A Clockwork Orange

I know it's the middle of August, and I'm just now getting around to posting the July book review. I've been doing pretty well with reading my novels before the end of the month like I intended, but in July this just didn't happen. My little sister got married at the end of the month (yay!), and with all the wedding prep I completely ran out of time to even buy a copy of the book. I just finished reading it, which is definitely going to put a strain on finishing my August book before the first of September, but I'll be pressing on! Maybe this year I will finally accomplish one of my New Year's resolutions.

The word that best describes my initial reaction to Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange is "perplexing." The story was completely bizarre and somehow extremely familiar. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like I know someone who acts kind of like Alex, repeating words three times and acting tough but listening to classical music in their spare time. Maybe I just have some odd friends.

In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of Huckleberry Finn. It's about a young boy, out causing trouble while speaking in an unfamiliar dialect, who goes through a brief transformation before returning to his old ways. That's probably where the parallels end, though. Where Huck is a redeemable character, helping out Jim and generally trying to make a good life for himself in the only way he knows how, Alex is different. He's young like Huck, only fifteen in the horrible first part of the novel, but commits horrible crimes like assault, rape, and murder without any smidgen of remorse. It's been five years or so since I've read Mark Twain's book, but I remember him doing ridiculous things like stowing away or stealing because he needed the money to survive or he was helping someone. Alex, on the other hand, did things that were against the law for the sole reason that it gave him pleasure. He enjoyed beating up old men and and leaving people bleeding in the gutter.

I have to say, the first couple chapters of this book were hard to read. And not just because half of the words are made up. In part one, the reader is tagging along while Alex and his gang (his "droogs") do drugs, break into houses, beat people senseless, rape women, seducing little girls, and killing an old lady. It's disgusting and disturbing to follow them do these things so nonchalantly, like it's a typical Friday night. And for them, sadly, it was.

It was no surprise then when Alex was hauled off to jail. He was a menace to society and everyone knew it, except maybe his mother, who it seemed to live in denial. The state of the jail didn't surprise me either - overcrowded, dangerous, unrefomative. "Cram criminals together and see what happens. You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of punishment," explains one of the jailers. So they take him out and send him to a government facility where he can be turned into a new citizen.

This section reminded me a lot of George Orwell's 1984. When they put him in the room and made him watch films all I could think of was the "Two Minutes' Hate" propaganda that the government forced everyone to watch. In both circumstances they were made to watch things they didn't want to in order to be brainwashed by the government. Granted, Alex's experience was heightened by whatever concoction they injected into his system that caused him to associate pain with violence, which made it even worse than Big Brother's hate videos.

This is a small book, but there is so much going on. What is it about society that has made it possible for hooligans to run the streets at night causing this much chaos? Why are intellectuals seen as outcasts? How did this bizarre slang come about? The prison chaplain was an interesting touch, trying to practice Christianity in a world where kids like Alex wish they were the Roman soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross, because it would be satisfyingly "ultra-violent."

Despite his political selfishness and anger, I think I liked the character of F. Alexander, the writer whose wife had been raped and beaten by Alex and his droogs that later took him in and recognized him as a victim of the state. F. knew that what they had done to Alex was wrong - they had taken away his free will, and as F. quotes, "A man who ceases to choose ceases to be a man." It would be better to choose his own way and be bad then be forced to do good, the writer argues, which is true. Without choice we are nothing but machines, which is the premise in the book written by F. Alexander, also called A Clockwork Orange. He writes that people are being turned into machines when they are more like fruit, naturally cultivated on a tree grown in the "world-orchard" and planted by God because He "had need of us to quench his thirsty love." It's a fascinating explanation.

By the end of the novel, Alex realizes that he does not want to be clockwork, and is glad when he is re-reformed to not be affected when seeing violence. The last chapter sees him at 18, released into the world, realizing that there is more to life than "ultra-violence" and finally wishing for a normal, settled-down life. Maybe in this sense he becomes like Huck Finn again.

