A Clockwork Orange

The last book I read was A Clockwork Orange. I read it over the Christmas Holidays and it has become one of my favourites.

I use the term 'read' quite lightly as I actually listened to the audio book read by Tom Hollander. I love reading books but I love being read to more and since my parents no longer volunteer... well this was the next best thing.

I absolutely love the way the protagonist is portrayed  this charming, funny, 'humble narrator' and yet he is actually a vicious, remorseless murderer.

As a reader, I know this but my emotions are still tied up in his plight and I empathise with him almost completely.

I think the way it is written is so clever and wonderful to twist morality like that... to have to power to make me come away from the book feeling almost ashamed is so brilliantly daring and clever.

I also love the amount of controversy that radiates from the novel. In America I think the final chapter (In which Alex decides to turn things around and quit his life of crime, not out of remorse but something more like boredom) was not allowed to be published. This was because it was thought to condone the violence and turn it into a kind of youthful energy which we grow out of. I believe this is exactly what Burgess was saying, and yet people couldn't allow it to be said.

I really believe that the honesty found in novels such as A Clockwork Orange (and Catcher in the Rye, which was also banned) scares people. It is fear and ignorance that tries to prevent people from reading these stories, even if it does have good intentions. It feels like most adults forget what it is like to be growing up in this confusing and frankly terrifying world, and those who do remember and try to reach out to the 'youths of tomorrow' are seen to be promoting everything which 'the state' stands against. What I think 'the state' fails to realise (or simply does not care about) is the comfort gleaned from this honest look into the human psyche.