A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange stands as a great literary work, yet most copies weigh in at less than three hundred pages. Written by Anthony Burgess, it spans twenty one chapters and serves as a cult classic to this day.The first person story is told by Alex, a youth but of fifteen that spends his nights with his friends, or "droogs", terrorizing the public with their bits of "ultraviolence", and engaging in the old "in-out in-out". He is a contradiction of characteristics, as he sips milk (moloko) laced with drugs, and listens to Beethoven while in the midst of raping a young girl. While the story sounds graphic, and in reality is, the book is not explicit. Part of this arises from the author's brilliant language system, nadsat, which in fact translates to "teenager". Nadsat is a combination of altered russian and odd bits of slang, and is constantly being spoken by Alex and his droogs. The other characters in the book, like his parents, do not speak nadsat, nor do they fully understand what it is that Alex speaks at times. The novella is split among three books, each of seven chapters. The first details his crimes. He beats the elderly, fights other gangs, with a razor knife "britva", no less, rapes girls, drinks much moloko, and final
ly, assaults a woman, inflicting mortal wounds. He is betrayed by his droogs and is sent to prison., where he stays for two years. During those two years he had become the Prison Chaplain's pet. One part even told of Alex reading the Bible and daydreaming that he was a Roman soldier on the day of Jesus' crucifixion. Anyway, after about two years, Alex hears of this new thing where a prisoner can be out and supposedly reformed within a week's time. So, he jumps to volunteer and is warned against it by the Chaplain. Alex had no idea of what the treatment really was. So Alex is sent to the "Reclamation Treatment" building and is given a small room with a TV and nice accommodations. He was quite happy with this. The next day, before eating he was given a shot that was thought by him to help his appetite. After he finished dining, a man came to his room to wheel him to his daily treatment. He was brought to a large room with a seat in the middle of it, projectors, and a movie screen. He liked all this... until he was constrained to the chair by his arms and legs, and with his head fastened so that he could not turn it. After the instruments used to hold his eyelids open were in place, the treatment began. Many short films were then shown to him that contained brutal violence and gore and girls being raped. Normally, he wouldn't have minded all of this, but the shot given to him earlier began to kick in. He began to feel horribly intense pain all over his body the entire time he was made to watch these movies. They even would play Beethoven, Alex's most beloved composer of all time. After having this treatment everyday for a week, he would b
Some common words found in the essay are:
Anthony Burgess, Reclamation Treatment, Hearing Beethoven, Beethoven Alex's, Prison Chaplain, Alex Alex, Prison Chaplain's, Anyway Alex, Clockwork Orange, Chaplain Alex, press conference, caused association, pain violence, told alex, association shots, reclamation treatment, caused association shots, inclination towards, intense pain,
Approximate Word count = 1111
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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