Reading Journal

Entry 1

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 2-5-2020, pp 189-212

Prompt 10: The last chapter of this novel was left out when it was originally published, though there is some debate as to why. Alex is out of the hospital, having survived his suicide attempt and gone through the government's deprogramming. As he says in his hospital bed, "I was cured all right," though what he means is that he no longer has the aversion to sex and violence that he was given by the Ludovico Technique. When he hears Beethoven's ninth symphony, he blissfully describes the violence he imagines. "I could viddy myself very clear running and running...carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva." He's right back where he started.

Malcolm McDowell as Alex in the 1971 film

The final chapter of the novel begins identically to the first. "What's it going to be then, eh?" Alex asks his new droogs as they sit in the Korova milkbar. They begin their evening much as Alex and his Droogs do at the beginning, and it seems as though Burgess is saying that even by modifying their behavior and thinking, you can't change people from what they truly are, and that Alex truly is the monster we believe him to be. Then comes the most startling twist in the novel - as he is about to accompany his droogs on a night of violent crime, he changes his mind. "Look, droogies. Listen. Tonight I am somehow just not in the mood. I know not why or how it is, but there it is."

Even when under the Ludovico treatment, Alex still desired sex and violence, even when it made him physically ill to do so. He wanted it so badly that the illness forced him to attempt suicide, and after all that, he ended the previous chapter fantasizing freely once again. Now he is free, and freely chooses to not partake in the activities that had consumed his days in earlier years. Alex leaves his droogs and goes off to "sort things out". While he is soul-searching, he runs into his former droog, Pete, who is now 20 and married. Pete and his wife are on their way to a friend's for what sounds like a very adult evening of wine and games. Once the part ways, Alex daydreams about coming home to a wife and son, and surprises himself with his realization that "Oh my brothers, I was like growing up." Here at the end, Alex has finally come of age and matured naturally, and therein lies the potential problem with this chapter. It could be interpreted that, with Alex's character arc, Burgess is telling us that "boys will be boys", and that the murder and rape in which Alex indulges throughout his teen years is merely a phase that he comes out of naturally.

Entry 2

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 2-5-2020

Why did I choose this book?

Entry 3

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, 2-5-2020

This has nothing to do with the book.

Prompt 6: On page 159, panel 3, Wong Lai-Tsao and Monkey King are about to go off on their journey. Before they do, WLT stops MK and says, "On this journey we have no need for shoes." This is referring to the shoes he has been wearing since he returned to FFM from the Deities' party. What he meant was that the MK needs to leave behind the false identity that had restrained him and kept him from gaining enlightenment. This represented the MK's final step towards embracing his true identity.