This Week in Reading - Week Three

Woop! Last post! I think?

(Warning, this post will be very spoiler-y, as it’s the end of the book and I want to talk about EVERYTHING. Well, maybe not EVERYTHING, but MOST THINGS.)

So, where did we leave Alex last week?

Stumbling out into the world without any way to defend himself, that’s where we left him.

But what happened next? Well, Alex got some breakfast, that’s what happened. He read an article about himself in the newspaper, and then he went to visit his mum and dad, thinking they would be happy to see him…

No such luck. I mean, they weren’t necessarily horrible to him, but they definitely didn’t expect him to come back so early. Frightened, maybe. And maybe a bit disappointed in him, since they thought he had escaped from prison. And then there’s the fact that they had rented out Alex’s room to some strange man who claimed that they had been like parents to him, and that Alex was horrible for putting them through such horrible things and getting himself sent to prison like a horrible son and all that.

 So they fight a bit, which ends with Alex leaving and going to the local library to try and find out the best way to die so he doesn’t have to live like this.  And there he runs into an old friend... Well, I say friend...

Alex runs into the "starry teacher type veck". Now, you might think that would be fine, and he probably wouldn't even recognise him, but you're wrong. It seems it isn't just nadsats (teenagers, did I explain that earlier?) who’re prone to a bit of violence in this society, and this old man, apparently named Jack, saw this as a great opportunity to get his revenge. So he and his equally old friends, or colleagues or whatever-they-might-be, start beating up Alex. And Alex, of course, has no way of defending himself.

 

*insert-relevant-caption-that-is-only-here-so-I-can-link-the-source*

A guy working at the library comes to see what's happening but runs to the office to call the police instead of interfering. And Alex ends up being completely out of it when the police actually arrives. And that's why it takes him some time to recognise Dim and Billyboy, who are now millicents and apparently get on like a house on fire. But they recognise Alex, and decide that he needs to pay more. And they take it into their own hands to make sure he does exactly that.

They drive out of the city, and when they are finished, Alex is left to stumble along, lost and bloody.

That's when he stumbles upon a little cottage, and finds a man that takes him in and helps him. A man Alex soon realises he has met before... Yep, it's the same man who was writing A Clockwork Orange. Turns out his wife died after Alex and his droogs raped her, and now he lives all on his own. (And his name is F. Alexander, by the way.)

Luckily for Alex, both he and his friends were wearing masks when they committed that particular crime. Unlucky for him, the man still seems to remember Alex’s way of speaking from somewhere.

Now, F. Alexander and his buddies see Alex as a way of getting rid of the government, since what they did to Alex was so horrible. They think that if they can make people see how inhumane the things they did to Alex were, they can make people realise that they need a new government. So they have their own little plan, which they won't really explain to Alex.

They put him in a flat, and Alex goes along with it without making too much fuss.

And then things go wrong again. Or right, depending on who you are. Because F. Alexander and his friends weren’t planning on making Alex hold speeches or tell people how much the government had messed with his head. No, they wanted him to demonstrate. Which they did by playing classical music through the walls in the apartment. Why classical music? Because the doctors at the prison had made sure he reacted just as badly to the music that was played over the films they showed him, as he reacted to the things that were actually happening in the films.

All this leads to Alex freaking out, because they have locked him in the flat and he has no way of escaping the music. So he decides his best option is to jump out the window and hope for death.

*help*

He ends up in the hospital with his parents crying at his bedside. And surprisingly enough, he can actually think of punching someone without throwing up. It seems the government realised they were better off with violent criminals than with brainwashed people who can make them lose all their power by dying. Imagine that…

Now, you’d think Alex would have learned the error of his ways, wouldn’t you? Nope. Not a chance. After he gets out of the hospital, he finds some new droogs and carries on as if nothing had happened.

Kind of.

Now here’s the fun part! (This will be spoilers even for those who have watched the film! Isn’t that great!)

There’s a chapter of the book that wasn’t included in the American version. Basically, Burgess let them print it without the last chapter because he needed the money, and the man who made the film read that version of the book!

But I have one of the books where the last chapter is included!

So, what happens in this mysterious chapter?

The happy ending, that’s what.

Because Alex can’t be bothered to go with his new droogs on one of their planned crimes. Instead, he goes to a coffee shop to sulk all on his oddy-knocky. And there he meets Pete. But Pete is not a Millicent or some criminal or something like that… Nope, he’s married. To a nice lady who apparently knows nothing of what her husband was doing just a few years ago. 

They talk for a bit, and then part ways. And Alex walks away with his head full of thoughts. Maybe he should find a nice girl and settle down? Maybe he is getting to old for all the violence and murder and whatnot?

And there the book ends.

