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