A Clockwork Orange

I just got done reading A Clockwork Orange and I have to tell you that it is not what I had expected. You see I have seen the movie a few times (pre-mission if you will) and so I thought I knew what this book was about.

In short the movie is about a hoodlum that terrorizes the streets at night with a gang that he is the leader of. One night he gets caught and is thrown in the state penitentiary. He is there for a couple years before he is picked to try a new type of rehabilitation. The rehab is horrible but seems to work. He is set free and sent back to his family. The problem is he is not choosing for himself rather to be bad or good. He eventually tries to kill himself and in so doing the rehab is broken and he is back to being himself.

As a teenager I thought that this movie was amazing, ultimately thinking that you couldn't rehabilitate someone because it took away their ability to choose for themselves.

I did get the English version which had chapter 7. Now as a grownup I really got chapter 7 and everything that comes out of it. The basic story is still the same but in chapter 7, which was not released in the US, the story takes an interesting turn. Alex (the main character) decides to turn away from a life of crime to grow up and become a husband and a father.

The more I think about this book the more I love it. Sitting here blogging about this makes me think about my own life. How when I was a teenager A Clockwork Orange (the movie) held a "teenage anthem" for me. It didn't wrap things up and it said that the bad things you did in life were someone else's fault. Now after reading the book and having that last piece, I see that I wasn't ready for that at the time. I am older and hopefully wiser then I once was. I see the error in my ways and see that growing up is not a bad thing, just something different and in most ways better for me.

If you get the chance to read this book, do it. It is a great read. It is tough because Anthony Burgess makes up his own language which is hard to get use to. The book is a good one but maybe it means more to me because it patterns my life so closely.

Quotes

"When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

"Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"

"Choice. The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice."