THC Science

A Clockwork Orange
Author	Anthony Burgess
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	William Heinemann (UK)
Publication date	1962
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette, CD)
Pages	192 pages (Hardback edition) & ; 176 pages (Paperback edition)
ISBN	[[Special:BookSources/ISBN+0-434-09800-0+%28Hardback+edition%29+%26+%3Cbr%2F%3EISBN+0-14-118260-1+%28Paperback+edition+UK%29 \|ISBN 0-434-09800-0 (Hardback edition) & ; ISBN 0-14-118260-1 (Paperback edition UK)]] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

"Clockwork Orange" redirects here. For other uses, see Clockwork Orange (disambiguation). For the Stanley Kubrick film, see A Clockwork Orange (film).

A Clockwork Orange is a speculative fiction novel by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962, and later the basis for a 1971 film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick.

Plot introduction

Explanation of the novel's title

Burgess wrote that the title was a reference to an alleged old Cockney expression "as queer as a clockwork orange".¹ Due to his time serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaya, Burgess thought that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) human (orang, Malay for "person").

Burgess wrote in his later introduction, A Clockwork Orange Resucked, that a creature who can only perform good or evil is "a clockwork orange — meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil; or the almighty state."

In his essay "Clockwork Oranges"², Burgess asserts that "this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness". This title alludes to the protagonist's negatively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will.

Novel layout

The novel is separated into three parts of seven chapters. Each part has a different setting or motive for the main character, but keeps to certain conventions across three parts. For example, each part begins with a character repeating the phrase "What's it going to be then, eh?" The number of chapters is relevant to Western Civilization's age of maturity, and as Burgess said in his introduction to later versions of the novel, "21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at age 21 you got to vote and assumed adult responsibility. Whatever its symbology, the number 21 was the number I started out with...that number has to mean something in human terms when they handle it." (Pg.vi)

Point of view

A Clockwork Orange is written in first person perspective from a seemingly biased and unreliable source. Alex never justifies his actions in the narration, giving a good sense that he is somewhat sincere; a narrator who, as unlikeable as he may attempt to seem, evokes pity from the reader through the telling of his unending suffering and later through his realization that cycle will never end. Alex's perspective is effective in that the way that he describes events is easy to relate to even if the situations themselves are not. He uses words that are common in speech as well as Nadsat, the speech of the younger generation.

Plot summary

Template:Spoilers

Part 1: Alex's world

Set in a dystopian future, the novel opens with the introduction of protagonist, fifteen-year-old Alex The Large (the character's surname is never revealed in the novel) who, with his gang members (known as "droogs") Dim, Georgie and Pete, roam the streets at night, committing crimes for enjoyment.

Essentially, the first part of the novel is a character study of our protagonist. We learn that Alex is articulate and clever, enjoys classical music (that particularly of Beethoven) and finds amusement during the evenings in committing crimes and acts of sexual violence — justifying himself through his narrative voice. We learn that Alex and his "droogs" have their own language known as Nadsat, and their own hierarchy, in which Alex is the leader. There is a general disregard for the law or for older generations — creating an image of a youth movement which is taking control of this fictional future. (This of course being the exaggeration of the concern that came with the changing values of the 1960s, in which teenagers were becoming decidedly more unruly and rebellious.)

Part 1 involves Alex reflecting on his illegal activity (which involves the rape of two 10-year-old girls, and also the wife of writer F. Alexander) and describes the treachery of the droogs which results in Alex's arrest and then later, prison sentence.

The use of lyrical language and Nadsat somewhat masks the horrible imagery of Alex's actions, and, to some extent, Alex is able to draw empathy from the reader, through his friendly nature towards his audience (referring to them as his "only friends", etc.)

Part 2: The Ludovico Technique

After being sentenced to 14 years for murder, Alex gets a job as an assistant to the prison chaplain. He feigns interest in religion, and amuses himself by reading the Bible for its lurid descriptions of "the old yahoodies (Jews) tolchocking (beating) each other", imagining himself taking part in "the nailing-in" (the Crucifixion of Jesus). Alex hears about an experimental rehabilitation programme called "the Ludovico Technique", which promises that the prisoner will be released upon completion of the two-week treatment, and will not commit crimes afterwards.

