The Picture of an Anti-hero in A Clockwork Orange

Mariana Valdés Flores
A01376836

The Picture of an Anti-hero in A Clockwork Orange

I agree at 100% with this essay.

After reading this essay I noticed some things that I haven’t noticed before, for example that A Clockwork Orange is a reflection of Burgess’ life (nadsat which is invented to separate Young people from the old one is a mix between English because he is British and Russian because he went to Leningrad, also when Alex killed the lady of the cats represent that his wife died in the same year) and the reality of the world in that moment.

Although we have a feeling that the story takes place in England we can’t know for sure because the author invented the places that are mentioned. The only historical references that Burgess gives us are that it is after the Second Word War after the 60’s. The street, his house and the Korova bar can be related to Alex’s freedom because he could decide what to do in these places, but when he went to jail it represented that his freedom has ended and he has to make responsible of his actions and accept the consequences.

Also we can relate music and violence with freedom. When he was in his room and in prision, he could decide when to listen to music and what music to listen, but when he went to the place where he would “become a good human being” music and violence was used against him with the Ludovico’s Treatment.

The author explained that the characters of A Clockwork Orange are divided into “good” and “bad” which is pathetic because everyone is good and bad in their own way. The reason why Alex was submitted to the Ludovico’s treatment was because society in the book thought that Alex was the bad guy but actually the politicians and doctors were acting the same. The only way to make Alex change his mind was to be patient so he can mature and become a responsible person (this is the reason why at the end of the book he is bored of violence), not submitted him to the Ludovico’s Treatment (which is name like that because they used Ludwig van Beethoven’s music to torture Alex) which is like doing the same as Alex. This posture belong to the Chaplain which is actually Burgess’ way of thinking, but some readers get confused between the narrator’s opinion and the author’s opinion which also defends free will and not Alex’s way of acting because he thinks that it is a privilege every human being should have although if our actions are good or bad.

By reading all these essays that you made us read I noticed that A Clockwork Orange is an amazing book, and that it is a reflection of our reality, maybe we don’t want to see it or can’t see it but it is there. Violence is there. It’s in front of our faces but we refuse to see it. We live in our little perfect world where rapping, robbery and assassination aren’t a problem for us. Why do we refuse to see it?

Weekly 1

THE STOCK MARKET

CRASH OF 1929

After the World War I, the “Roaring twenties” started it was an era were there was an economic boom and new technologies such as the vacuum cleaner, the dish washer, the radio and the automobile, America was in a place of peace and happiness for everyone. People started buying on credit without even having the money comforted by the fact that the stock market was in a good position in that moment.

The financial boom occurred when all families were optimistic. They could afford Automobiles, telephones, and other new technologies. Ordinary people afforded things they couldn’t afford,  

like houses, investments and they began borrowing loans they couldn’t pay in their whole life. Farmers also got affected because their crops decreased and they were forced to leave their lands.

In 1929, the Federal Reserve raised the interest rates in attempt to moderate the economy and the stock market. On Thursday, October 24^th, 1929 or The Black Thursday, a panic started, investors began to realize the stock market was going down, rich people went bankrupt in a second, people started to commit suicide, a record 12,894,650 shares were traded.

After the crash the economy couldn’t go anywhere but up. The stock market crash wasn´t  the only cause of the Great Depression, but it did made a worldwide economic collapse. By 1933, nearly half of the banks in America failed, the unemployment rate was nearly 15 million people.

The President Herbert Hoover tried many ways for solving this problem, like, private charities to help the victims the US government intervened to provide unemployment relief, , to encourage unions, and create a government system of old age pensions and unemployment insurance known as social security.

However, the Roosevelt didn’t had success in reviving economic growth and business confidence remained weak.

As a result, it would take World War II, a huge production of armaments and the unemployment to women and black people that went into workforce to finally bring the U.S. out of the Depression.

