Blog Post for Friday March 26

A Clockwork Orange is a very strange book, but yet I did like it! In the novel, Alex and his droogs, are out and about at night and end up causing all kinds a damage to people, places, and to themselves. As the story progresses, I almost got a feeling that something would change Alex and make him a nice person. Well, I was right. At the middle part of the novel, Alex gets caught and is thrown in jail. While he is in jail for a couple years, the new treatment comes out, which is to watch basically what you've done in the past, and then you will feel sick if you try to do it ever again. Alex watches all this videos or "films" and gets the sick when he watches them, which is a sure sign to the soctors, that he is getting better. So after watching these horrible films for a fortnight, he does get released out into the world again. When he gets out, he goes home, and finds out that his parents have basically took in John, a laborer, into thier home, almost as a replacement of Alex. Alex is quite furious, I can't balme him for that, I mean what parents would do that to thier son, but when he even thinks nasty things, he starts to get the sick feeling, like when he watched the films. He then leaves his house and goes out on the town. To make a long story short, he joins another gang, but doesn't do any of the violence part. Its almost like he feels like he's not worth anything to anyone since he left for jail, and his own parents didn't want him. He then one day sees Pete with a wife, and this makes Alex almost think t himself that maybe it is actually time, to turn into a good person, and settle down, and find out how to love instead of hate.

One thing that I thought was very ironic, was that after all the sick feelings he had while watching the horendous films, he actually went right out into public and did what he always did, by joining a gang. I think that it relates in today's world with people that get out of jail, are extremely likely to go back into jail for the same reasons they were in there previously for. It just hit me a certain way to think that yes jail is sometimes a curable notion for people, but yet some just go in, do their time, and then go right back out into the world and do it again. There needs to be a line drawn, people need to be put through theropy like Alex. Eventhough he did join a gang, he was not doing all the violence acts, like he was, which is a step in the right direction.

Blog Post for March 19

As I started to read A Clockwork Orange,I was thinking to myself, what a mistake on picking this book to read!! The slang they used completely baffled me, and when I would look at the Nasdat dictionary to try to help me understand what the words meant, it took about an hour to read one page! Not exactly an hour but longer than normal! This book strikes a lot of resemblance to today's world, as we know it! The main characters in the book are Alex (the gang leader and narrator), Pete, Dim, and Georgie, which are the other gang members a.k.a. his "Droogs". The pages that I have read are filled with violence such as beating people up, raping, robbing, etc. But also in class on Thursday, we discussed about certain topics we agreed or disagreed with that went right along with the novel.

The topic in class that really made me think about was whether aversion therapy should be used. In my honest opinion, I think it definitely should be used. If we have a person running around on the streets that is stalking someone and watching their every move so they can plan the perfect time to kill that person, I think that the killer should have to go through the exact same pain that the other person went through. As one of my group members was telling us the one day, that from the video of Clockwork Orange, they actually use this tactic on Alex and after watching it (the acts that he has done) makes him get sick in his stomach, because he can't stand to watch what he, himself did! That's the whole purpose of my point. People may not realize how much they do hurt others when they do a certain crime or action. And in my opinion, jail time is a good thing, but that person could walk right out of a jail and do that same crime again within the hour. But what causes this, society, parenting? That's the key, I think it's a little of both. If we see all the great movie stars doing certain acts and scenes, and they get all the money and hype about it, so we go and do the same thing to try to get the same recognition, but get in serious trouble. And yet, parents can try to raise their kids a certain way, but the kid has a choice on what they want to do and are going to do it, no matter what. These topics are just my opinion, and can go either way, I just thought it was a very interesting thing to talk about,since it fit right in with A Clockwork Orange.