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A Clockwork Orange

 A Clockwork Orange.
 I read it with a little background information on it. I saw the Kubrick movie when I was about 15. What stuck out to me the most was the themes of choice, and also the controversy of the last chapter. Alex DeLarge is a violent young man, he gets chosen for the Ludovico experiments specifically because he killed a man. The violence and rape is very shocking and hard to read, since Alex and his gang are not the only nadsats partaking in the old ultraviolence. The question the book presents about authority and violence is very hard to answer. Is taking away choice from evil? Would the Ludovico treatment ever work? Alex represents humanity's the right to choose even if its a twisted choice, if we take away the right to choose then what are we? an organic machine, but is that better for  the good of society?
I particularly enjoyed the Nadsat. It takes an interesting approach when it comes to slang. Combining two languages and creating new words, this happens very rarely in real life, but in the book it creates a vignette into what the youth in the book are like.
As a film buff, I wanted to read more on what happened with the movie and the book. I wondered if Kubrick changed  did it deliberately like he did with The Shining. I had no idea that the 21st chapter was never published and that completely changed the way I saw the movie.
In a way its more realistic. I understand that Alex leaves violence in the past with his youth, and decides to grow up and be a grown man..But what he did was way more intense than what normal teenagers do, the inward change Alex DeLarge experiences is very fast, for me at least.

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