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phdoingmydamnbest 's review for:
Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange
by Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Burgess
This review will focus both on Fahrenheit 451 and A Clockwork Orange and so can also be found in my review of Fahrenheit 451.
The kind of questions I have after reading these two books one after another over three days are like this:
Can reading make us better people?
Is someone who appreciates art and literature a good person?
Is popular culture automatically bad? And if so, is this true in and of itself or because pop culture is almost always associated with teenagers? Are teenagers bad? Do they deserve that label?
I think in some ways both texts leave these questions very much up in the air (where they belong if you ask me) although Bradbury's own writing on Fahrenheit 451 seems to point to the moralising that 'if only children would just READ more then the world would be perfect.' This is what he actually says:
'If we ensure that by the end of their sixth year every child in every country can live in libraries to learn almost by osmosis, then our drug, street gang, rape and murder scores will suffer themselves near zero.'
Although I am, and always have been, a bookworm, and I genuinely believe that reading can help you become a more empathetic and compassionate person, I just unfortunately can't believe in this. It doesn't tally with real life, or with the world of Fahrenheit 451. Captain Beatty is a well-read man who becomes a fireman, even the wandering literary minds that Montag meets at the end of the novel admit that:
'They weren't at all certain that the things they carried in their heads might make every future dawn glow with a purer light, they were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books were waiting, with their pages uncut, for the customers who might come by in later years, some with clean and some with dirty fingers.'
Obviously then, it is not something innate about books or art or music that makes society or individuals better, but something in what they can do under the right conditions.
And here, case in point, we look at Alex. Alex the 15 year old narrator of A Clockwork Orange who has raped, maimed, and killed before the age of 16. During his time in prison Alex reads the Bible. whether you believe in the Christian God or any god at all, the Bible can at least be inarguably be termed a book. A book that contains much violence and oppression, particularly in the Old Testament, but finishes on a high and hopeful note of peace, grace, and forgiveness. Alex reads the Bible and twists it into something that fulfils his own needs. He meditates on the crucifixion of Christ with no compassion, horror, or sympathy, instead imagining himself as a Roman soldier hammering the nails into Christ's hands and feet. Example one that reading does not always immediately make you a better person. This is easily applied in our reality, how many times have you pulled your hair in frustration at the twisting of religious texts, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or of political documents, constitutions, laws, treaties, to prove an insane point? Texts themselves are dangerous, because their meanings are always sliding around and perpetually on the verge of pitching off in an evil direction in the mouths and minds of people.
In Fahrenheit 451 Montag commits the last two books of the New Testament to memory just before the apocalyptic ending of the city and everything it represents. For Montag and his fellow wanderers it isn't clear whether this knowledge will ever be helpful to the people who are asking why things 'blew up under them.' But I suppose there is something to be said for having that option of knowledge, rather than nothing. It's funny how the Bible plays such a pivotal role in both books, sticking around even when everything else has gone so horribly wrong.
The second point I'd like to make is that, for a 15 year old, Alex has quite a fine appreciation of Beethoven, Mozart, and others from the classical period. He certainly has a more quote, unquote, refined musical taste than I had at 15. Of course, that's the crunch really though isn't it? It doesn't make him any better a person. He listens to Beethoven and imagines acts of ultra-violence, something that lays waste to the idea that 'young people these days are angry and violent because of video games, or rap music, or whatever else baby boomers see as new and threatening.'
Burgess sees popular culture as violent, Bradbury sees it as vapid and insubstantial, but even their own writing fails to prove that there is any way to be 'cultured' that definitively leads to goodness. We live in the four screen walled age of Mildred that fills our heads, but it doesn't mean we are unthinking. Alex listens to the great classical composers and it humanises him, one of the only things in the novel that makes you inclined to see him as a person, but it also dehumanises him into a monstrous child molester who dreams of violence, rape, and murder. Clarisse has never read a book, but she thinks more deeply and purely that Captain Beatty and his twisted well read knowledge.
Things are multifaceted and complicated, nowhere more so than in the land of the teenager and the popular culture they enjoy. Just because something is new it doesn't make it bad. Just because something is old doesn't make it good.Even if 'the public stopped reading of its own accord' no one should burn books. Even if teenagers do dreadful things choice should never be confiscated. It's a fallacy that Montag comes to realise to say 'if there's no solution then there's no problem.'
