In 1962, Anthony Burgess' novel “A Clockwork Orange” was published for the first time. Full of sex and violence, the novel follows the story of its hoodlum narrator Alex, who terrorizes his city with his teenaged friends until the government catches him and uses psychological conditioning to "cure" him of his violent behavior. In 1971, director Stanley Kubrick turned Burgess' book into an even more erotically violent film, “Clockwork Orange”. Kubrick's adaptation is generally the same as Burgess' novel, but a few minor differences and the change of medium ultimately make the film a more shocking and powerful work than the book.

In the novel, Burgess has Alex speak an odd version of English, which he calls Nadsat. Burgess uses this language extensively in the book's more violent scenes. Breasts are "groodies," policemen are "rozzes," and men are "chellovecks." Alex does not rape women with his friends; he and his "droogs" give "devotchkas" the "old in-out-in-out." The effort of translation forces the reader to distance themselves from the horrific actions described, thinking about the drama rather than experiencing it as pornography. The language reduces the a

Is this ending more powerful than Burgess' original ending? I believe it is. Although Burgess intended to develop the novel's themes of free will and moral choice with the resolution, the last chapter reads a little too much like a fairytale. Given his previous actions, and the pleasure he got from them, it seems a little unrealistic that Alex would be so quick to change his ways. Although Kubrick's ending is both distasteful and disturbing, it seems more genuine than Burgess' ending, and has a more profound effect on the reader.

Burgess' verbal trickery does not affect viewers of Kubrick's film in the same way it does readers of the novel. Although Alex does narrate the story using Nadsat terms in the film, the language does not muffle the violence or eroticism of the scenes. The viewer actually sees the brutal beating of an old man, gang warfare, a sexual act and the rape of several women in the course of the movie. Because film is primarily a visual medium, Burgess' verbal cushion has no effect on the way the audience pictures the violence; Kubrick interprets Burgess' words and throws it on the big screen for all to see. He does attempt to do some muffling of his own. He generally moves the camera further away from the actors as the violence grows more intense, and shows the sexual scene at several times normal speed, but the effect is not as strong as Burgess' narrative device. In his adaptation, Kubrick does not leave too much to the audience's imagination; the scenes of a sexual or violent nature are still very explicit and much more shocking than the printed version.

If the intent of Kubrick and o

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