Titel: A clockwork orange
Autor: Anthony Burgess
Year of first publication: 1962
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 148 A clockwork orange The book is about a society that is taken over by violent youthgangs. The whole population is careless and bored and the people are living in growly cities. The society is very socialistic and that’s why everybody has to work if they are not sick or pregnant and all the gangsters have to be replaced in the society as soon as possible because the jails are crowded. The story is about Alex who’s a leader of a gang. He is fifteen and has to go to school but most of the day he lays in bed watching television. And when the evening falls he terrorizes the town after drugging himself with hallucinogenic drinks.Alex is an intelligent boy but violent. He ‘s cruel and he commits his crimes with pleasure; older people have to be punched,books have to be damaged and women have to be raped. The love for classic music from Alex fortifies his feeling of violence. After a fight within the gang Alex was betrayed by the other memders. He is thrown into prison and sentenced to for fourteen years. In jail he works himself to the bone for reduction of punishment. Alex gets into trouble when a big fight turns into a killing and he gets the blame of it. The government decides to give him an improvementtherapy . The therapy is that he has to take drugs that make him feel ill if he thinks of violence. And when he gets ill he becomes a very submissive person. After the therapy he ‘s a free man but he can’t defend himself. One item of the socialisti policy is that criminals are recruted to be policemen and many enemies of Alex are policemen.When he meets them, they bring him to a silent place where they beat him up. After that he rings ,heavely wunded,the bell of a house and a man lets him in. The man doesn’t know that Alex raped his wife last year who died after that. His name is F.Alexander and he also fights against the growing power of the state. But in contrast with Alex he’s peacefull and an intellectual
Alexander has just written a book that’s named ”A clockwork orange”and it‘s all about his protest against the way in which the state turns humans into clockwork oranges. And Alexander thinks that Alex is a perfect example of that practice and he wants to use Alex for his propaganda.Alexander brings Alex to his political friends but they are only interested in his propaganda value.This value would be enormous as he would die a dramatic death. They try to let him commit suicide by doing all the things that make Alex very depressive. Alex knows what they’re doing but he can’t defend himself and he jumps out of a window. When he wake’s up Alex finds himself in a hospitalbed,and he is back to normal. And Alexander is in jail. Setting 'A Clockwork Orange' is set in a future world where all 'normal people' stay at home at

night, because young hooligans make the streets unsafe. There is very little police, and
criminality is everywhere. The society is clearly devided into different groups, mainly separated by age or class. Among others, there are the bourgeois, vecks, cheenas, sophistoes and nadsats. Style
In the book the author uses a sort of ‘turbo-language’, a mix-up of English and Russian; a language referred to as 'nadsat'. Like Orwell invented a language to be spoken in by the people in 1984, Burgess created
this type of slang used by the youngsters in his book. He has implemented this language
very well into the book: While reading you learn the meaning of more and more words by
context, and the language doesn't need any further introduction or explanation. 'A Clockwork Orange' is written as if the main character put the story down for people
younger than him, telling them about the way things were when he was their age. He doesn't
always refer to himself as 'I', but he also uses phrases like 'Your Humble Narrator' ('YHN') and 'your Faithful Narrator'. In the part of the book where he is in Staja (State
Jail), he is no more than a number. Burgess stresses that by not calling him 'Alex' there, but '6655321'. Title The Clockwork Orange is the title of a book that has been written by F. Alexander. The ‘orange’ represents the human being as a product of nature, capable of growth and sweetness. According to Alexander, the Government is trying to make people into machines that run like clockwork, with no freedom of choice. Later Alex becomes the living example of the ‘clockwork orange’, a natural being that is made to operate like a machine. Theme - The ethical question how crime should be treated. As the Chaplain wonders: The question is whether such a technique can make a man good. Goodness comes from

within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a
man. Chaplain It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. I
know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want
goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way
better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? You are passing now to a region where
you will be beyond the power of prayer. A terrible, terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have
in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think. So, God help us all, 6655321, I shall like to think. - Religion - Classical Music -Growing up and becoming morally responsible Main characters Alex: Alex is a criminal who is ‘cured’ of his criminality by being made to feel ill whenever he thinks of violence. This makes it impossible for him to continue his life of crime, but at the same time it robs him of the power of choice Alex is one of the ‘Modern Youth’ who rebel against the totalitair system by living a life of drugs, crime and violence He is fifteen years old. F. Alexander: He is the political opponent of the all-powerful Government. Genre: The book can best be classified as alternative realism because it is set in a future world that has transformed from our world into a world with other social and political values. The story isn’t meant as a ‘true story’, but as a possible story to happen in the future.
Setting: The story takes place at a future time in an England that has become a totalitarian state. Life is prescribed and controlled by law. People live in numbered blocks of flats. Perspective: The story is told in the first person, totally from the point of view of Alex. My opinion A clockwork orange is not an easy book to read because it is written in a special teenagers language that ‘s called”Nadsat”. And that makes it sometimes difficult to understand. It’s strange that you’re not realising that all the crimes he commited are very cruel because they are written from his point of view and in “Nadsat”. But it’s interesting to read how a society can sink so deep. It is a little bit shocking to see the world through the eyes of a young criminal with totally different values, standards and way of thinking than mine.