An innovative and violent three-part novel that formed the basis for an equally provocative 1971 film adaptation of the same name, A Clockwork Orange portrays a dystopian near-future world. Alex, a teenager who leads a small gang on violent forays against those weaker than themselves, lives with his parents in a faceless block of public housing.
Alex and his followers speak a peculiar slang that Anglicizes Russian terms, suggesting a possible result of the Cold War that was at its height when Burgess composed this story. They beat up old men and brawl with opposing gangs, and for a special thrill, they break into the home of a mild-mannered writer, rape his wife, and beat him so badly he is crippled. On his own, Alex entices two teenage girls to his room for an orgy to the accompaniment of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When his gang members challenge his leadership, he forces them to back down but carries through with the robbery they planned without him. The elderly woman whose home they invade manages to call the police and attempts to defend herself; Alex accidentally kills her just before his gang betrays him to the police.
In the middle part of the story, Alex is in prison. In order to minimize his stay, he willingly becomes a well-behaved prisoner, spending time with the chaplain. When he learns of the Ludovico Technique, a method of behavioral conditioning designed to eradicate violent impulses in convicted criminals, he volunteers to become a test subject. The transformation works, but it deprives Alex of his free will, as the chaplain had warned him it would. Additionally, it conditions him to become ill at the sound of Beethoven’s symphonies, thereby depriving him of one of his greatest pleasures. He is released back into the world two years after he committed his crimes, a completely new person.
In the novel’s last section, Alex experiences the violence that he had dealt out to others in the first part, and he is helpless to defend himself from it. His parents reject him, having acquired a paying lodger, and he encounters his former victims as he roams his old haunts in isolated misery. As for his old friends and enemies, some of them are now policemen, and upon rescuing him from a beating, they carry him out to the country and beat him up themselves. Lost and brutalized, Alex stumbles upon the cottage of the writer he had crippled, whose wife had died after being raped by Alex’s gang. Alex’s face is recognizable from news coverage about the Ludovico Technique, and his voice, with its distinctive nadsat slang, seals the writer’s recognition of his tormentor. He has Alex locked in a room and tortured with classical music. Eventually, Alex’s conditioning is reversed through further agonizing procedures.
The novel exists in two editions: The American edition ends with Alex’s violent fantasies restored along with his ability to enjoy Beethoven’s symphonies, while the editions published in the rest of the world include a further chapter. In this ending, Alex encounters one of his gang members who is married, holding down a job, and speaking standard English; he recognizes that his teenage ways are outdated, supplanted by a younger generation, and imagines himself settled into domestic conventionality. The American version (and the film version) present a bleak, nihilistic view of
Alex’s future role in the world, while the other suggests the possibility of self-willed reform and redemption in an acceptable way of life.
Anthony Burgress discussed his intentions for this novel at some length, emphasizing the importance of free will in the story’s construction. Alex first chooses to be evil, and then in prison he chooses to be good, but after the behavioral conditioning he is no longer making his own choices. He has been dehumanized and made into an organic automaton—the clockwork orange of the title. Burgess asserts that the freely chosen life, even the evil freely chosen life, is superior to the passive existence of the automaton. Alex is no longer a moral agent after his treatment, and therefore
his “good behavior” is only an illusory good for society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mathews, Richard. The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1978.
Petix, Esther. “Linguistics, Mechanics, and Metaphysics: A Clockwork Orange.” In Anthony Burgess. Edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Ray, Philip E. “Alex Before and After: A New Approach to Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.” In Critical Essays on Anthony Burgess. Edited by Geoffrey Aggeler. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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