LITERATURE ANALYSIS #2

I read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
1. The novel starts with Alex and his droogs in a bar, drinking. They buy a couple of old ladies drinks and leave the bar. They go on to beat and rob an innocent man. Alex and his gang and proceed to rob a store. They run back to the store. The police swings by the bar to ask if there were any witnesses. The old ladies exculpate Alex and his game, telling the police that they were here the entire time. After they leave, they battle a rival gang , joy ride a car, beat a man, and rape his wife. The following day, Alex ditches school and seduces two young girls and gives them drinks. While passed out, Alex proceeded to rape them. That night, he has a dream that Georgie was giving him orders and tells Dim to whip Alex. Later on, he and his gang break into a wealthy old folks house. The habitats fight back. Sirens went off and the rest of the gang escaped. Alex beats the old lady to death with a marble bust of Beethoven. The police apprehend him. He is sentenced to jail for murder. While in jail, he becomes a member in the jail's church choir. He is blamed for the assault of his bunkmate and is subjected to a new experimental method of reform. He is given shots with an unknown type of medicine inside and forced to watch brutal images and videos of violence. At the end, he becomes unable to make violent decisions. His head and stomach begin to hurt at even the thought of violence. He is deemed reformed and is released into the public. He goes back home but discovers that his parents have rented out his room to a student. Alex, angrily leaves the house and goes to a library, where he is assaulted by old men her beat up earlier in the novel. The police arrive, but it turns out the policemen are Dim and Billy, Alex's old rival. they take him in the car to the outskirts of a village and beat him into a bloody pulp and leave him there. Alex somehow makes it to the village and gets help from a man, who turns out the husband of the old woman Alex killed with a bust of Beethoven. The man is oblivious to this, and helps Alex recover and soon writes an editorial piece on what the government is doing to unruly children, such as Alex, in order to deter crime. He, Alexander, is only using Alex to express his views that the public should not reelect the incumbent candidates. Alex is given a room at a flat he was to stay at. He attempts suicide by jumping out the window but fails. When he wakes up from his concussion, he is surrounded by government officials and journalist. The governor shakes hands with Alex and offers him a well-paying job. Alex daydreams of violence for the first time without feeling any nausea as they shale hands. The book skips to a future time, where Alex has a new trio. He halfheartedly prepares for nightly shenanigans with them. He isn't in the mood and leaves his trio. He travels to a nearby bar and finds his old droog Georgie with a woman. Georgie recognizes Alex and tells him he's reformed and gotten married. Alex soon begins to realize the futility of violence and how he needs to mature. He decides to become a productive member of society and get married and start a family.
2. The unassailability of free will is one that is extremely present in Burgess's novel. The title of the novel itself refers to a person who appear perfectly moral, but truly have no control over their decisions; they lack free will. Burgess's character, F. Alexander, states this idea the best when he tells Alex "A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man." This is what the government of the novel is essentially focusing on. When Alex became subjected to the Ludovico method, he becomes so disgusted by violence that he cannot even think about it without becoming nauseous. By doing those, they essentially stripped him of his ability to choose between good and evil. It strips him of his ability to become a living human and turns him into essentially a mindless drone. The novel reinforces the concept that morality is a concept of choice. This brings up an interesting moral question: what is a society willing to give up for security and tranquility? Is the freedom to choose truly worth a conformist society?
3. Burgess's tone is disturbingly vivid, blunt, and humorous all at once. "...they thought it the bolshiest fun to viddy old Uncle Alex satnding there... squirting the hypodermic like some bare doctor.... and then I felt the old tigers leap in me and then I leapt on these two young ptitsas." Here, Burgess vividly describes Alex injecting himself with a potent drug and raping the two girls he invited to his house.
4.

