I really adored this book and emerged from it with massive respect for Anthony Burgess as both a writer and a philosopher. By following the life of Alex, an explicitly evil young man who chooses to live the way he does as an exercise of his God-given free will, Burgess is able to ask the reader big questions pertaining to the true essence of morality and the constituents of human nature, ultimately leading the reader to begin to analyze their own exercise of free will. Not many novels can cause the reader to apply the novel’s themes to their own lives resulting in soul-shaking discoveries and realizations that have the capacity to change an individual’s entire perspective on life, let alone accomplish that all while narrating in a mad Russo-Anglo slang completely invented by the author.
What I really enjoyed about A Clockwork Orange, aside from its completely unique, fresh, and unconventional approach to the same basic, over-arching situation presented in 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or A Brave New World, was Burgess’s capacity to create such a dynamic character. Alex is an evil thug, and yet we love him, we relate to him, and we find ourselves rooting for him. He is the embodiment of “duality is the ultimate reality,” a term coined by Burgess himself. Also, being able to read and understand nadsat, essentially a different language, allowed the reader to identify with Alex on a very intimate level which provided one the most unique and remarkable reading experiences I have known.
“The freedom to choose is the big human attribute”
--Anthony Burgess
You're right, I hadn't really considered Mr. Burgess a philosopher until you coined him as one, but I guess anybody with a powerful idea and a proclivity for the written word can be a philosopher, hm?
ReplyDeleteI liked the theme of free choice vs. control, morality vs. immorality in this novel. In other contexts, it might've been annoying and preachy–but Burgess had a way of entirely assimilating his message into a story that was captivating and into characters who weren't self-righteous. Alex is one of the most dynamic characters I've ever read about and I love him for it, though his rational intelligence can, indeed, be brought into question.
The book simply wouldn't've been the same without Nadsat, I feel it was almost essential. And I agree it produces intimacy, no innuendo intended, between Your Most Humble Narrator and his reader.
The quote you included at the bottom raises a lot of questions indeed. Are all humans free to choose? Why attribute that only to humans; can't animals choose, as well? (Maybe it's better left as a rhetorical question..)