A clockwork orange and Brave New World similarities=

1.Confusion= As a reader I can kind of tell whats going on but not quite which makes me confused. For example Brave new world I’m aware that whatever that is happening is taking place in a high story building and that its in a laboratory, and that somethings being fertilised however I’m not sure what.In A clockwork orange I’m aware that someone is in some sort of bar with some mates, theirs liquor something with milk, something kind of insidious is going on because theirs mention of blood but i haven’t quite figured out what. This could be because the confusion causes intrigue an almost desperation to put my finger on what exactly is happening and the authors could have strategically made the opening like this in order to achieve this feeling.

3.Made up words= A clockwork orange does this to such an extent in the first page I’m incredibly unsure about what I’m reading. ”skorry, bog, mozg, deng’, a brave new world also does this. ”wintriness” Brave new world doesn’t do it to the same extent as a clockwork orange. But they still both use it. One thing they both do that i find interesting is that they use normal day to day language and words that id recognise and then throw in a made up word in the mix. This gives it a feeling of normalcy when reading it. It helps to show that it is part of the characters day to day lives. At the same time helps to connect this dystopian future to our own lives since at first it we can still relate it to present day.

sense of discomfort= Something about both first pages makes me uncomfortable. In a Brave New World I feel like its partly because of the imagery. The word gray to describe the building , then the words harsh as well as the personification used to describe things like the elements and the architecture of the building ”a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some placid shape of academic gooseflesh” gives a feeling of foreboding and unnaturalness. The foreboding because of the way that even the light coming through the window doesn’t seem to have a good agenda. Because of the way it says hungrily and what its seeking is placid which i associate with something easy to bend and shape to a will. Which makes me feel like something not right might happen soon. Also because even though theirs mention of fertilisation creation of something, theirs a lot of words that seem to talk about decaying and death which puts those images in my head. ”corpse coloured rubber,dead, a ghost”  The unnaturalness is for several reasons, a big one is because of the way things around birth and conception are talked about. ”central london hatchery, and this is the fertilisation room,  three hundred fertilisers are plunged” At this point i don’t know that they are making humans for all i know it could be animals however theres a seriousness about the way its written that makes me feel like its not. Its also the way its being described as very clinical. Which when associated with birth feels unnatural because its meant to be a bit messy and not as controlled however here it is obvious that whatever happening is being repeated and clinically controlled. Which forces a feeling that its unnatural which furthers my discomfort.

In A Clockwork Orange the discomfort is in the not being quite sure whats happening but knowing its not quite right. ”and that would sharpen you and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty to one. to tolchock some old veck in an alley, and viddy him swim in his own blood” As well as the casual tone that he talks about whatever he’s doing. You can kind of guess and probably have an idea of what he’s doing, but you don’t know for sure because you haven’t learnt the language yet.

I feel that the discomfort early on in a dystopian is important because, a dystopian isn’t meant to be an appealing possibility for the future if it was it wouldn’t be a dystopian. The whole point is for their to be something really wrong with it. Having the discomfort and knowing quite soon that even if you don’t fully get whats happening quite yet that its not quite right makes it hit home faster as well makes the reader want to find out what exactly went wrong in their society for it to end up like that.

Done differently in the opening of the two novels-

Familiarity being distorted= I feel that out of the two novels a clock work orange is the only one that does this quite obviously in the opening page. With the milk. Normally when i think of milk I apply it to mostly good things, hot chocolate cereal, animals feeding their young. However as soon as a clockwork orange mentions it. You can tell there is something not quite right with it. ”What they sell here is milk plus something else” as soon as theirs a mention of milk and then words that i don’t know the meaning of yet. The text gradually gets a bit more wrong. Like whatever is happening isn’t quite right. Because theirs words like ”horror show, blood and knives” which i feel can be directly associated with the milk. I feel again this causes intrigue, questions like how can something so normal be used this way in this new reality come to mind? it also helps to make me realise as the reader that the reality I’m reading about is quite different to my own. A clockwork orange also does this a little bit with the made up words. ”synthemesc, horrorshow, pretty polly” Words are used that i somewhat recognise then distorted like syntemesc looks similar to the word synthetic, horrorshow has a meaning in the english language however i can tell that it doesn’t have the same meaning in the text. Or even pretty polly almost sounds like its another word for money because its slightly similar to the word pennies. However the fact that they aren’t quite these words forces me to be unable to skim over them. They stop me for a moment and make me think maybe a little bit to hard about what they actually mean. This frustration could cause commitment in the reader to figuring out their real meaning.

A clockwork orange is in first person past tense. This makes it bias from  the beginning but also helps to narrow down on the main characters personal experience. From the beginning.

Brave new world having narration from not a character, means that we as the reader can grasp the bigger picture faster and he can talk about aspects of his world that we might not experience if it was strictly stuck to one character.