Lunchtime read: A Clockwork Orange

Work has been manic today and looks like being that way until we go to press late on Thursday night. All I have been able to do is squeeze the last few pages of Clock Work Orange past my eyes and it was worth it.

The language might be difficult but after a while you actually start to enjoy it and I particularly liked his reference to cigarettes as ‘cancer’s cutting straight to the truth. In the end Alex finds his speech is both the trigger that jogs the memory of one of his victims as well as something that is there to be ridiculed by those who have left that sort of life behind.

In the end you start wondering where Alex is going to go with the potential for him to become cured and get back into his old ways. Things take the inevitable turn as Alex starts to relax in the home of his protector who realises that the young man was responsible for the rape and death of his wife. Before he can take any revenge his friends take Alex away and pipe in music with the effect of driving him to the point where suicide seems to be the only way out.

Alex does land on the pavement and it looks as if he has helped smash the government by trying to kill himself. But politics being what it is he is deprogrammed and the government says that it will help him get back on his feet and he gets a job in the state music archive.

In his evenings he is back out with a gang trying to get up to the old tricks but the joy has gone out if it. He leaves his droogs in the pub and goes for a walk and comes across a coffee bar and there meets the one member of his old gang who has not been mentioned since he went to prison. Peter is with his wife and the shock of seeing someone grown up and worrying about jobs and money hits Alex hard and he realises that he has grown out of the desire to destroy and instead wants to join the human race and become an adult, husband and father.

A review will follow towards the weekend…