In conclusion, if it was not for the war maybe the U.S will not be a huge economic power in the world and there are some things I learned about this Stock Market Crash, first, is that all financial markets and banks are interlinked so if one goes wrong the other ones are affected, second, is that when there is a problem the government should act quickly because it’s essential to ease the pressure and not to act slow and give a bad response that makes the problem worse. Something good came out of all of these problems, bank deposits now are secured, people who work there cannot steal or lie from the investors and banks can’t control the money from others, but there will always be corruption on financial systems.

Many ask themselves the question “CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN?”

For me the answer will be yes, it happened already twice, so it can happen another time, but the good thing is that now days we can now what´s going on, we are more informed than ever, and economists understand better the market and it’s for sure it would never happen as bad as it happened in the STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929.

Weekly Post

Religion

While it might be true religion is necessary for people, since it gives them something to hold on to in rough times, giving them hope that everything is going to be alright, it is also the worst thing that could ever had happened to humanity.

First of all, The Middle Ages, rightly called The Dark Ages, was a time when everything that contradicted religion and disagreed with the stupid theory of God creating everything in the world in 7 days, and the rest of the nonsenses the bible stated was an act of Satan. I’m totally convinced that if we had skipped that period, science and technology now a days would be infinitely more advanced.  

But besides being the worst thing ever could had happened to humanity, it is also the biggest and greatest major bullshit ever told. Just think about it, religion has actually convinced people that there is an invisible man above us, who watches and knows everything you do every second of every day of your life. And this man has a special list of things he does not want you to do, if you follow this rules to the dot, when you die you will be seated in a cloud with a white dress playing a harp for eternity. A HARP!!! Who the hell came up with that crap? But if you ever do any of this things he has a special place for you full of fire and smoke and torture were he’ll send you to suffer and scream and burn for eternity, But He Loves You. Furthermore if humanity keeps sinning, our All Powerful Father God who loves us above all, will unleash his wrath over the earth and mankind, but I have to ask, isn’t wrath a sin? And not any common sin, it is a Capital Sin, which will make God a sinner. How logical.

Besides we have the church, I say besides because I believe religion and church are different things, the first one, as I’ve said, is the greatest bullshit ever told, while the second one is a bloody corruption center, an organization that blackmails innocent people. They are the representatives of God on Earth, but they always need money, since the beginning, throughout history, church had charged people for the forgiveness of their sins, leaving the poor starving while they live in wealth. The Church takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes and they always need a little more.  

They also constantly contradict themselves, as you know, killing is a sin, and one of the big ones, but when during the Inquisition the Catholic Church tortured and assassinated billions of people, everything was forgiven, because they were killing in the name of God. 

Gabriel Serrano
A01376608

Weekly Entry 2..... Cynthia

Mexican Elections

Nowadays it is said that us Mexicans should not complain about all the problems with our government because we are the ones who selects them. Nevertheless the selection is not as clear and fair as it should be. The elections in Mexico have plenty reasons for being unfair and consequently for them not to work when finding the best option for our next president.

One of the main problems we confront is the lack of participation from the citizens. Every six years there is a change of president in the government and for this reason there are held elections in which every citizen has the opportunity to vote for the candidate he considers the best. The problem here is that most people do not participate in elections or each individual does not take the necessary time to think about the options and make a wise choice for our future.

Unfortunately this problem is caused by another big problem, and that is the lack of education and access to information that the Mexican community has. This cannot be solved from one day to the other, but with small actions we may help to make a change and eventually more people will be able to vote in an informed and reasonable way.  The vote made by well-informed people contributes to the idea of getting the best people to govern our country by making the right decisions.

Another thing that makes elections harder and less reliable is corruption and the actions that the political parties make during elections and the political campaigns. Most politicians in Mexico behave incorrectly and make decisions according to the most convenient situation for them and not for the country and its citizens as it should be. They think first about the money they will get with each vote they make within the government and then about the benefits or disadvantages for the community.

In order for elections to work in Mexico education should work first. If people are well informed they can choose their leaders objectively and our governors will be the ones properly chosen by our community.  Another way to improve the reliability of the vote in Mexico is to penalize the corruption in our country and report even the smallest signs of corruption. With small actions it is possible to make a real change In the end the most important thing is to make a good decision and vote in the best way possible.

