Anthony Burgess and A Clockwork Orange

Through literature, many authors have attempted to represent the societies in which they live and what they think society may become in the future if things continue to be looked over such as political corruption. This is clear in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. Fitzgerald tries to encapsulate the corruption that lay beneath the extravagance of society in the roaring twenties. In contrast, Burgess’s novel, ‘A Clockwork Orange’, depicts a futuristic society in which the novelist fears about mankind’s capacity for corruption are explored.

        The second event that influenced the creation of his novel happened when Burgess and his wife took a trip to the Soviet Union and encountered a group of thugs who strangely maintained a kind of honor code (Contemporary). Burgess displays morality in Alex by not making him a common

A Clockwork Orange, a novel written by Anthony Burgess in the 1960’s takes place in dystopian future in London, England. The novel is about a fifteen year old nadsat (teenager) named Alex who along with his droogs (friends) commit violent acts of crime and opts to be bad over good. In time, Alex finds himself to be in an experiment by the government, making him unable to choose between good and evil, thus losing his ability of free will, and being a mere clockwork orange. A “clockwork orange” is a metaphor for Alex being controlled by the government, which makes him artificial because he is unable to make the decision of good verses evil for himself and is a subject to what others believe is right. In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

“The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen,” Anthony Burgess in his novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’, which happens to be a scathing critique of totalitarian government, through the character of F. Alexander. Burgess is attempting to criticize the type of governments that try to limit the freedom of an individual through science and technology. To be more specific, the use of ‘Ludovico technique’, is one example of the government using technology to establish control in the dystopian world of the text. Although the government, in its defense, prioritizes the safety and well-being of society, it is imperative to note that this use of technology turns Alex, the protagonist into a creature devoid of moral choices. This is what Burgess is referring to by the term ‘mechanical creation’, Alex goes on living his life as a machine, his criminal reform is marked by his inability to make conscious moral decisions. How then, is this scientific measure of criminal reform pursued by the government justifiable? Good and evil are intrinsic part of any human being. An individual always has the moral conscience and choice of picking between the two, and this is what makes him human.

Previous research suggests that Alex DeLarge, a fictional character created by Anthony Burgess, was the epitome of evil. However, previous research has not considered the environmental, socio-economical, and physiological dispositions that molded him into the person he became. Hence, in this paper, it is argued that Alex DeLarge is at a greater risk for Antisocial Personality Disorder than most members of the general population. This is important because it allows us to view beyond the theatrics and the metaphors into a character that is mentally unstable not a villainous caricature in the eyes of the audience.

When African slaves were sold to Americans, they lost their fundamental rights as human beings. However, their inferiority was further cemented when slaves eventually conformed to their white owners. In slavery’s infancy, almost all slaves resisted against their oppressors in one form or another but had limited to no success. These failed resistances eventually led to hopelessness for the slaves as they even began to consider slavery as an accepted practice. Many slaves developed a notion of performing their forced labour more willingly and in turn their owners decreased the beatings and cruelty towards them (“Slavery in the United States.”) For instance, slaves who displayed respect towards their owners were assigned to perform less

In modern society there is much value placed on the concept of individual freedom. However, too much freedom can provide an individual with the power to interfere with the happiness of others, thus a balance between freedom and state regulated order is required. The concept of an individual struggling against an order focused society is a common topic in texts. In Aldous Huxley’s 1933 novel Brave New World, this concept is explored by John, an outsider in a dystopian world society that places high value on stability rather than individualism. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, which is based Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel of the same name, a similar dystopian society is explored by the aggressively individualistic Alex.

Authors tend to have a reason for everything they do in their writings, especially when it comes to their choice of vocabulary. Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange has dialog that is very hard to follow. Instead of using everyday vocabulary, it uses words that are assumed to be slang. Burgess’ diction throughout the novel displays a sense of disconnection between Alex and his friends and the real world, exemplifies how disrespectful him and his friends are to other people, and it creates a mischievous tone along with a cynical mood.

Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, a critically acclaimed masterstroke on the horrors of conditioning, is unfairly attacked for apparently gratuitous violence while it merely uses brutality, as well as linguistics and a contentious dénouement, as a vehicle for deeper themes.

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” is the signature question in Anthony Burgess’s novel, A Clockwork Novel that not only resonates with the moral identity of the anti-heroic protagonist, Alex, but also signifies the essential choice between free will that perpetrates evil and deterministic goodness that is forced and unreal. The prison chaplain and the writer F. Alexander voice the most controversial idea in the novel: man becomes ‘a clockwork orange’ when robbed of free will and tuned into a deterministic mechanism.

Anthony Burgess's writing style in his most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, is different to say the least. This novel is praised for its ingenuity, although many are disturbed by Burgess's predictions for the future. However, for many, it is close to impossible to comprehend without outside help. This is because Burgess created a language specifically for this novel, called Nadsat. This Russian-based language forms conversations between the narrator, Alex, and his teenage, delinquent friends. There are many assumptions as to why Burgess chose to complicate A Clockwork Orange by filling it with the confusing Nadsat language. Some opinions are that the language shows A Clockwork Orange readers

I think that A Clockwork Orange is a book worth reading because it is relatable, makes you think, and is interesting. The author, Anthony Burgess, was born February 25, 1917. At the young age of two his mother passed away. He was brought up by his aunt and later his stepmother. Even with such an unstable childhood Burgess continued on to enroll in college and major in English. He had a passion for music, which he expressed in the main character of A Clockwork Orange. Burgess wrote several accomplished symphonies in his day, as well as over fifty books. He was diagnoses with a brain tumor at about age 40 but well outlived his doctor’s expectations continuing his artistic output until his death from lung cancer at age 76.

Stanley Edger Hyman, in his efforts to add a glossary and afterword, may not have effectively cheapened the novel, but it certainly takes something away from its meaning when every single word that was meant to be understood through context is highlighted, boldfaced, and slapped with a Webster's-safe dictionary definition. Reading Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is a deceptively easy task when compared to reading the likes of Shakespeare or Marlowe. A good amount of the work involved in reading Burgess' famous novel is the use of contextual perception. One word expressed one way can convey no sense of what its meaning is, but when used in another fashion it becomes decipherable. In the introduction to Stanley Edgar Hyman's Nadsat dictionary, he says:

   Freedom and liberalism are catchwords that appear frequently in both philosophical and political rhetoric. A free man is able to choose his actions and his value system, to express his views and to develop his most authentic character. What this kind of idealistic liberalism seems to forget, however, is that liberty does not mean a better society, better life or humanistic values such as equality and justice. In his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), Anthony Burgess portrays an ultimately free individual and shows how a society cannot cope with the freedom which it in rhetoric so eagerly seeks to promote.

Burgess also manipulates language in A Clockwork Orange in more traditional ways, in the form of literary and linguistic devices. The novel is saturated with irony and dark humor, dotted with repetition, and laced with word play.