Talk:A Clockwork Orange

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Contents

[edit] Misc.

Malcolm, you removed the following from the article: Yeah Malcolm, jesss

The film caused some controversy at the time in Britain for its violence, with the press blaming an attack on a homeless person on the influence of the film: the outcry annoyed Kubrick so much that he personally withdrew the film from distribution in the United Kingdom. As a result, the film could not be seen in Britain for some 27 years, until after Kubrick's death.

Seems to be useful information if true. Why not include it? --LMS

Oops...I must have deleted it accidentally when I added the plot summary. And, yes, it's true. I saw it when it was released, I remember the press outcry shortly after (as if teenage males have ever required any reason other than alcohol for unprovoked assaults) , and I remember it being almost totally impossible to see it in the Uk for all that time, barring a few unauthorised showings here and there. When it finally became available on video in the UK last year, it hit the bestseller charts for some weeks.- Malcolm Farmer

And an afterthought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=004904839349933&rtmo=3SnBxHuM&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/99/9/13/wfil113.html

which matches my memory of events, other than I got the year wrong!

IIRC: The novel as written and as published in Great Britain is divided into three parts of seven chapters apiece. The first American edition, upon which the movie was based, omits the 21st chapter. In this closing chapter, Alex is presented as having survived and recuperated somewhat from his manipulative experiences. He encounters Pete, another former member of his gang, who has become a responsible citizen (in contrast to Georgie and Dim, who became brutal policemen). Presumably, the American publisher removed it to make the book more, well, what we'd today call "hardcore".

Is the US version still minus a final chapter? The end of the penultimate chapter is far too abrupt for it to be the closing of the book -- to end on that would ruin the rhythm of the book. :( -- Tarquin 11:31 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)
My UK version leaves out chapter 21 also. Re-worded article accordingly. Andy G 00:12 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Just check reference as novel vs novella (see List of Novellas)

[edit] Origins of the title

The title refers to a mechanically-responsive (clockwork) non-human (Orange, Malay for orang-utan, a hairy ape-like creature). Really? I thought it was from the expression "Queer as a clockwork orange". could we check this? -- Tarquin 19:10, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
My source is http://www.filmsite.org/cloc.html which is a detailed review and analysis of the movie by Tim Dirks. See the 2nd para. You can also find in the same para, the expression u have mentioned. Jay 07:06, Sep 7, 2003 (UTC)
It's 1 week and no response from you .. I'm placing back my edits. Jay 22:22, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC)
it seems clearer now -- earlier it sound like "orange" for "orangutan" was an english expression -- Tarquin

The source of the title is from the old English expression "as queer as a clockwork orange". Are you sure of that? I am under the impression that the book predates the expression, and that the former is the source of the latter. Mkweise 23:58, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I didn't get much info on the usage of the phrase. One website says the phrase was in use in the 1920s. where as the book's author Anthony Burgess was born only in 1917, and the book written in 1962. If there are any Londoners here, they can research on the origins of the phrase.
By the way, Burgess himself, in the preface of the book says he took the title from the phrase. (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1974/main.html)
Jay 13:34, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

Burgess's title is the first recorded use of the phrase, and no-one knows if he made it up or not. There are analogies in Cockney ("As queer as a bottle of chips", for example) but no known 'clockwork orange'. Garrick92 13:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Growing up in Middlesbrough in NE England in the 50's and 60's, I must have heard the expression "You're as useless as a clockwork orange", or "You're as useful as a clockwork orange" quite a few times. When the movie appeared I had no trouble with the "source" of the title. If the novel caused a stir among the chattering classes in London ("doon tha Smoke" was the local way of referring to the place) it didn't penetrate the North. Burgess probably knew as much about working class slang as the first Pres. Bush knew about supermarkets. One of the hazards of a class-ridden society, I'm afraid. Burgess wouldn't have even bothered to name a source if he'd been a prole - the expression would have part of his environment. Djdaedalus 19:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


I believe the Italian translation of "Clockwork Orange" is actually "Arancia Meccanica", as in "Mechanical Orange". But I suppose the meaning is the same...