I told you he was going to suffer more. But did you listen? Did you? Honestly, did you? Because I have absolutely no way of knowing…

As for how I read? Tired and annoyed at an airport at 9pm. And a bit on a plane, trying not to feel sick and doing my best to see the words without having to awkwardly ask the stranger next to me if it would be OK if I turned on my lamp...

Part of my list, complete with very readable writing.

Seriously, though, there wasn’t more of a process than what I said last week. Except that I didn’t write down any more words, as I had come across most of them earlier in the book. I liked this book, and that means that the only reading-related process is the process where I turn the pages and pout once I finish the last one.

Seriously, I love this book. It’s at least in my top ten. Maybe higher. I’m buying my own copy.

I’m not sure I can say more about how I feel about this book without repeating myself. The language is by far my favourite part of it. Both nadsat (the slang, not the teenagers) and the way the story is written.

As I mentioned in another post, I usually put a book down if I so much as glimpse something that looks like first-person narrative (I know, I know, it’s kind of stupid… but I’m probably not going to stop). Not this time, though. I have to admit that it worried me a bit when I first saw it, but it was great. Probably partly because being referred to as “brother” by a fictional character is kind of interesting… Me being a girl and all… And I’m not even being ironic, I really liked that part. We definitely need more fictional characters who address the reader.

But what about the oranges? What about the title of the blog? What’s the answer?

Well, there have been some more mentions of clocks and oranges throughout the book, and from what I understand, people are like oranges. We’re soft and squishy and covered by a protective shell that makes everyone look approximately the same. It’s the shell that makes an orange look like an orange, but it wouldn’t be an orange without the squishy stuff on the inside. There are sour oranges and sweet oranges and oranges where the squishy bits on the inside have dried so that they’re not all that squishy anymore, but they are all still oranges. Buy if you take all the squishy stuff out and put cogs in there instead? Is still looks like an orange, but all the stuff that actually made it an orange is gone. For all you know, without the squishy stuff, it could be a painted melon.

And if you remove the squishy bits from a human (metaphorically speaking, of course), then what’s left is just the shell. Without our squishy minds we might as well just be puppets on strings. Even if someone chooses to be a dry, tasteless orange, it doesn’t make them less of an orange.

Did that even make sense? Who knows. The point is that A Clockwork Orange is exactly what Alex turns into. He still has the shell that all oranges have, but inside he’s full of cogs that make him do what the government wants him to do.

And that’s it. That’s all I have to say right now.

(And I said last week’s post was long, holy *insert-some-word-I-souldn’t-write-in-something-my-teacher-is-going-to-read-because-I-refuse-to-write-macaroni*)

- Ellen Johanne

 

Friday Focus: Focus on Social Studies

Now, to relate this book to themes we have been working on in class…

To be honest, in A Clockwork Orange, society is a mess. There are a lot of things I can talk about, but one of the things that stands out to me the most is police brutality (I know, I know, crime literally takes over the city at night, a whole generation have turned into violent criminals with no moral compass whatsoever, what happened to parenting, bla, bla, bla… Don’t you worry, I’ll get there eventually).

The police brutality in the book is technically not the same as the police brutality we often hear about in the media. The things we hear about today are characterizes by racism and oppression of minorities. In A Clockwork Orange, police brutality (as far as I can tell) is more related to an unhealthy attitude towards criminals in general, in addition to police exploiting the power they have been given by the authorities.

Ouch...

So, what do I mean by an unhealthy attitude towards criminals? Well, I think the meaning behind it is nicely summed up in this little quote, brought to us by the Governor of the prison: 

“An eye for an eye, is what I say. If someone hit you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also?” (p. 70).

Fight fire with fire. What a great idea. Totally. So great. You have no idea. 

Not only does this way of thinking not make any sense at all (don’t hit people, or I’ll hit you!), but it leads to a bit of a problem in the prisons… And by that I mean that the prisons are full to the brim (and a bit more), the prisoners are treated horribly, and no one seem to want them to be reformed. 

And I imagine that the way they are treated give them very little reason to want to change their 

ways…

Now, at least unemployment isn’t an issue in this society. Why? Because, apparently, there is a law against it. And I’m not even lying like I did in that one post, there really is a law, and I have proof.

After his mum tells him that she has to leave, Alex tells us this “Which was true, there being this law for everybody not a child nor with child nor ill to go out rabbiting.” (p.28)

(Rabbiting means working. As in working in general, not just work involving plant-eating mammals with long ears and an affinity for bouncing.)

I’m not sure how much people earn, though. I imagine Alex and his family aren’t that rich, but there are definitely differences between how much different people earn. The woman with all the cats, who I mentioned in an earlier post, was very rich, and lived in a rich part of the city, while Alex and his family seem to be living in an area that is a bit shabby.

