Reviews with content warning for Forced institutionalization - A Clockwork Orange

Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

67 reviews

vikhasread's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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kari_f's review against another edition

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4.0

“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?”

I have so many mixed thought and feelings on this book. Instead of my usual likes and dislikes, I figured I’d talk about some of the interesting aspects of the book.

The main character is despicable, but he’s supposed to be. He’s more a product of his authoritarian society than he realizes, and he embodies many of their core values and falls prey to their whims even as he strives to subvert them.

Language plays an important role in the book, with the narrator speaking Nadsat (a young person’s language) that the reader has to learn to decipher. Alex’s crimes are absolutely horrific, but toward the beginning the reader is so bogged down by figuring out what he’s saying that the crimes themselves almost take on a secondary nature. By the time the reader is able to decipher the meanings of the words without having to think about them, we have moved on to the next part of the story where he’s moved past them in one sense or another. I think some of the violent scenes would have been too much to read were it not for that, and even with it there were times I had to take a break from the book.

Many ethical conundrums are brought up in this relatively short book, to include free will, subversion, and the horrors that can occur when the government has too much control.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the book per se, because it was dark and very violent, but I did find the concepts and language very interesting. I’m not sure I’d revisit it in the future, but I’m glad I finally read this classic! I’m also very glad I read this with my book club, because the discussion was excellent.

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author_d_r_oestreicher's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, … and then came A Clockwork Orange. How did I miss A Clockwork Orange? …the story of Alex, aka Your Humble Narrator, told in three acts. First, his life as a fifteen-year-old “ultra-violent” teen. Next his time in prison, subjected to behavioralist experiments to rid him of his violent behaviors. Finally, his life after prison. Two things mark this book, the ultra-violence and “nadsat” slang. The slang is pervasive and slows down the reading. However, the slang softens the violence. When the teens tolchock someone, it doesn’t have the same emotional impact as the English equivalent. A one-of-a-kind classic.

For my extended notes: https://1book42day.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-clockwork-orange-by-anthony-burgess.html

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations.

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pinkfloydtwisted's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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emilyyyhillsss's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“You’ve sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power or choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly— that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain”

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krmreads2024's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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deathmetalheron's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

If I were more clever + had more time I'd write this in Nadsat, but I'm not and I don't.

A Clockwork Orange is brilliant to say the least, and I think a firm example of where the book is just so clearly a superior format for the storytelling than the film will ever be. Narration in films is often a crutch, but in books it's one of the best tools for establishing character and tone of your story. Alex, the protagonist of the story, is so clearly in his own head that he cannot and will not divulge the details of his misgivings and his deeds. He is clearly a bad person and does horrible things but ultimately the narration is so supremely done because it distances the viewer from these actions--there is no voyeurism here, Alex is evil but so clearly inhuman that I found myself able to read about disgusting or awful occurrences with virtually no misgivings. It's an incredible feat to have been pulled off by Burgess to weave into the text such obtuse vocabulary to build Nadsat, not to mention it was done in three weeks.

Beyond the narration, the commentary being society's obsession with "rooting out" evil and social distortion while at the same time CAUSING said distortion is very palpable. Alex is certainly an evil figure but by the time the story has finished Alex's story feels tragic, but not in a sad way due to the fact it's Alex. ACO sort of feels like a litmus test for authoritarian punishment--do you wish a fate worse than death on the biggest dregs of society?

And it's the final chapter that throws me for a loop and prevents me from going 5/5. On the one hand,

yes, the fact it's so quick and is effectively another story plot line feels very rushed. To be fair I completely sympathize with the American publisher's instinct to get rid of it. At the same time, isn't it incredible how ultimately society's perceived social issues are solved not with intervention but with time? Alex's instincts towards criminal acts disappear the older he gets--while the crimes he commits are heinous, it didn't take the Ludovico technique to fix him--just time. Perhaps the real conspirator of societal evil is not the individual that commits the crime, but the society that enables the method of evil?

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morralia's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The nasdat language made it a very annoying read but I loved the book it was interesting how my perspective of the main character switches throughout the book and I the last chapter originally removed from the first american edition of Clockwork orange makes a big difference of how you see the book as a whole

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mossbird's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

There's so much to say about A Clockwork Orange, I'm not entirely sure where to start.

I'll preface this review with the following: I've never seen the film and have limited exposure to Kubrick's works in general so I went into this novel relatively blind. I'd only heard of the film by name with no real explanation as to what it was about, making my first experience with Burgess' work a standout and leads me solidly into the camp of wishing the final chapter had been included in the film.

