Basically, the book is a thoughtful and insightful read albeit its fairly short length (a novella).
It narrates the life of a sociopathic teenager with extremely violent and sexual tendencies. He then gets into trouble with the law and is incriminated with these out-of-control criminals preying on his young flesh, but soon takes control of the situation and create even further chaos in jail. Driven by the will to change his psychotic streaks and behavior, the government then comes up with a program to change him for the better.
Burgess leads the prose by setting a relatively high benchmark: the creator of words he calls NADSAT. The reason why i had a hard time getting through this book is mainly because of this new language he coined out of nowhere. (I wouldn't say nowhere as it has some russian origins and made-up words). This form of diction that he has weaved out symbolises the age of how teenagers communicate. It is as if the commonality and shared experience of growing-up has a common tongue to be spoken within the inner circles of youth that the novel must encompass a large part of. Another reason why nadsat is used here is because of the massively graphic imagery portrayed by the narrator, Alex. It is then used to quell the intensity of the mature scenes. The Clockwork Orange is also nadsat for The Mechanical Human when translated into modern day english. This illustrates that a bulk of the novel would be revolving around the oppression of the people just like a mechanical being, controlled by the state and politics.
Common themes in this book encompass around youth violence and chaos, the issue of control (be it the individual obtaining power or an authoritarian state), suppression of the individual in a dystopian society and lastly the betrayal of relations. In a whole, i feel that the main purpose of the story is to lead the reader through a journey of self-awakening and maturity as the plot slowly unravels to depict the stages of Alex gaining a step further to attaining a certain level of maturity, thereby charting his growth. In the novel, Alex "tolchoks" the characters quite frequently and inflicts fear through violence. He assumes power via physical abuse and sometimes raping his victims. He feels that "starry vecks" are rather loathesome and tends to classify his victims into the elderly and "ptitsas" (girls), perhaps because of their vulnerability. Alex and his "droogs" would go out in the night and hunt for victims and sometimes to steal money from residential estates and shophouses. He often gets away by bribing the "babooshkas" to be his alibis and cover up for his misdeeds. Also, power is often transferred via bullying when the 'droogs' of Alex later got employed as "millicents" and drove Alex to a secluded place just to brutally attack him. Power is now in the hands of his "droogs" when they inflict physical harm onto him instead of before his incarceration where he called the shots and was the leader of the gang.
On one of the nights, he finally got betrayed by his gang of friends and is incarcerated. He then becomes a tool for the state to experiment on. Burgess named it the "Ludovico Method" which is an astute wordplay of Ludovico Einaudi, a renowned pianist. Since Alex is a fan of classical music and especially Mozart's works. This method involved forcefully prying Alex's eyes open to witness murderous scenes of violence and torturous rape scenes to induce absolute guilt in him, relying on the empathetic instincts of human beings to cringe and attacks the natural instinct of his brain to be repelled by these images and to restrict his nature to do those exact actions. This the leads us to question whether is this really a humane form of experimentation. The irony in this context is that in order to treat Alex of his violent nature, the state has to succumb to inducing extreme violence to stop his belligerence. The treatment itself actually causes unease and extreme discomfort instead of allaying and curing his bestial qualities. This "subliminal penetration" is actually a form of political propaganda, with the government using him as a tool to gain the people's trust and to keep the streets safe again. After the experiment, the effect would then leech onto the suffering of Alex to lay foundation to a more conducive environment for the citizens.
Much of the novella's purpose is to hold a didactic message and that is the maturity of the protagonist to reach adulthood. The frequent reference to milk is to emphasise on the 'toddler-like' quality of this age of teenagers. The "Korova Milkbar" induces a childlike quality of the gangsters, thereby showing that they do not have the capacity to act like adults and make prudent decisions for themselves yet. At the end, Alex finally feels the need to throw his nadsat identity away and shrug away the familiarity of being immature and reckless where he met his 'droog' Pete who announces that he is settling down with his wife and getting married. The most obvious transition from adolescence to adulthood is the dismissal of nadsat speak. The speech patterns soon begin to turn normal and the moral direction of the individual is more focused with a life goal in mind, not mindlessly causing trouble in the streets. This transition of course, does not come easy as the main character passes through many milestones of his awakening phase. He experiences the betrayal of entities (his friends and the mistrust in the state) and then experiences guilt and remorse when the past goes back to haunt him. An instance would be him accepting kindness from the stranger whose wife him and his droogs brutally attacked and raped. He inadvertently becomes the victim instead of the man, recognising his savior from his savage misdemeanor earlier on in the text. As quoted from Burgess, "Being young is like being one of these malenky machines", he actually breaks free from his reins of being a "clockwork orange" and attains freedom through growing up.
So, "What's it gonna be then, eh?" seems to be occuring a couple of times throughout the book and this "O, my brothers" would be Alex's way of reassuring himself that he is still not losing touch with his humanity as he questions this sanity but at the same time feels clueless about what he is about to embark on thereby asking a rhetorical question to engage his readers and to constantly engage his troubled mind.
All in all, it was a remarkable experience with this novella and it would be a necessity for all (be it a classics reader or not) to feel the sensation of a Burgess dystopia for yourself and bring up topics for discussion. 3.9/5
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