Fantastic. It is a great story, but what is truly impressive is the experiment in language. What seems difficult and confusing at first becomes perfectly clear as you read more of the book. I even found myself thinking in nadsat a couple of times while I wasn't even reading the book. ( )

Fantastic. It is a great story, but what is truly impressive is the experiment in language. What seems difficult and confusing at first becomes perfectly clear as you read more of the book. I even found myself thinking in nadsat a couple of times while I wasn't even reading the book. ( )

This would rate higher, but wading through all the nadsat (slang) got to be a bit of a drudge. Still, I couldn't put it down. Loved the message; a man isn't a man if he is forced to be good - it's in the choosing. Horrorshow, and all that cal! ( )

So you see the movie and you wonder how much it's like the book. I think the answer is quite a lot. Burgess and Kubrick seem suited to one another. Kubrick's film has the virtue of not emasculating the message of the book. It may be a little more counterculture-ish than the book, but like the best film versions of the best books, it's a worthy complement.

If you read the book after seeing the movie, you can't help but picture Malcolm McDowell as the narrator. I take it McDowell had thoroughly digested the book as part of his preparation.

Aside: I know I'm not the only one who sees the young McDowell in Jonathan-Rhys Meyers' portrayal of Henry VIII in the TV series, 'The Tudors.' ( )

Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange paints a horrifying, grim, dystopian future. Your Humble Narrator - or, Alex - and his three droogs spend their evenings and nights beating, raping, torturing and stealing from any person unlucky enough to be in Alex's path. One evening, however, the gang turns on Alex and he is set-up, with the police arriving just as he murdered an old woman in her house.

Off to jail he goes, having to serve over a decade in a prison over-stuffed, with six or more people sharing a cell designed for two or three prisoners at most. Alex, however, is given the choice to take part in a new program that will get him out of the prison in two weeks, and back to the outside world to live his life as he sees fit. This new program, however, is not something Alex expected; Alex was tied to a chair, with his eyes taped open and forced to watch horrible acts of violence and murder - acts all-too familiar and enjoyable to Alex - as an injected chemical makes him feel nauseous and sick. After two weeks of this treatment, Alex would feel sick at the mere thought of violent acts.

The treatment worked, and Alex's life became a living nightmare, as his former friends were now police officers and old victims were able to exact their vengeance upon Alex. A failed attempt at suicide left Alex in the hospital - cured of Ludovic's experiment - and a return to the life of violence and crime he once knew.

So ends the previously published American version, short one chapter that had been published in the UK. Burgess claims the American publisher made the decision to leave out the final chapter while the publisher claims it was "merely a suggestion made for conceptual reasons." Regardless, the American version misses a chapter that is vital to the message: the power of choice.

One of the characters - the prison chaplain - asks the questions, "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?" Through the experimental punishment to rid Alex of his evil ways, he no longer had a choice in his actions. This brings a moral dilemma, discussed by a panel after Alex has completed his punishment. "He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice," argued one person, but the general consensus was that, "We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime...and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons." This moral dilemma, the ability to choose right or wrong, good or evil, is the message of Burgess' work. The final chapter completes the story and how Alex chooses and acknowledges this moral choice.

A Clockwork Orange is written in a peculiar way - the entire book uses the nadsat language created by Burgess. Not so much a language, rather heavy slang influenced by Slavic languages, the use of nadsat creates a unique world the reader becomes entranced in. It also helps to alleviate the gruesome nature of Alex and his friends, putting more focus on the message rather than the brutal acts of violence. While some may be put off by the confusing language at first, Burgess does an excellent job introducing it and using each new word in context easy to understand and grasp, and before long the reader will be reading at his/her normal pace. ( )