When I first dug in to this book I thought it might be a bit difficult to get thru. It is written in the first person narrative style - the main character speaking directly to the reader. Alex speaks to you using that futuristic cockney slang that Malcolm McDowell so brilliantly brought to horrorshow life in Stanley Kubrick's film. You do soon get used to all the listos and glazies and such, O My Brother, so it is not that bad after all.
There is an introduction before the edition that I read that gives the impression that Burgess isn't as fond of this work as everyone else is. If I remember right, Kubrick wasn't all that proud of the film version either. Perhaps bringing to life a character as horrible as young Alex puts you off a bit.
And Alex is thoroughly awful. Believe it or not, Kubrick changed some things to clean him up a little bit. Burgess' Alex is absolutely detestable.. and he attempts to ingratiate himself to the reader by referring to himself as "You Humble Narrator" and your "Friend". Ugh - barf.
Normally, in a philosophical work such as this, the deeper message is more nebulous.. something you are forced to ponder and piece together.. but not here. Burgess comes right out and tells you the precise meaning and explains the metaphor - right in the book - of the "clockwork orange". He spends pages explicitly detailing the meaning of what he is saying about human nature and crime and punishment. I guess I am used to some more obscurity for things of this nature.
The book is divided up into three sections, each begins with Alex being asked "What's it going to be then, eh?" This particular line gets to the heart of the major philosophical issue in the book: CHOICE. Alex chooses to be who he is (evil) and the justice system takes away his ability to choose. I suppose he should be locked up for life because he only chooses to hurt people for his own gain, but I suppose he should not have his humanity stripped from him even if he is a shitty human.
P44
They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasure, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by the old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting with these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.
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