A Clockwork Orange

I just recently finished Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange. For those of you who may not be familiar with dystopian novels, a dystopian novel usually takes place in a future society, although not always, and is characterized by misery, squalor, oppressive governments and any host of other deplorable aspects of life (1). Arguably the most famous dystopian novel is Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Which is about a society that seems perfect or utopian but on closer inspection, the whole society is morally on its head. Anyway another good book should you find yourself in need of one. A Clockwork Orange takes place in futuristic England, in what is supposedly London. Note that this book was written in 1962, so the future in the book seems more like the early 1970’s but the themes are still very relevant. The book follows the exploits of Alex, who is a teenager growing up in the declining state Great Britain. Alex with his gang, go out and terrorize the city at night, robbing, raping, and beating up whoever they see fit. Without giving too much of the plot away Alex eventually is forced to change his ways, to the point where he physically cannot do harm to others. This is where the main theme of the novel comes into play, even though doing evil is wrong should we be allowed to force wrongdoers to do good? Again, I do not want to give the plot away so I will have to leave you hanging about how this theme materializes in the novel, if you want to find out I recommend reading it or at the very least watching Stanley Kubrick’s movie based on the book. A Clockwork Orange is very psychologically challenging with many disturbing acts of violence, the book used to be banned.

1.      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dystopia

"Who am I?" asked by myself

According to www.facebook.com Carter Moore, has the middle name Allen. His favorite sports include anything with a ball such as; soccer, football, baseball, and basketball. When reading about his interests; watching movies, hanging with friends and working out are all interests of his. Further reading suggests that he is enjoying his time at Virginia Tech, where I assume he is studying engineering according to his most recent status, “Engineering homework is gonna kick my tail!” As I scroll through his pictures it is interesting to note that many of his pictures do not appear to have been taken in the US of A. It seems as if he has been to England, Italy, Mexico and Romania before, or he is quiet good at Photoshop. By jumping over to www.Twitter.com Carter seems to be a somewhat modest tweeter, with only 69 tweets to his name as well as most of these about taking a nap or doing homework. Flying to the other side of the internet to http://www.augusta.k12.va.us/70562012510945377/site/default.asp which was his high school’s website, I dug up that Carter was president of the SCA his senior year. A quick Google search for “Carter Moore”, turned up numerous tattoo parlors, all apparently owned by yours truly. As many of his friends know, Carter seem to really like getting up for his 8am English class as 8am is the best time possible for blogging and doing English things. Perhaps it would be of interesting note that Virginia Tech made a heinous error when calculating Carters grades, where he should have gotten a 4.OH he received a 2.OHNO. There must be a typo in there somewhere? This seems like it should be a somewhat satisfactory introductory research based look at the one named Carter Moore. Like Bigfoot however he is elusive and quite a handful with the ladies.