And then there are all the teenagers running around in the streets and causing trouble to the point where other people are VERY cautious about going out at night. And they should be, because they will probably end up hurt in some way or another. And maybe killed. (Or worse, expelled! …I’m sorry… I had to…)

I assume this is the part where they "bother" the "starry schoolmaster type veck," but I haven't actually seen the film, so I don't know for sure. Let's hope it's not completely wrong...

Now, A Clockwork Orange doesn’t really gloss over anything, and you don’t really get the objective side of things. There are no numbers, but rather just how people experience it. And the people who experience it are so used to it that it’s not really portrayed as a big deal. Yes, it’s horrible, but you can’t really expect anything else, and so on...

And then there’s the fact that the person telling us about things isn’t really a model citizen, either...

When Alex talks about these things, it’s in an almost disinterested way (unless it’s happening to him, of course). He is used to violence, whether it is he and his friends who are being violent, or the police. In addition to this he is used to the living conditions, the economy, and all those things, and this influences the way he describes it, and how much of it he describes. 

In other words, there are probably more problems in the society Alex lives in than the problems we are told about, and there is probably more to the problems we have been made aware of, too.

(Wow, two actual pictures this time! I'm spoiling you...)

- Ellen Johanne

This Week in Reading - Week Two

(Woop! Long post ahead!)

Last Sunday’s post ended with Alex and his friends going to their separate houses, and a lot has happened since then. 

First of all, Alex skipped school the next day, which was a bit disappointing, as I’d been looking forward to seeing how he would deal with school (and how his school would deal with him…). Instead, he goes to a record shop, and brings home both a new record of Beethoven and two ten-year-old girls. 

When night comes, he leaves to meet his friends at the Korova Milkbar, but they are waiting for him when he gets down the stairs in his building. They question Alex’s leadership, and he ends up fighting both Dim and Georgie to show that he deserves to be the leader of the small group. After that, they take a trip to a bar, before heading to one of the richer neighbourhoods, where they plan to do a bit of breaking and entering.

And they do. Or at least Alex does. He climbs in through a window, planning to show his droogs that he can take care of things himself, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, the lady living there (who by the way owns a LOT of cats) calls the police before he gets to her, and Alex is arrested after Dim makes sure he can’t get away.

So, Alex ends up in prison. For two years, he manages to behave himself, and then things turn bad. A new prisoner arrives and has to share the already full cell Alex has been living in, and he is not opposed to trying to take advantage of a the seventeen-year-old. And when he crawls into Alex’s bed while he sleeps, the man ends up being beaten up to a point where he is dead the next morning. And Alex gets the blame, even though the five other prisoners in the cell all had a go at the man. 

Alex is then sent to a white building next to the main prison, where he is supposed to be “reformed.” 

It’s all well and good at first. He gets much better food, his own room, and a dose of vitamins after every meal so that he will get better. Except the vitamins aren’t vitamins, but some sort of drug. He is strapped to a chair, and made to watch several films of crimes being committed (everything from executions and rape to torture), and the drugs make sure he feels sick while watching it. It goes on like that for a fortnight, until just thinking about doing anything to harm someone will make him feel like he has to be sick all over the floor. And then they let him out. 

They just let him walk out. And I’m a bit worried about him. First of all, I worry about what will happen when his droogs find him. They didn’t seem all that fond of him when they parted last time, and now he has no way to defend himself. And how is he supposed to survive the society he lives in? Even the police are horrible to people, and no one knows what Alex has gone through and what’s going on. 

I feel like Alex isn’t done suffering.

And, yes, I suppose he could deserve it. But I still feel sorry for him.

Poor thing...

Now, my reading process, you ask? 

(You didn't? Too bad.)

Was there supposed to be a process? Because I’ve just been having trouble putting this thing down. I’ve just been reading, and occasionally taking a short break to add another word in my “words-I-might-possibly-understand-what-mean”-list. Honestly, it’s just been a process of getting to the end, while simultaneously hoping there will never be an end. 

I just really like this book. Especially the way it is written. I’m usually a bit sceptical of things written in first-person narrative, but it seems it’s all good when the narrator addresses the reader. Honestly, it’s great. And I’m loving all the weird slang. Tolchock and malchick and litso and millicent and just the fact that the word horrorshow is used in the same way you would use nice or pretty or good. Seriously, the language is so great.

There are of course the times when I forget what a word means and confuse it with something else, and I have to think for a bit before I realise where the person is actually being hit. Like plott and gulliver. Because plott means body, while gulliver is head, but plott just really sounds like something you would call your head, doesn’t it?

But it’s definitely worth it. 

- Ellen Johanne