A Clockwork Orange was a literary masterpiece by Anthony Burgess before Stanley Kubrick made a award winning movie out of it. The two versions are completely different while retaining the same essential story. So whose was better, it really depends what you’re looking for.

The book was published in 1962, first in the UK and then in the US. The US actually had an abridged version of the book for many years. Since the US publisher didn’t believe that the US audiences would believe chapter 21, he convinced Burgess to drop it for US publication. That created a significant change in the overall meaning of the book.

The basics of the story are very similar. It’s a three act story. The first act introduces us to our main character Alex and his band of buddies who speak in a slang based on rhyming slang and Slavic words. The slang is only spoken by the young with older adults speaking normal English. Alex and his buddies are into ultra violence and attack people and break into a house to rape a woman while her husband is forced to watch. Alex is also attracted to classical music, especially the power of Beethoven. The first act ends after another night of violence when Alex is caught having murdered a lady.

The second act deals with Alex’s life in prison and his “rehabilitation”. Alex gets interested in religious books, but only for the violent description contained within them. His violent and rebellious tendencies get him selected for an experimental treatment. He is given drugs and forced to watch violent films with classical soundtracks. The drugs are designed to force him to become physically ill at the sight or thought of violence, but the poorly designed experiment pushes Alex away from the classical music he loves. Alex is pronounced cured and released

In act three, Alex is free, but has nowhere to go. His family doesn’t want him around, the government is no longer interested in him and his ex buddies are now sadistic police officers who beat him senseless. In a daze, Alex ends up at the house of the man whose wife he raped. The man is a political writer (writing a book called A Clockwork Orange) who hates the government and recognizing Alex from the newspaper reports of the treatment he brings him in. As Alex recovers in the man’s house, the man’s friends debate how to use Alex to attack the government. Accidentally Alex reveals that he was one of the people who raped the writer’s wife.  The writer attacks Alex by locking him up and torturing him with classical music. Alex attempts suicide to escape. But, failing suicide, he is rescued by the government (who arrests the writer), apologies are made and the treatment is reversed. Alex is free to live his violent life again.

Chapter 21 is the concluding chapter, which was left out of the US version initially, where Alex has a new group of friends to bond over ultra violence with. But Alex finds himself unhappy with his new group without knowing why. He ends up at a diner and runs into Pete (the fourth member of Alex’s original gang) who is married and has given up his violent tendencies. Alex chats with Pete and then realizes that he wants what Pete has, but is worried about his kids inheriting his violent tendencies.

What the book does well is the language (consult the dictionary in the book since it will take 20-30 pages to start understanding what is going on). The slang and rhythm of Alex and his friends speech is amazing. Few authors other than Burgess have pulled off creating such a memorable and effective language to use within their books. Alex himself is a wonderful creation. He is a mix of youth, inexperience, joy and violence. Alex truly loves his ultra violence and his Beethoven. He doesn’t do violence to prove a point or cast an opinion. Alex is violent because he loves being violent. He can’t understand why he should do anything else. And his violence forces him into the treatment. The ending shows another side of Alex, making him a more well-rounded character. The Alex from the Chapter 21 has matured and is starting to realize that there is more to life than the violence that has dominated it. His interaction with Pete and Pete’s wife lead him to understand that there is a way out and decide that he wants to take it.

What the movie does well is the music. While the book talks about Alex’s love for music, the movie does a better job integrating music into the story. By reducing the music problems from the treatment down to just Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the film is able to concentrate all of the horror and fear into one musical number. In addition, the William Tell Overture during the scene with the two young women and Alex’s soft shoe to Singing in the Rain (suggested by Malcolm McDowell apparently) brings out the violence and music link. Alex in the movie is more of a schemer than the Alex in the book. Where in the book, Alex is selected for the treatment due to his violence, in the movie Alex volunteers for the treatment to get out of prison. Kubrick, not having seen Chapter 21 until late in the production, decided that he would stay with the US ending. So the movie ends on a much more gleefully violent note than the meditative ending to the book.

Both presentations of the story are masterpieces and do a wonderful job showing that a translation across mediums can have extraordinary results. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you should do both.