The Need for Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange Essay

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.

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

Alex realizes that at eighteen he is no longer a child, but rather an adult who has not yet amounted to anything. He comes to realize that he would like to start a family of his own, with a wife and son like Pete. He makes a comparison between youth and a windup toy, saying how they continue moving forward in one direction until there is something to block its path. He says that this is a fundamental fact of youth: youth will always make mistakes, as he has, and that this is what leads to the growth into an adult. He realizes the connection that exists between violence and youth, and that free will is more than just violence but making choices based on morality and thought rather than

Alex’s whole story is an allegory for what happens with too much free will. When free will is given to someone they get choices, but eventually, they start to infringe upon others free will. Burgess wants to show the consequences that free will can cause. However, the opposite is also shown. With the government shown in the story, many people don’t have free will. They are miserable and no one ever seems to be happy. In fact, the government wants to remove all the evil from the criminals in the prison so that they will be rehabilitated. They literally want to remove the free will from these people. Burgess wants to show that neither extreme is a good option and that something in between will be best.

“A Clockwork Orange” starts with Alex posing the question: “what’s it going to be then, eh?”. Burgess begins the story by demonstrating that Alex

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.

Life is sustained by the struggling that occurs between good and evil. Take, for instance, the evening new which eradicates this fact of life. Unfortunately, the tendency for mankind to destroy rather than create is due to a certain amount of “original sin.” But there is a fundamental importance of moral choice, and that is what Burgess intends for us to learn about this free will aspect of life. When he added the controversial 21st chapter he solidified the books meaning by saying, “Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.”

Throughout the novel, Burgess also seems to suggest that the environment or the government regulated industrial city in which Alex

The decades-old stereotype that adolescents get a kick out of rebelling against the society they live in believe it or not only came into fruition at the climax of World War II, the era of which these novels were written. Teenagers were beginning to break away from the pressures that were placed upon them by their elders, and bringing in new ideas. However, both novels portray this in different ways. Burgess has created this dystopian, post-apocalyptic realm where Alex, the fifteen year-old male protagonist, is a drug taking sociopath who partakes in several violent acts such as breaking and entering and gang rape. In this dystopian society that Anthony Burgess has created there is a clear struggle between the individual, Alex, and the oppressive control of the government.

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

In the novel A Clockwork Orange, the author Anthony Burgess tells a story about a young man name Alex and his friends, every night they go around and start committing violent acts. In the novel Alex expresses his freedom of choice between good and evil. The freedom of choice is a decision that every person must make throughout his life in order to guide his actions and to take control of his own future. This Freedom of Choice, no matter what the outcome is, displays person power as an individual, and any efforts to control or influence this choice between good and evil will take way the person free will and enslave him. In this novel the author uses this symbolism through imagery. He shows that through the character of

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.

The created patch-work language of Nadsat in the novel, A Clockwork Orange, satirizes the social classes and gang life of Anthony Burgess's futuristic society. The most prominent of these tools being his use of a completely new language and the depiction of family life from the eyes of a fifteen year old English hoodlum. Burgess effectively broke arcane traditions when he wrote A Clockwork Orange by blending two forms of effective speech into the vocabulary of the narrator and protagonist, Alex. Burgess, through his character Alex, uses the common or "proper" method of vernacular in certain situations, while uses his own inventive slang-language called "Nadsat" for others. Many

The society of A Clockwork Orange is constructed upon struggles for power. Crime is a part of the everyday. Violent street gangs seek power through anarchism, direct authority is represented by a network of corrupt police, and on the highest social level a struggle for political and administrative power is fought. Alex reflects: "Power, power, everybody like wants power." As a microcosm of the social mentality, he seems to fit the notion of being a product of his environment.

Burgess used the setting in which he lived to create the characters of many of