I can see why this is considered a classic, with it's foreboding future, themes of free will and liberty, and a timelessness that makes it seem set in modern times despite it having been written nearly 50 years ago. Now I have another film to add to my watch list: Stanley Kubrick's 1971 adaptation, a classic in and of itself.

Brave New World

This month it was time again for a pre-1970's selection, and the lot fell to Brave New World, the 1932 classic from author Aldous Huxley. It's a small novel, but one that is often referenced and is most likely on the same Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels of All Time list that the majority of these books are included on. Finally having a day free to read I delved in and hoped that I would like it as much as I was told that I would.

I knew that it would be about a utopia, judging by the French epigraph, which when translated spoke of the reality of utopian societies and the fact that modern society may instead be turning towards the imperfect. Chapter one threw me into the heart of the "new world" - the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where individuals were cloned, predetermined, actualized, and molded into who society need them to be.

In this new society, children are taught to want to do the job they've been created for, and to be glad that they are in their specific strata and therefore not envious of anyone else. "Everyone is happy nowadays" is a phrase characters often utter; and indeed they are -  stresses, tragedies, passions, every sort of extreme has been erased from their lives, leaving them to live in the moment and feel good about it. Religion has been replaced with industrialism, with Ford being used in place of God, obviously an homage to Henry Ford, his Model-T (all crosses have been repurposed as T's), and his ways of capitalism and assembly lines. Freud is thrown into this odd religion/patriotism (they believe Freud is Ford's psychological persona) and subsequently all happiness and entertainment is sexual in nature. Promiscuity among children is encouraged, all films are pornographic and/or violent and relationships have disappeared in favor of "everyone belongs to everyone else" mentality. With cloning as the main means of reproduction, nuclear families have also disappeared and asking someone about their mother is a dirty insult. Humans almost world-wide are psychologically trained to accomplish exactly what society needs them to, and they are more than content to follow along unquestionably. 

I am really fascinated that I happened to line up this novel directly after Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It's interesting to see how two different authors, 50 years apart, present a utopian society and the people in it. Huxley's world looked forward to the future, while Atwood's world did the opposite and reverted to the past. Atwood's characters could remember the world before the utopia, while Huxley's characters knew nothing of the past. Atwood used surrogates to repopulate the human race, Huxley used artificial cloning. Yet somehow, they both taught the same message: Utopians are unnatural. They do not work, no matter how complicated or simplistic they are created to be.

I loved Huxley's jumping between characters and storylines, especially in Chapter Three with the juxtaposition of at least three stories told alternately one line at a time. Brilliant. I also enjoyed the inclusion of John, the savage, and his love of Shakespeare. Ironically, the one that is considered the most uncouth is instead the most intelligent and the most aware of what is actually going on in the world. He's the one who fights for religion, for modesty, for goodness, for education - and when he learns that nowhere in the world, not on the reservation or the outside, is any of this accomplishable, he kills himself rather than succumb to the modern ideal.

It's no wonder that this is considered a classic. It speaks of the human condition, what is important in life, and what is important enough to die for. It forewarns the dangers of putting too much stock in industrialization, of ignoring education and history, and of altering the natural way of life. And all in less than 200 pages.

The Handmaid's Tale

First and foremost, you should know that I am a little biased when it comes to Margaret Atwood. The first book of hers that I read was The Blind Assassin for a course I took on contemporary literature, which I absolutely loved (both the novel and the class). Since that time I have read two more of her novels, not including this one, and own three of her collections of poetry. I am a huge fan of her writing and included her on my 2011 reading list as an excuse to read more of her work.

I chose The Handmaid's Tale because of it's popularity and the fact that the description on the back of the book made absolutely no sense. Offred? The Republic of Gilead? I love reading books that I am intrigued and confused by. As with the other books I've read so far, I made a point not to research it or read any reviews before reading it, so that I can experience it without any preconceptions.