Partially by taking part in the fatal beating of a cellmate, Alex manages to become the subject in the first full-scale trial of the Ludovico Technique. The technique itself is a form of aversion therapy, in which Alex is given a drug that induces extreme nausea while being forced to watch graphically violent films for 2 weeks. Among the films shown are propaganda films such as Triumph of the Will, which includes Alex's beloved Beethoven. At the end of the treatment, Alex is unable to carry out or even contemplate violent acts without crippling nausea. He can't listen to the Beethoven music he loves either, as the treatment has caused him to experience nausea by simply listening to the music.

Part 3: After prison

Alex gets his release, but upon returning home, finds that he is not welcome: his personal belongings have been confiscated (sold, so that the money made might go towards the care of the cats of the woman Alex murdered, as well as other victims), and his parents have taken in a lodger, Joe. Dejected and suddenly with no place in the world, Alex begins to contemplate suicide in a way that will not be painful or cause any more nausea - and visits the public library in order to discover what sort of poison he might take to end his life. There he is spotted by one of his former victims, the librarian, who, accompanied by his friends, exacts his revenge (this is referred to as the aged attacking the youth). Alex is unable to strike back for an overpowering fear of sickness over being beaten — the police are alerted. The police who arrive are his old cohort Dim as well as Billyboy, the former leader of a rival gang whom Alex fought earlier. Alex is taken out onto the edge of town and is beaten harshly — left alone in the desolate nothing on the outskirts of the city.

Alex stumbles to the nearest house for help, which turns out to be that of F. Alexander, whose wife Alex had raped and beaten earlier in the book. At first Alex is not recognized. Though as he stays with his guest, it becomes clear that F. Alexander begins to suspect something: memories of names that Alex accidentally mentions, etc. Alex discovers that F. Alexander's wife has died, apparently through sickness, though her still living husband insists that it was her rape that killed her, when she died several months later. Because of his grief, F. Alexander has become obsessed with bringing down the State that has failed him, and, upon hearing Alex's tale, intends to use him as a tool against the government; being an example of the terrible things that the State are capable of. It is unclear as to whether F. Alexander's friends lock Alex in a room and play the fictitious "Symphony Number 3 Of The Danish veck Otto Skadelig" at full volume. Whether it was revenge or not, it does seem extremely likely that their intention was for Alex to be in great pain after listening to the music. F. Alexander's cohorts successfully "prove" that such government-sanctioned conditioning should not be supported.

Unable to stand the pain, Alex throws himself out of the window attempting suicide. He survives the fall with broken bones and wakes in a hospital, informed that his tormentors have been arrested. When he hit the road after jumping, Alex hit his head on the road, effectively ending the hold that Ludovico's Technique had over him. Alex realizes this after imagining himself murdering and torturing his tormentors without inducing feelings of nausea. the chapter ends with "I was cured all right". (This is the point at which the U.S. edition of the book ended, implying that Alex would return to his ways of violent delinquency.)

The actual final chapter begins identically to the first; Alex has formed a new gang and reverted to his previous criminality. On this particular night, however, he decides not to join them and goes for a walk on his own instead. In a café, he bumps into the last of his old gang members, Pete. To Alex's astonishment, Pete is now married and has become a respectable member of society.

After conversing with Pete and his wife, Alex has an epiphany, renouncing violence on the one hand, but on the other concluding that his behaviour was an unavoidable part of youth, and that if he had a son, he would not be able to stop him from doing what he himself did. Template:Endspoiler

Characters

It should be stated that the names of the members of Alex's gang can be seen as shortened versions of classical Russian names — Alex for Alexei or Alexander (arguably an allusion to Alexander the Great, another youthful militant), Dim for Dmitri (this one seems truly obvious, since there is no "elongated" English name for the nickname "Dim"), Pete for Peter (Peter I of Russian royalty), and George for Georgi, which is admittedly a fairly innocuous Russian name with no "historical" precedent — though George was a recurring name in English kingship, another possible allusion (as George is the one who masterminds Alex's betrayal, possibly a show of "perfidious Albionism"). These Slavic appelations of the main characters parallel other Slavic connotations within the work — such as the Russian etymological origins of much of Alex's droogs' slang-speech, nadsat.

