The Picture of an Anti-Hero in a Clockwork Orange

Diego Espinosa Piñeyro

Group 60 

After reading the thesis my idea about the novel "A Clockwork Orange" and his author, Anthony Burgess has changed. At first, I thought Burgess was like an addict to violence, as most critics says but Radka explain the past of this author. He started talking about how Great Britan was at that time, loosing power when Anthony Eden replaced Winton Churchill with great social power. The United Kingdom lost Suez Canal at Africa near Egypt. After that, he talked about Anthony Burgess life. At this point of the lecture, I understood why the author had this characteristic kind of violence literature. "Llewela was brutally assaulted by american soldiers." I think the scene at the movie as in the book where Alex kills a women and he had no idea the consequences of his actions reflects what happened with Llewela when the soldiers entered the house, destructed everything and kill her. There is also another part where he is compared with different authors whom literature masterpieces have as main point is violence. Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Muriel Spark based their political ideas that refused any type of utopia. This according to them, was because the nightmares of the twentieth century like fascism and nazism were born from Utopianism. I took the time to analyze this situation and conclude that these persons were right, both Hitler and Mussolini wanted to create a country were only the dominant race had the right to live. The first one wanted a Germany of blonde, strong and tall humans while the Italian wanted powerful workers. These author counter this utopia creating novels that had a lot of violence and question the consequences "free will" brings with it. Then, Radka talks about the structure of the book and the different types of narrators it has. I liked a lot the part when he said that fews paragraph start with Alex saying "O my brothers" making allusion to the Holy Bible. I also reflected at this part of the reading and conclude that Jesus and his followers were like naughty guys. You got to agree with me, they did like crazy rituals and at last, Jesus was scold by carrying a cross. This makes like an similitude when Alex asks his friends what are they going to so for some fun (beating an old man or kill a women). Something that was really interesting was the use of Nadsat. The 200 nouns and verbs that make the lecture be difficult it's not just to have fun, but to make a critic on how the Russian ideas about the communism and socialism penetrate the society with their advertisements and the beaches. The motif Radka uses as an example is the ironical view on humanism and boundless belief in human goodness. Burgess thinks this is just ridiculous and shows it at the the treatment Alex is submit. The other day that my group had a  talk with the psychologist, she asked us what is normal and someone said that being normal is no killing persons. In my mind I thought "killing at war is something normal, the even give you a recognition if you kill more than you were asked to." It is this part of the book that also questions about the free will. This reading took me a lot of time because I really wanted to understand why Burgess made a story so violent, now, I even see Anthony Burgess as a really good author whose novel as misunderstood by society.