As I started reading, I found myself in the not-too-distant future, where society is structured much like that of the Biblical Old Testament - patriarchal, with women reduced to a status significantly lower than their male counterparts. In the new Republic of Gilead, where the novel takes place, men are employed in a military-style hierarchy ranging from lowly servant types to powerful commanders. Women are categorized by the role they are expected to fill, including Wives (those technically married to the men), Marthas (serving women), Handmaids (young women whose sole job is to reproduce), and Aunts (women who teach the Handmaids). This bizarre reorganization of societal roles emphasizes the new mentality that life is only rules and regulations; no longer are emotions and individual thoughts important. It reminded me a lot of The Giver, the young adult novel where villagers must get permits to have children, jobs and marriages are assigned, and only one person in each generation can see color.

The scariest part of this novel is how quickly the new Republic of Gilead took over, and how creepily plausible the transition from typical American society to cult regime actually was. One day people were going about their lives, the next women were no longer allowed to work or spend money and the soldiers posted nearby were suspiciously wearing unfamiliar uniforms. Atwood created an authentic sense of dystopia, where in contrast to a far-fetched futuristic novel, this featured a situation that actually could happen. All of the characters in the new Gilead, even the men who seem to be in powerful positions, are under the control of some larger organization that quietly gained power and is never discussed. Other than the fact that they employ Eyes as their scouts, we (both the reader and the narrator) know nothing about them.

This unnamed, invisible leadership was a brilliant move by Atwood. They--whoever they are--created a "monotheocracy," as its called in the Historical Notes section, and used religion to back up their new laws and regulations. Biblical scripture is twisted and altered to instate the Handmaids and Marthas (both Biblical references) and to push the female population into submission. But despite the "manifest destiny"-like propaganda that God ordained this rather than the government, the people don't seem to believe it. They're simply afraid of the consequences - and rightly so, for those are also of Biblical proportion. In this new Gilead where punishments that rely on psychology are the norm (such as hangings displayed publicly as examples, or male rapists presented to groups of rallied women for group beatings reminiscent of stonings, it is easier for the characters to repress their memories of the world before and follow the rules, at least on the surface. Under the surface, however, is an entire network of people trying to escape to a life that even remotely resembles the one they knew before.

It is revealed at the end that this book, much like The Blind Assassin, is essentially a nested narrative - the entire book is a transcript of a recorded diary found much later by a society that has thankfully progressed past the "Gilead" stage. This new society, set in 2195 when the outer narrative takes place, looks back at Gilead much like we do pre-Civil War slavery or the Salem witch trials. They study it, teach courses on it in their universities, collect artifacts from the period. There is something unsettling about this future society of 2195 that comes about in their "Historical Notes" epilogue.  In one of the few pop-cultural references say that they "must be grateful for any crumbs that the Goddess of History has deigned to vouchsafe us." They also reference Eurydice, the daughter of Apollo in Greek mythology that dies but is retrieved from the underworld. Is this new society female-centric?

I have so many questions that remain unanswered. What caused the fall of Gilead? Was Offred ever reunited with her daughter? Was anything ever done to memorialize the women objectified by Gildeadeans, or are gaudy things like the "Outdoor Period-Costume Sing-Song" the only way they're remembered? And more importantly, should we stop romanticizing time periods like the Antebellum south and the European medieval era and instead look at the historical atrocities that accompanied them? Should we be careful not to let church and state get entangled so that out-of-context religious rules never become deity-ordained laws? It's been almost a week and I still find myself wondering about this book. As the professor of that contemporary lit class always said, if you find yourself thinking about a movie days after watching it, you know it was good. I think the same thing goes for great novels.

