The old in-out-in-out

“So Dim did the strong-man on the devotchka, who was still creech creech creeching away in very horrorshow four-in-a-bar, locking her rookers from the back, while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still, and real horrorshow groodies they were that then exhibited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge. Plunging, I could slooshy cries of agony and this writer bleeding veck nearly got loose howling bezoomny with the filthiest of slovos… Then there was like quiet and we were full of like hate, so smashed what was left to be smashed – typewriter, lamp, chairs – and Dim watered the fire out and was going to dung on the carpet, but I said no… The writer veck and his zheena were not really there, bloody and torn and making noises. But they’d live.” - Alex

This passage describes a typical night of violence for Alex and his friends. They break into a country house, vandalize it and rape the woman. The rape scene made a strong impression on me, because of Alex’s quite sincere, graphically detailed report of the act and his feelings. They engage in such blatant violence that I feel nauseated just reading about it. They don’t really do it for money or for revenge. Even meaningless violence is terrifying enough, but the hardest idea to digest is that they actually seem to take great pleasure in their brutality. Alex’s usual objective tone becomes excited and almost poetic in this passage, as he compares her nipples to pink eyes. The ecstasy he gets out of the rape, and the way he ignores the furious husband, is sickening. After getting so worked up about the rape, the disinterested tone of ‘there was like quiet and we were full of like hate’ is quite jarring. However, it is interesting that after all the random smashing, Alex stops Dim from defecating on the floor. It is as if the violence is too elegant to be demeaned with such a crude act. I shudder when I wonder how special his sadism is to him. Alex’s lack of concern for the effects of his destructive behaviour is all the more chilling. He dismisses the beaten up couple with no emotion beyond checking that they will survive. Do terrorists in the real world do what they do for similar reasons? Because it excites them to hurt others? Because they really don’t care about what happens to their victims? To Alex, violence is an ideal. Is that just the writer’s characterization at work, or could this be a deeper psychological observation about certain kinds of people? Another thing that struck me was the excessive use of nadsat language. It took me a long time to puzzle everything out, and the awkward language somehow dilutes the initial shock of what the author is describing. It was only after reading it over a couple more times that the full impact of the actual brutality hit me. Maybe the author intended to protect the readers from that shock. It remains an extremely disturbing passage, as much for its enthusiasm as for its content.