A Clockwork Orange is, at its core, a story about morality. We begin the novel with our protagonist, Alex, and his gang of lackies. Immediately from the jump, you're completely immersed in their world as Burgess spares no moment to explain anything from the setting to the distinct dialect we see used throughout the book's pages. To say I found it a touch hard to follow in the beginning would be an understatement. This, however, ended up adding to my overall takeaway from the novella. Bear with me, we'll get there. Spoilers to follow.

The story follows Alex, beginning our tale when he's the humble age of 15 and ending shortly after his 18th birthday. Throughout the course of its first chapters, the reader very quickly gains the understanding that Alex is not a good person. There are explicit, once you understand the dialect, depictions of murder, rape, and violence in general and Burgess makes no attempt to make you feel any amount of pity. It's explicitly clear that not only does Alex do these things of his own volition, he genuinely enjoys them too. The novella is written as though Alex himself is writing it, he refers to himself as "Your Humble Narrator" throughout the length of its pages, making the experience feel almost autobiographical in a way as if he takes pleasure in detailing his crimes.

This all changes however when Alex is arrested for the murder of an elderly woman and it is here that Burgess' delicate dance with morality begins. We see a short bit of Alex's time in prison, generally with the theme that he'll serve his years and then get back to how his life was before, though he exhibits a newfound enjoyment for the Bible and religion during his time behind bars. Burgess truly begins to challenge the reader's moral compass when Alex is taken into a State Center for Prison Reform.

There is really only one way I could describe Alex's 'treatment' in guise of reform. Alex is tortured and Burgess lays all out to bear. The question then becomes this. Does Alex's former involvement and perpetration of objectively heinous crimes entitle him to a fortnight of psychological torture? Does the perpetration of a crime warrant the criminal to undergo treatment of debatably the same severity? Why is this torture sanctioned and encouraged? Is it moral to sanction psychological torture if the outcome is a reformed criminal? Does it not just strip the individual of independent thought? Does the repentance of a murderer retain any meaning if the repentance is brought on by repeated Pavlovian conditioning and not the perpetrator's free thought?

Burgess continues to explore this as we follow Alex after his release, his 'reform' having been deemed successful. We see him return home only to find a stranger in his place next to his parents, the welcome he was expecting turned cold and unaccepting in reality. We follow Alex next as he revisits many of the places he and his cronies frequented in the book's opening pages, culminating ultimately in his brutalization and abandonment by his former 'friend' and former enemy. It is here Alex returns to a very prominent place in his story: the home of a man whose wife he brutally attacked and gang raped years ago which led to her untimely death.

At first, the man, a writer of a novel of the same name as the one I review now, doesn't recognize Alex and instead takes him in under a guise of kindness with the plan of using Alex and his story as a political pawn. And he does just that, handing our protagonist off to three of his colleagues just as he begins to realize Alex's true identity. It is with these three colleagues that Alex's mistreatment continues, culminating in the youth's attempted suicide. After a short stay in the hospital, Alex is released once again with the assurances of safety from the very people who initiated his first bout of torture in the name of 'reform'.

Unfortunately for them, Alex's suicide attempt seems to have undone a majority of the classical conditioning embedded into his psyche with much of his bloodlust and love for violence returning as he lays in his hospital bed. What we see now though, as Alex leaves the hospital, is a brief return to his former criminal compulsions before we see a genuine change in our protagonist. The final chapter of the novel, omitted from the film, shows us that, despite all he's undergone, Alex has grown. He longs for a family, specifically a son, and we end the novel with a final farewell from our leading man.

TL;DR: The ending of A Clockwork Orange is one that left me deeply contemplative and to say it didn't affect me would be a lie. Burgess' entrancing playfulness with language and the detailed horrific mistreatment undergone by his protagonist provides a haunting dichotomy that lingers with the reader as they near its final pages and leaves them pondering many sociological ideas, truly exploring the limits of human morality and what it means to make a choice.

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theodoreeeeeeads's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What a horrorshow vetsch. Lots ittying on with krovvy scenes and gullivers spinning physically and metaphorically, I defo smecked a malenky whilst viddying the pages. A tolchock in the yarbles when it got intense but I do recommend it to all the lewdies!! (this is what the whole book is like hehehe)

Now returning from the Nadsat language to English, wowowoeeee what a book, well-written, thought provoking, funny at moments and with a fantastic plot. The story poses lots of moral dilemmas and philosophical questions.

It’s terrifically dark, the phrase “ultra-violence”, as used many times in reference to gang activities, is very accurate.

Easy to read classic (except the whole new language lol). Would massively recommend.

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