Atlas Shrugged

One of my goals/resolutions for 2011 is to read a novel every month. I've been constantly reading for school for as long as I can remember, and now that I've finished college, I've been going through a bit of reading list withdrawal. So I took matters into my own hands, and set myself a schedule of books to read for the year, made of up novels I've always wanted to read but haven't had the opportunity to. January's choice was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Before reading this book, I knew next to nothing about it. I knew that colleagues who had read it loved it, and had read online that it was considered the second most influential book after the Bible. Based on those observations I knew it had to be on my 2011 list. And topping off at 1074 pages, I put it first to get it out of the way. 

As I began reading, I was quickly enamored by the story and Rand's style of writing. The characters and dialogue were all completely believable and everything seemed contemporary, despite having been written in 1957. In my mind I imagined the scenes unfolding in a tone much like the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with sepia tones, 50s versions of future technology, and classic vintage clothing.

The giant calendar looming over the city should have tipped me off, but the corrosion of America into an Orwellian dystopia was something I hadn't anticipated. The first couple hundred pages paint the country as a prosperous, forward-moving nation, albiet one with an underlying unease manifested in the phrase "Who is John Galt?". As the narrative progresses the dystopia slowly comes into control, beginning with the arguments of morality, reason and duty until the government becomes completely corrupt and starts promoting concepts like "we must control men in order to force them to be free (pg. 127)" and outlawing dog-eat-dog business competition because it's "unfair". Soon the nation is in chaos, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, and technology is being used for all the wrong reasons. As this is happening we are also following romances, searching for a missing person, researching mysterious objects, watching marriages unravel, and realizing that everything that is happening - from bars in New York City to counties on the other side of the planet - is not only intertwined but is following the plan of a single man with the intent to change the way the world works. If this isn't a story of epic proportions, I don't know what is.

Besides the obvious comparison to 1984 I was reminded of various other books, and most specifically Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen. Their graphic novel classic is another story in which a single, self-centered genius hordes the great minds of the world in order to throw society into a state of chaos that he believes will promote an improvement for the greater good - the difference between the two being that in Watchmen, the genius is on the 'bad' side. I'm curious if this book had any influence on them.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and despite how much I love the writing and the emphasis on the importance of intelligence, there are some things that the book promotes that I have trouble with. Rand is operating under the practice of Objectivism, a philosophy which I do not know much about outside of the fact that she pioneered it. According to our friend Wikipedia, Objectivism teaches reality independent of consciousness, knowledge found through logic, and rational self-interest, among other aspects.  The most challenging part of the novel for me was the radio address promoting this philosophy, because a lot of it seemed to go directly against my personal beliefs. In the address character John Galt preaches that justice should always preside over mercy, that a person's pleasure is more important than the welfare of their neighbors, that a man's mind is the only judge of truth, that love is earned as a reward for virtue.

As a Christian, I cannot agree with these statements. Justice is a great concept, but mercy is what leads to forgiveness and reconciliation - and there is no one so perfect as to be above the need to be forgiven. It's important for people to be happy, but never at the expense of someone else's life. I cannot agree that a man's mind is the only judge of truth - believing that the world is flat doesn't make it true. And what good is love if it's conditional and must be earned? I also cannot believe that faith is the absence of intelligence, or that following God causes man to "become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question (pg. 944)." In my opinion, based on Galt's speech, Objectivism leaves no room for error or mistakes or even flaws. It ignores the concept of living life with purpose and settles instead on the fickle emotion of personal happiness as the end-all-be-all of existence. In addition, it doesn't make sense to me that the characters preach that the individual is greater than the group while suffering torture in the name of their plan to create a better world, or that faith is unintelligent but believing that truth is truth because "existence exists (pg. 933)."

Although I did not agree with some of the basic teachings in this novel, I can still appreciate the skill it took to not only write such a hefty novel but to create a complicated web of unique characters and to invent an entirely new philosophy. After reading it, I can absolutely see why it is considered the second most influential book. Rand's writing is fabulous, but when it comes to philosophy, I think I'll stick with the number one most influential book.