Post #6

Post #6: Why A Clockwork Orange shouldn't be considered a classic 

 By, Alex Testerman

1. Plot Line: The plot line of A Clockwork orange is that a 15 year old boy who is part of a violent gang in future England cause havoc on the streets as the rape and beat innocent people. But one faithful day when the gang was attacking a woman, Alex, the main character, was left behind. He was later arrested and found that the woman had died from his injuries and that Alex would be in prison for 14 years. The story transitions between his violent younger years, him in prison and being mentally experimented on to where any form of violence would make him awfully sick, and his years after prison in a downward spiral of suicidal thoughts and trying to live a normal life. The plot gets so confusing throughout with the plot lines changing and the period of time never being explained so the reader is confused. The novel is very scattered and has a lot of unnecessary twist and turns that make it even harder to figure out what is happening.

2. Vocabulary: This book is narrated by Alex, and he has a, with a lack of a better word “Different” way of speaking. Not only does he use different words from the England side of English instead of American English, they also use a made up language to talk to one another in this slang. At times it is impossible to figure out what Alex is trying to say and it really pulled me out of the book on numerous occasions. It at times can be charming because it is a twist on the way the story is told rather than it being explained but there are too many unexplained words and phrases that really lost me at parts especially with the dialogue.

3. Alex himself: Alex has a growing period where he goes from being a violent and sick kid to a strange adult because of prison and brainwashing. Alex is such a hard character to like and or dislike because you dislike him as a villain at the beginning because of all his and his gangs random acts of violence to watching him rot in his own crazy mind and not feeling bad for him what so ever. He is just hard to relate to because I’m not a murderous criminal. There are also no other characters from other books that I know of that I can relate him to. He is kind of like The Joker from Batman at the beginning of the novel with his sick and twisted acts and cunning personality but at the end he is this strange reclusive man who has nothing. The only thing I can really give Alex is that he is a very original character as he develops.

4. The Movie: Now the movie on the other hand is outstanding. This was made to be into a movie with all the characters and scenes that you have trouble picturing in your mind while you read the book but with the movie the whole book started to make so much more sense. The acting for a 1960’s film is wonderful and it really has that dark presence throughout the whole film with little elements of comic relief throughout. In my own personal opinion, I would say that the movie should be considered a classic and the book be something attached to the film as an extra for huge fans of the movie or those who would like to see how confused you can get while reading. Skip the book and watch the movie is what I think personally.

Post 5: My thoughts

          In my mind I think that a nonfiction piece of writing needs to be as truthful as you can make it, when I say this I mean that you shouldn't lie knowing that you are lying but there are some things we don’t know for certain, so we have to fill in the gap. There is a large difference between filling in gaps because you don’t know, and lying. When you lie, you know what you are doing and you are disgracing the name of nonfiction by knowing what you are doing is wrong but still acting like it is true with the case of James Frye “Bending the truth”. As Seth Greenland stated “You shouldn't lie… That the Greenland rule, don’t lie.” And he is saying this in response to when, in his novel A Million Little Pieces that he had a stint in prison for 6 months but in reality he only stayed a could hours and this really shows that a lie or stretching of the truth once discovered ruins the immersion of the book and pulls the reader out. Ultimately I think that you can fill in gaps for information that you don’t know or stretch the truth, but only if you state somewhere in your piece that this is 100% true or you didn't know all the information and had to fill in gaps. Aimee Bender stated that “It’s all about playing with from” when talking about how nonfiction is changing and she also says “Which is exciting for all writers.” So this shows to me at least that maybe people will grow accustom to stretching of the truth and that is what will be called nonfiction; But for right now I think that nonfiction should be as close to true as humanly possible and lying about events to add drama should stay with fiction pieces.