The Ramblings of Elyse

Really?

No.
Though, true to my word, I promised I would write about the book I just finished reading. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
I use the word "just" loosely, because I actually finished yesterday on the train at around Harris Park, which I meant I had half an hour of train trip left as well as the waiting time since I was going out for Ness' birthday and got there early and had to wait 20 minutes for the train afterwards.
Not that any of that information is important, in fact it is really quite useless but that is half the fun.

So! A Clockwork Orange. It is interesting because until I saw that book in the bookshop last week I didn't even know it was a book, I just knew it was a movie. Quite an infamous one at that made in the '70s by Stanley Kubrick.
It isn't a long book, one could hardly call it a novel. The word used is Novella which is just a cool word. 150 pages. I could have read it in the one day but I have started using my morning train trips for sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

There was an introduction, that was nice of them. It was interesting, it spoke a fair bit about Anthony Burgess' thoughts on the book which as it seems to go had to be with that he would be remembered mainly for this book (Which in reality was more of being remembered as the dude that gave Kubrick the source material) as opposed to his other better written books. I believe it is George Orwell who thought the same about Nineteen Eighty Four, or was it just a book that he felt should have never been published. I don't remember the details. Perhaps I should before I start my rambling, oh well ,suck it up.

It isn't an easy read, so while it is a short book I didn't fly through it as I sometimes do.
It is big on the slang and really big on the slang. It is in the first person and told through the eyes of the Protagonist, Alex, and it's basically the inner monologue, which is always cool but difficult to understand because EVERYTHING is in slang based partly on rhyming slang and Slavic words, I'm not all that familiar with Russian either.
Eventually, I caught on to what everything meant, sometimes it was a bit confusing.

I'm quite fond of my book vs movie comparisons, which is hard to say because I've never seen the movie but has quite the reputation.
The book is split into three parts, each part has 7 chapters. Which is significant in itself because my mad maths skillz says that is 21, the legal age in England for a long time or maybe just for the time it is set. Each part also starts with the same line. Just to create that symmetry.
The 7th Chapter of the third part is not published with the American version, the movie is based on the American version, thus the last chapter is not in the film. The last chapter is an interesting one.

Oh, I guess I should move onto some joyful commentary, why? Because it is my blog and I'll write what I want to.
The joys of conditioning!
Which is what it is about. The human body and mind is a wonderful thing, the whole concept of tolerance and building up tolerances. I honestly believe the human body could adjust to being hit by a bus, if one were to survive the first hit.
Now, Pavlov's Bell. That's what it is about! That is the prime example of condition. Actually, it might be called Pavlov's Dog and Pavlov's Bell is a song. Either way, it is the same thing.
Pavlov was a dude who condition his dog because each time he rang a bell, he would feed his dog. Eventually, he would take away the food but when he rang the bell all the reactions were there to get ready for the food.
That is such a poor man's explanation, but people, this is what wikipedia is for!

Alex is basically an arsehole. He is the antihero of the piece. Even though he is the youngest in the gang, a fact you don't find out til towards the end, he is the leader and tends to initiate many of the plots and one of the more disturbing things is the gang rape of a woman, while her husband was held back. You find out later in the book that she died not long after that. Disturbing. Very, very disturbing and that scene is pretty why I wouldn't be able to watch the movie.

So yeah, eventually he is put in gaol and in the process is involved for killing one of his cell mates. He is then reprogrammed so that he can't do anything violent at all and just the thought of it makes him sick, that is the conditioning and it is done with violent films with some music underscoring it which ruins his favourite music for him.
It comes down to the by removing choice, how does that remove the humanity.
It is a lot like a conversation we were having at Antioch the other day, but not doing bad, you aren't necessarily doing good. They are not mutually exclusive things.
You can also do good and bad. Sometimes with the same action!
Good and bad can coexist.
But by removing the bad, what else does it remove?
What are the consequences?

In the end, all Alex wants to do is kill himself and he is driven to it by people that understand how the conditioning worked. Ultimately, Alex is a pawn in the political game and because he is an arsehole to everyone, he has no consequence for anyone and so his life really is just to further various government schemes.
At the end of the 20th chapter, he has the ability to commit violence again. That is where the movie ends.
It is in the 21st chapter where he realises that he doesn't get his thrills from that anymore and that it would be time for him to grow up.
The biggest thing for me in that chapter is his name, all through out the book he is called "Young Alex" because well, he is young. He is 15 at the beginning of the book. In the last chapter he is referred to "Old Alex". It's a small thing really, but the significance is huge, especially since the first and last chapter are quite similar in the tone. They are book ends.

But it doesn't end on a happy note, the basic thing is, that is what growing up is, you fuck up and you keep fucking up and regardless of what you are told that won't change anything.
Eventually, you'll reach the tipping point on which growing up begins.
Not really a happy note if you look at all that had happened for that to occur.

Hmm...
It's interesting.
It's all about the nature of society. I find it fascinating.

On a side note: I think my spelling is getting better.