1. Juxtaposition: Burgess uses juxtaposition various times throughout the novel, especially when he is doing it with music. During the rape scene, he "pulled out the lovely ninth out of its sleeve, so that Ludwig van was now nagoy too, and I set the needle hissing on to the last movement, which was all bliss." The juxtaposition of opera music and a rape makes it that much more poignant and draws attention to Alex's mix of sophistication and brutality.
2. Imagery: Alex is a very descriptive narrator. "Now as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots and koshkas what should I slooshy but the shoom of the old police-auto sirens in the distance..." (pg 65). He also very vividly describes the torture scenes he was forced to watch. "...there were soldiers being fixed to a tree with nails and having fires lit under them and having their yarbles cut off, and you can even viddied a gulliver being sliced off a soldier with a sword, and then with his head rolling about and the rot and glazzies looking alive still, the plott of this soldier actually ran about, krovvying like a fountain..." Alex paints a vivid picture because he wants his audience to know what he had to go through. 
3. Alliteration: This device actually goes hand-in-hand with the imagery part of the novel. "so I made the starry dama' kroovy flow with a crack crack crack on her gulliver". It creates a memorable phrase that flows and sticks out like a sore thumb. Describes Alex's brutality.
4. Allusion: Alex alludes to Ludwig van Beethoven and the Ninth symphony various times throughout the novel. "'That,' I said, very sick. "Using Ludwig can like that. He did no harm to anyone." It helps make an association between Alex and Beethoven, illustrating his sophisticated side.
5. Irony: The novel is saturated with it. While in jail, Alex dreams of the day he is released so he can continue wrecking havoc. Yet when he is released, the sheer thought of violence makes him nauseous.
6. Foreshadowing: The foreshadowing in this novel comes in terms of a dream. "'It was vivid,' said my dad, 'I saw you lying on the streets and you had been beaten by other boys. These boys were like the boys you used to go around before you were sent to that last Corrective School.'" Alex gets beaten to a bloody pulp by his old goon Dim and a former rival in the third part of the book.
7. Symbolism: Alex's clothes, or his "platties", change when he goes out at night, representing the change that he also undergoes during the night. 
8. Allegory: The novel is very allegorical. It touches on the notion that removing freedom to choose, even if the individual becomes nothing but good, is wrong and immoral.
9. Metaphor: The title of the novel itself (A Clockwork Orange) is a metaphor for someone who is overly-moral, but has no freedom of choice. "Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?" Alex questions the government officials and scientists that subjected him to the Ludovico technique.
10. Satire: The Novel is essentially a satire in the form of political commentary. Burgess wrote this novel during a time where both Great Britain and the Soviet Union were experiencing trouble controlling the rowdy youth. So Burgess wrote it as a satirical example of how a society with no evil and/or bad would work.

CHARACTERIZATION:
1. Burgess uses clothing as direct characterization tool throughout the book. The clothes in the novel are attributed to different factions of society. For example, Alex and his droogs are dressed in dark, gothic clothing. "The four of us were dressed in the height of fashion, which in those days was a pair of black very tight jeans.... Then we wore waisty jackets without lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders...." (pg. 10-11). The older society dresses lugubriously, typically in gray and other bland colors. Another example of direct characterization lies in his description of his friends. "Dim not ever having much of an idea of things and being, beyond all shadows of a doubting Thomas, the dimmest of we four." He flat out said Dim was dumb instead of subtly implying it. The reader can imply that Alex and his gang are extremely brutal by their actions. Their brutality is seen in the fight between Alex's gang and a rival gang when  "...old Dim chained him  [rival gang member] right in the glazzies..." (pg 23). Alex's brutality is also later seen when they break into F. Alexander's house. "So then I screeched: 'You filthy old soomka', and upped with the little malenky like silver statue and cracked her a fine fair tolchock on the gulliver and that shut her up real horrorshow and lovely." Through this passage, the reader can imply Alex's brutality through his vivid description and apparent enjoyment of it.
2. The novel is written solely in the point of view of Alex, the unreliable narrator. But Burgess does use a certain syntax and diction when Alex speaks. Alex's diction is one composed of a majority of slang words dubbed "nadsat". Examples are using "devotchka" when referring to a girl, calling someone's head their "rot", replacing hands with "rookers", and "droog" when referring to a friend, among much more other words. By using nadsat, Burgess makes Alex a more realistic character and gives him depth. It also provides a reader with a chance to imply his age and culture though his use, cause only the rebellious youth underground talk in this slang. Alex's words and use of nadsat creates a tone that alludes to the rebellious thoughts and tendencies of the young rebels. His convoluted phrases expresses to the reader the confusion of that period in time in the novel.
3. Alex, the protagonist in the novel, is a dynamic, round character. You can see his evolution in the novel. Burgess's division of the novel into three parts reinforces Alex's change and tracks his growth. In the first part of the novel, he is a ruthless, brutal hooligan with a desire for violence, simply for pleasure. His capture signifies the transition from being a brutal hooligan to an empty shell of a human, incapable of choosing. His subjection to the Ludovico technique solidifies this change. His third and final metamorphosis occurs when he is released from the jail. Even with his new band of hooligans, he seems disinterested in partaking in their activities. When he encounters Georgie with his wife in the bar, he realizes that he also needs to settle down and become a productive member of society.
4. After reading A Clockwork Orange, I feel like I have actually met a person and experienced his life in detail with him. Alex's narration is one of the main reasons why I feel this way. He talks in the first person and talks in a way where the reader feels like Alex is an old friend recounting a story to them. His liberal use of slang and attention to detail makes it seem as if Alex is comfortable talking about his exploits with the reader. He often refers to himself as "your Friend and Humble Narrator" (pg. 76).