Quote:
Originally Posted by jidar
I read the book with the missing chapter and a forward by Burgess where hes goes on about how his vision was altered in the American printing of the book.
Frankly I think the book was improved by removing the last chapter (and that goes for the movie too). Burgess claims that the final chapter is required in order to show Alex changing and growing otherwise it's not truly a novel, but to me that section was so unbelievable and cliched I really thought it diluted the books impact by including it.
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I don't see how it's cliche. I think the book and movie both work, with or without the final chapter, in different ways. I don't agree that the final chapter dilutes it, or that it was unbelievable. It just shows that despite all the attempts to change Alex's way of thinking what actually ends up changing him is time. I guess you could say it dilutes the impact of the novel if you wanted the impact of the novel to differ from what Burgess wanted, but the author decided what impact he wanted the book to have. If he wanted the impact to be just be about droogy sort-of ultraviolent behavior he would have cut it, but obviously he wanted the ending impact to be that people can just naturally grow beyond that sort of behavior.