assault a
storekeeper and his wife, rob the store, stomp a panhandler, and battle against
a rival gang. They continue to countryside where they break into an isolated
house and beat up the husband and rape the wife. Back at the bar, there is
in-fighting amongst the gang. Alex goes home to enjoy some classical music.
Alex
ditches school and gets a visit from a truant officer/juvenile probation
officer. Alex meets two ten year olds in a record store, takes them to his
parent’s flat, gives them alcohol, injects himself with a drug, and date rapes
them in their incapacitated state. Later that evening, he meets up with his
gang. Georgie challenges Alex’s leadership by demanding a “man sized” job. He
stops the mutiny by cutting Dim’s hand and fighting Georgie. They break into a
wealthy, elderly woman’s house which was Georgie’s idea. In the violence, the
woman dies. Dim knocks Alex out of revenge and so that Alex can take the blame
for the death. Alex is sentenced to prison for murder. He gets a job playing
the religious music at chapel. The chaplain mistakes Alex’s interest in the
Bible for faith, but Alex is only looking for the violent passages.
Alex is
framed for a murder inside the prison. He volunteers for an experimental behavior-modification
treatment called the Ludovico Technique to get out of prison sooner. It is a
version of aversion therapy. When injected with the serum, Alex gets sick while
watching graphically violent films. It conditions him to suffer crippling
nausea at the thought of violence. They even used Beethoven’s Ninth and other
classical music as a soundtrack that makes him sick listening to it. The
technique is proved to work in front of officials when Alex is presented with a
bully and a scantily-clad young woman and is made sick. He is released into
society.
Alex’s
parents rent out his room. Alex roams the streets. He researches painless ways
to commit suicide. He encounters the scholar he beat up and in return is beat
up by the scholar and his friends. The police arrive to help him but it turns
out to be Dim and a rival gang member that drag him outside of town and beat
him. Alex is back at the cottage of the break in and rape. The resident, F.
Alexander, takes Alex in, not recognizing him because of the ski cap he wore
during the home invasion. F. Alexander asks Alex about the conditioning he
endured. As a critic of governmental programs, F. Alexander plans to release
Alex’s story as an example of the brutality of the justice department against
prisoners. Alex accidentally reveals that he was the leader on the night of
horror that killed F. Alexander’s wife. F. Alexander’s friends sequester Alex
to a dank apartment near his parent’s. They pretend to leave but torture him in
the middle of the night with classical music driving him to commit suicide by
jumping out a window.
Alex wakes
up in a hospital where government officials use him to counter the bad
publicity from the prison research. He is offered a job and a reversal of the Ludovico
conditioning if he agrees to let the politicos use him for their own gains. He
dreams of violence. Soon after, he half-heartedly prepares for another night of
ultra violence with a new set of droogs when he runs into Pete. Pete is
reformed and married. He starts feeling less pleasure with the violence and
longs to start a family and be more responsible with his life.
Critical Evaluation: One might think that A Clockwork Orange
is a useless piece of literature for teens to read. It is full of violence,
rape, and irresponsibility. It also teaches the lesson of consequences. Alex
does an array of horrible things. He is imprisoned for it. For every atrocity
that he did in his young teen years, he paid for it doubly later in life.
Through the experience of paying his debts, he slowly comes to the conclusion
that what he did was wrong. He also sees that he has a free ticket to grow up
and be a constructive citizen instead of always being destructive. We hope that
our young people do not follow this path. The last chapter of this book proves
that even those on that path can make the change in their life to be something
different if they choose to be different.
Author Information: Anthony Burgess was an English novelist,
poet, playwright and composer born on February 25, 1917, in Manchester, England.
In total, he wrote 33 novels, 25 non-fiction pieces, three symphonies, over 150
other musical works and other works. Well known novels included The Wanting
Seed, Inside Mr. Enderby, Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange, the latter of
which was adapted into a popular 1971 Stanley Kubrik film. Burgess died on
November 22, 1993 in London.
Source -
http://www.biography.com/people/anthony-burgess-9231506#awesm=~oDCEtndflRF3dR
Curriculum Ties: Politics, Psychology
Challenge Issues: Language; Violence; Sex; Rape
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