I hope you all enjoyed my review and I'd love to hear your thoughts on either text.
As always, book love,
Grace
The kind of questions I have after reading these two books one after another over three days are like this:
Can reading make us better people?
Is someone who appreciates art and literature a good person?
Is popular culture automatically bad? And if so, is this true in and of itself or because pop culture is almost always associated with teenagers? Are teenagers bad? Do they deserve that label?
I think in some ways both texts leave these questions very much up in the air (where they belong if you ask me) although Bradbury's own writing on Fahrenheit 451 seems to point to the moralising that 'if only children would just READ more then the world would be perfect.' This is what he actually says:
'If we ensure that by the end of their sixth year every child in every country can live in libraries to learn almost by osmosis, then our drug, street gang, rape and murder scores will suffer themselves near zero.'
Although I am, and always have been, a bookworm, and I genuinely believe that reading can help you become a more empathetic and compassionate person, I just unfortunately can't believe in this. It doesn't tally with real life, or with the world of Fahrenheit 451. Captain Beatty is a well-read man who becomes a fireman, even the wandering literary minds that Montag meets at the end of the novel admit that:
'They weren't at all certain that the things they carried in their heads might make every future dawn glow with a purer light, they were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books were waiting, with their pages uncut, for the customers who might come by in later years, some with clean and some with dirty fingers.'
Obviously then, it is not something innate about books or art or music that makes society or individuals better, but something in what they can do under the right conditions.
And here, case in point, we look at Alex. Alex the 15 year old narrator of A Clockwork Orange who has raped, maimed, and killed before the age of 16. During his time in prison Alex reads the Bible. whether you believe in the Christian God or any god at all, the Bible can at least be inarguably be termed a book. A book that contains much violence and oppression, particularly in the Old Testament, but finishes on a high and hopeful note of peace, grace, and forgiveness. Alex reads the Bible and twists it into something that fulfils his own needs. He meditates on the crucifixion of Christ with no compassion, horror, or sympathy, instead imagining himself as a Roman soldier hammering the nails into Christ's hands and feet. Example one that reading does not always immediately make you a better person. This is easily applied in our reality, how many times have you pulled your hair in frustration at the twisting of religious texts, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or of political documents, constitutions, laws, treaties, to prove an insane point? Texts themselves are dangerous, because their meanings are always sliding around and perpetually on the verge of pitching off in an evil direction in the mouths and minds of people.
In Fahrenheit 451 Montag commits the last two books of the New Testament to memory just before the apocalyptic ending of the city and everything it represents. For Montag and his fellow wanderers it isn't clear whether this knowledge will ever be helpful to the people who are asking why things 'blew up under them.' But I suppose there is something to be said for having that option of knowledge, rather than nothing. It's funny how the Bible plays such a pivotal role in both books, sticking around even when everything else has gone so horribly wrong.
The second point I'd like to make is that, for a 15 year old, Alex has quite a fine appreciation of Beethoven, Mozart, and others from the classical period. He certainly has a more quote, unquote, refined musical taste than I had at 15. Of course, that's the crunch really though isn't it? It doesn't make him any better a person. He listens to Beethoven and imagines acts of ultra-violence, something that lays waste to the idea that 'young people these days are angry and violent because of video games, or rap music, or whatever else baby boomers see as new and threatening.'
Burgess sees popular culture as violent, Bradbury sees it as vapid and insubstantial, but even their own writing fails to prove that there is any way to be 'cultured' that definitively leads to goodness. We live in the four screen walled age of Mildred that fills our heads, but it doesn't mean we are unthinking. Alex listens to the great classical composers and it humanises him, one of the only things in the novel that makes you inclined to see him as a person, but it also dehumanises him into a monstrous child molester who dreams of violence, rape, and murder. Clarisse has never read a book, but she thinks more deeply and purely that Captain Beatty and his twisted well read knowledge.
Things are multifaceted and complicated, nowhere more so than in the land of the teenager and the popular culture they enjoy. Just because something is new it doesn't make it bad. Just because something is old doesn't make it good.Even if 'the public stopped reading of its own accord' no one should burn books. Even if teenagers do dreadful things choice should never be confiscated. It's a fallacy that Montag comes to realise to say 'if there's no solution then there's no problem.'
I hope you all enjoyed my review and I'd love to hear your thoughts on either text.
As always, book love,
Grace