It's apparent by the length of time since my last post that school, homework, best friends moving away, cars breaking down, and sleep are interfering with my pleasure reading. I hate when that happens.But, I digress. I just finished A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, a gift I got for graduation. I admit, I didn't really know too much about it before reading it, but I quickly learned it's a very allegorical, political, and linguistically fascinating book. First off, the Nadsat slang. It's Russian-influenced which I find coincidental considering I just read Crime and Punishment. At first it's like reading a bunch of made-up words (probably because most of them are), but through context the slang makes complete sense. I love the correlation between the "brainwashing" use of Nadsat language and the government-issued brainwashing of Alex, the anti-hero and narrator of the story.
The main theme of the book is free will - is it better to have a choice and do wrong, or be forced to do good? Because the moral lesson is so apparent, Burgess dismissed A Clockwork Orange as too didactic to be artistic, which I disagree with. Maybe it's because I never tire of a good, satirical, dystopian novel about the fundamental importance of moral choice. Or maybe it's because now I want to use words like "droog" and "slooshy" in everyday conversation.
As for the title itself, it's supposedly Cockney in origin but I think Burgess defined it best as, "...the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness."
Fascinating, no?
-Lizzy
