In society uniqueness and independence are traits that are strongly encouraged. However, this is not the case in some circumstances. Throughout history, there have been multiple attempts to change individuals to respond in a manner that is approved by society. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess are both eternal novels that share the theme of social conditioning gone wrong. The novels explore the lives of two entirely different people: in Burgess’ novel Alex- a 15 year old violent unforgiving boy and, in Keyes, Charlie - a slow and uneducated man. Both characters find themselves in a conditioning experiment designed to change who they are. Through literary devices of stylistic features, symbolism…show more content… Both Charlie and Alex are alike in the sense that they both show a keen interest in intellectual topics, Charlie with science and Alex with the music of Beethoven. Nadsat is the main stylistic technique used by Burgess and is a fictional language, primarily English but with foreign slang words. Nadsat was created by Burgess in order to add a more ‘futuristic’ feel to the novel and is the result of the mix of Slavic words, rhyming, slang, Russian and words that Burgess invented. Frequent Nadsat is used in the book for example, ‘droog’ (friend), ‘horrorshow’ (good) and ‘chelloveck’ (man). A more subtle reasoning behind the use of Burgess’ language is to brainwash the reader. As Alex is brainwashed in the book, Burgess is as well brainwashing his readers by forcing them to understand and learn Nadsat, as Alex was forced to undergo behaviour modification treatment to cure his violent thoughts. Both of these stylistic techniques used by the authors promote the theme of social conditioning gone wrong as it shows the characters development. As time goes on, Charlie’s grammar and punctuation improves and Alex’s slang decreases, as well as his description of gory things as, ‘all that lovely red’