A Clockwork Orange

This is the first of three journal entries on the book A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess.

This book takes place either in an alternate present or the future. The technology of this book seems slightly greater than what we have now but it also seems to be written under the context that Russian and British cultures merging to a point. This book takes place in London where the adolescents rule the nighttime streets, stealing and fighting with hardly any interference by the law. Alex, our protagonist, along with his three “Droogs” makes up one of the small street gangs that rape and steal for fun.

The language used in the book is extremely interesting; it is a fictional British slang that merges Russian slang and English to create the vocabulary of the street urchins. The book refers to men as "malchicks", girls as "devotchkas" and "ptitsas", Teeth as "zoobies", milk as "moloko" the face as a "litso" and so on. This language completely saturates the novel, as it is written in the first person from Alex’s point of view. In the beginning it is a little hard to understand what they are saying but the book puts the words in context well so at this point I, for the most part, know what they are saying.
Alex is very definitely the leader of the four-man group that he hangs out with. I get the age that Alex is somewhere around 15-18 because he goes to school during the day and still lives with his parents. During the night time Alex and his three friends, Pete, Georgie, and Dim, cause trouble by stealing and generally harassing the public. One of their regular hang out spots is the Korova Milk+ bar, a bar that serves milk spiked with fictional mind altering substances such as synthemesc. After drinking their milk they go on generally making trouble, stealing money from people, fighting other gangs, stealing cars, and all manner of trouble making.
I find this book extremely interesting, the protagonist is a very intriguing character, a smart teenager who has a good appreciation for the arts but is totally evil. the writing style and fictional dialect do well to help the atmosphere of the book, the setting almost seems post apocalyptic but there was no apocalypse, more off a dystopia than anything. This book is very cleverly written, it is almost reminiscent of jack the ripper's letters, a very smart person narrating his raping and pillaging. The writing style during the action pieces of the book is also interesting, he never lets up on the language of the book causing the scene to seem almost dreamy, as if Alex were watching his fight in slow motion and commenting on it. Overall I enjoy the book a good bit