Book: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Krishna
A classic that everyone has heard of, but how many have really read the book? If you are not into classical novels, the answer is very few.
It has throughout, an invented language. The language is based on Russian (or Slavic languages) but not entirely. It has mostly English words with viddy for “see”. It can be very irritating at first but you simply get used to it very soon. Let us see what the story is about.
Alex has three friends, Pete, Georgie and Dim. They are hooligans, enjoy terrorizing the neighbourhood and having gang wars just for fun. They are cruel, out of control and are feared even by their parents. Alex terrorizes a writer and his wife and tears up a story he is writing, called A Clockwork Orange. (Clever to name a story in a story with the title of the book itself)
When you viddy the slovos (words) that the author chelloveck has written, you can’t believe your own glazzies and you wonder “Am I to figure out what this is in my gulliver all by my oddy knocky?’. Your rot drops and you grind your goobies in frustration.
Did that make any sense? If you have this dictionary (viddy – see; slovo – word; chelloveck – fellow; galzzies – eyes; oddy knocky – myself; rot – mouth; goobies – teeth), then it makes sense. There is a glossary at the end of the book but it is more fun to read and guess. (I did not know it was there but by the time I found out, I had guessed most of it anyway and did not need it. But you, on the other hand, may feel more comfortable to check it out from the beginning)
Alex goes to a cat lady and accidentally knocks her on the head and she dies. He is arrogant and treats everyone with disdain and takes what he wants – including taking girls to his room and raping them. It is a kind of a futuristic society where the rule of the law has broken down and the police seem to be ineffective. He insults his own cronies but they trap him with the lady and when the millicents, sorry, police come by, he is taken to jail, which turns really dire when the old lady dies.
Then they conceive of a medicine, which can make a person incapable of deceit, lying or cruelty. They decide that this is a better way to reform criminals and even hooligans, and that way, there is no need for jails or punishment. If you are caught for a crime, they can just ‘cure’ you and let you back in society, knowing that you will be incapable of being bad again thereby eliminating the problem of recidivism.
Alex is the gunea pig for the miracle medicine and made “good” but a lot of folks do not like it. He is “re-cured” and resumes a life of crime but his heart is not in it.
The explanation for why he loses interest in crime, though making for a satisfying ending to a book, is weak and unconvincing. I leave it to you to read it and either agree or disagree with my assessment.
But the book does indeed raise very interesting ethical questions. The most important one, I think, is this: If you were forced, as by medicine in this story, to choose good and are incapable of making a voluntary choice between good and evil, are you really good? Is not being a good person automatically imply choice to be good? Very interesting questions.
In essence, the story is interesting, and is well told, and the invented artificial language adds, in my view, and additional layer of enjoyment. It is not a profound book and does not move you very much, but still very readable.
I would give this book a 6/10
– – Krishna