Alex (known as Alex DeLarge in the Kubrick film) — The main character and, as he puts it, "Your Humble Narrator". The leader of his gang and an only child sent to several child reform schools only to return unchanged and on the streets every night with his Droogs.

George or Georgie — One of the members of Alex's gang. He rallies Dim against Alex and becomes the leader after his betrayal. He later dies leading the remaining members of the gang on a raid.

Pete — Another member of the first gang, he typically has more morals than the rest of the crew and suggests on several occasions talking things out before letting Alex and Dim fight. Pete is the first and maybe only one to reform and become a member of society.

Dim — "Dim being really dim" the brawn of Alex's gang, he later becomes a member of the police and seeks revenge on Alex.

P.R. Deltoid — Alex's snooty Post-Corrective Advisor, he speaks through implications never flat out saying what he knows; he later spits in Alex's face, an act that transforms his character into one of the people of the government that represent it but do nothing to change it.

The Prison Chaplain (also the prison charlie) — One of the few people in the government actually working to change people through the belief that human nature is innately good and that through spiritual clensing and belief in God, that a person can change. He is strongly opposed to the Ludovico's Technique because it takes away the ability to change yourself.

The Governor — The man who decides to let Alex "choose" to be the first reformed by the Ludovico Technique.

Dr. Brodsky — One of the Co-Founders of the Ludovico Technique, at first seemed like a friend to Alex, and then introduced him to pain. Plays the "Bad Cop" role when talking to Alex before and after his sessions in the theater.

Dr. Branom — The other Co-Founder of the Ludovico Technique. He says much less than Brodsky and is interpreted as the "Good Cop" role when addressing Alex.

F. Alexander — An author writing, at the beginning of the novel, his own novel called A Clockwork Orange. His wife is raped by Alex and his droogs, and subsequently dies. He later takes Alex in and subjects him to his extremist friends. Shortly after meeting they try to kill him using the weaknesses caused by the Ludovico Technique.

Differences in U.S. editions

Although the book is divided into three parts, each containing seven chapters (21 being a symbolic reference to the British age of majority at the time the book was written^{[citation needed]}), the 21st chapter was omitted from the versions published in the United States until recently. The film adaptation, which was directed by Stanley Kubrick, follows the American version of the book, ending prior to the events of the 21st chapter. Kubrick claimed^{[citation needed]} that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, but that he certainly never gave any serious consideration to using it.

Nadsat and criticism

The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang dialect which Burgess invented for the book, called Nadsat. It is a mix of modified Slavic words, Cockney rhyming slang, and words invented by Burgess himself. One of Alex's doctors explains the language to a colleague as "Odd bits of old rhyming slang; a bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav propaganda. Subliminal penetration."

Nadsat may serve various functions: first, Burgess, while wanting to provide his young characters with their own register, did not want to use contemporary slang, fearing that this would date the book too much.^{[citation needed]}

Second, the novel graphically describes horrific scenes of violence, which would be shocking even by today's standards, so Nadsat is used as a "linguistic veil" to distance the reader from the action on the page.^{[citation needed]} Third, the Soviet Union being a big political power at the time, Burgess wanted to show that its culture had influenced slang, just as English influences other languages because of the U.S.' being a big political power.^{[citation needed]}

Awards and nominations

1983 - Prometheus Award (Preliminary Nominee)
1999 - Prometheus Award (Nomination)
2002 - Prometheus Award (Nomination)
2003 - Prometheus Award (Nomination)
2006 - Prometheus Award (Nomination)[1]

Adaptations

Excerpts from the first two chapters of the novel were dramatised and broadcast on BBC TV's programme Tonight, 1962 (now lost, believed wiped)
A 1965 film by Andy Warhol entitled Vinyl
1971 film by Stanley Kubrick.

Trivia