Weekly Entry ... Cynthia

Success

What is success? By definition success is to get the favorable or desirable outcome or result. But nowadays this concept is sometimes forgotten or misunderstood which makes success sound like always winning, being better than others and getting tons of money. It is complicated to define appropriately the word success and a lot of people use it in very different ways. But I really think success has a more personal meaning and for each person is a different thing. That is the main reason that it is so important to find our own meaning for success so that we can succeed in our own way.

Society has taught us to believe that to succeed we need to be the best in every single thing we do. The way I see it we do not necessarily need to. Success is a matter of perception.  Of course being the best and winning is great and very important, but sometimes you can consider your results as great too even if you were not the best. Sometimes you learn more by losing than by winning and that may be considered as success as well. The most important thing is to always keep in mind the lessons we learn from each experience.

Another common belief society has taught us is that success depends on the money you gain and have. I really do not agree because as proven by some studies, the people with more money are sometimes the least happy people and I do believe that success involves happiness. Of course sometimes money can make someone happy and feel successful but as there is more money we are begin to expect more and more and it comes a time that we never end the obsession with being rich. In this way money affects us negatively because it becomes a sort of endless addiction that bring as result loneliness which we can say in most cases is not a source of happiness nor success.

My personal belief is that success means being able to achieve your personal goals and be satisfied with yourself for being you. Unfortunately it is not easy to succeed. You must work to achieve your personal goals and that takes persistence, concentration, effort and the most important thing is to never give up. Success involves doing everything in your hands to achieve your goals, never taking no for an answer and giving an extra effort to get further and further each time improving and improving. 

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. 

Why should we go to Mars?

Why should we go to Mars?

By Bruno Betancourt

For centuries Mars has been one of the biggest mysteries of the solar planet, and yet, it is the closest planet to the Earth. We have watched the red dot on the sky for thousands of years, we´ve written legends and myths of it, but we haven´t been able to explore it or get to know about the past of our neighbor.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, the president and founder of Nasa´s Mars Society says that there are three main reasons why the man should go and explore the red planet. “It´s where the science is, it´s where the challenge is, and it´s where the future is,” he says.

First of all, science. Mars once was a wet and warm planet, just as the Earth. And cosmically speaking, not long ago. The planet had water on its surface around two billion years, and this is twice the time that took life in earth to appear after water arrived. This means that if the theory is correct, and life is a natural development given the required scenario, Mar´s could have been a planet that hosted life, or could be right now.  So if we go to Mars, and in some way we discover any kind of fossil or something that proves that life was or is living on the plant, life could be a general phenomenon in the universe.  We could discover if life is as we know it here on Earth, or if we are only one expression of life. If not, we could be alone in the universe and be a natural incident or something like that (not quite what we would like, but good to know).

Secondly, the challenge. We all love challenges, and even more if they´re big. Youth societies are always hungry for challenges and they need them in order to grow in the future. This takes me to the third point, the future.

Mars is the only planet known (or at least the only one that we could get to), that has liquid water and all the resources needed to support life. Dr. Zubrin gave a speech where he stated, “I ask any person on America ´What happened in 1492? ´ and they´ll tell me; ´well, Columbus sailed in 1492´, and that´s correct, Columbus did sail in 1492. But that´s not the only thing that happened in 1492, because in 1492, England and France signed a peace treaty, in 1492 Lorenzo Di Medici, the richest man in the world died. A lot of things happened in 1492, and if there had been newspapers, this would be the main titles, not this Italian crazy guy sailing to nowhere! But we remember Columbus because he was the one that made our civilization and society possible.” We may not be the ones talked about right now, but its our job to make future generation´s life possible and safe.

We may be far from Mars, but I think that we´re closer and closer every day. Mars will be explored, no matter if its for science, or the challenge or the faith of humanity, or the technology or anything. The next big step of humanity will be on red, dusty soil.