The title of the first Italian translation of the book (1968) was indeed the literal "Un'arancia a orologeria". The 1971 film was translated as "Arancia meccanica". Recent reprints of the book have adopted the film title, most likely because the expression has become with the years a catch-all phrase in the Italian language to indicate any sort of juvenile group violence. Marco Pensante

[edit] A Clockwork Orgy

I've noticed that we now have a paragraph about A Clockwork Orgy, the pornographic take-off of Kubrick's film. The article mentioned this particular "derivative work" before, but the passage was claimed to be irrelevant and therefore got nixed. My thoughts:

  • The version we had before was marginally more informative. It gave the title and indicated that ultra-violence had been replaced by "ultra-sex" (which makes the tagline "rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven" a bit of a pleonasm, doesn't it?).
  • To my knowledge, neither Burgess nor Kubrick had any invovlement with the filming of A Clockwork Orgy. Shouldn't the article spend more time discussing the stage version, for example, which Burgess did write?
  • Claims about a pornographic movie's quality are highly contestable. Saying that Orgy is "surprisingly well-produced" verges on POV; the previous version made some comment about "production values", which (to me) implies more a financial than an artistic judgment. When I saw Orgy, at a party several months ago, a young woman commented that Alexandra was not as talented as she should have been.

Anville 15:05, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The porn industry sure knows how to crawl their way into just about anything, huh? Anyways, I'm not sure if it should be mentioned in the article at all. If it should, then perhaps it'd be wise to place it in the Trivia and not dedicate a section to a porn flick. Floramage! 16:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link suggestions

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[edit] Separate articles for separate topics DONE!

In the next couple of days, I will create two new articles to solve some problems caused by two Stanley Kubrick ”film” pages.

Both A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey try to deal with both the book and the film when what’s really needed are individual pages for these two separate topics.

Though neither of these pages are anywhere near as confused or biased as the Dune page, for example, I cannot see how serious future contributions can be made without muddling things up even further.

As for the names of the new articles, ACO is straightforward enough: the book came first, and the film was adapted later. The case of 2001 is perhaps more controversial, since Kubrick and Clarke worked on the screenplay/novel(ization) simultaneously. In this instance, I’m going to favor Kubrick: 1) The film was released first and 2) The film is undoubtedly the more better known of the pair (and thus the more likely target of a search).

The new articles will be named:

I’m sorry that this necessary editing job will result in some tedious manual labor thanks to the (hopefully few) link changes that need to be made. (Of course, there’s really no rush, since all the pages will still link to each other.)

See Talk:2001:_A_Space_Odyssey for more discussion. 62.148.218.27 21:07, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Two isfdb entries?

I'm not sure why there are two entries for A Clockwork Orange at ISFDB...perhaps there's a reason for this; perhaps it's just a mistake.

I was just going through and updating the ISFDB links, so I left things as they were. But someone better informed than I might want to fix the listing if it is, in fact, broken.

Starwiz 01:46, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if this is actually the case, but there were at least two versions of the book - the original British (and rest of the world) version, which is complete; and the American version which is missing the 21st chapter. This might account for the two listings, but I'm just speculating. Tufflaw 20:56, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)


It is generally considered to be a fantastic, top notch book.

[edit] The page (of the film (of the book))

It seems to me that an awful lot of stuff about the Kubrick movie has ended up on a page about the novel. Therefore -- if you'll forgive me taking a liberty -- I've moved all the Kubrickiana to the "Clockwork Orange (film)" entry, and put some unadulterated Burgess stuff in under 'trivia' instead. I haven't deleted anything - honest! - but we're encouraging category creep otherwise, surely? You wouldn't put stuff about Laurence Olivier under an entry about Shakespeare's Hamlet, would you? (Would you?) Well, then! Garrick92 13:38, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Up the Oi! ..

I've added two more contemporary Oi!/Skin bands who are influenced by the novel and possibly also the movie; as well as a small notice that the book and movie continues to be very popular in the Oi! skin/punk subculture. Tias 08:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Merge

See Talk:A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#Merge.3F for a discussion of merging A Clockwork Orange (film) into this article.

[edit] Moved influences section to Cultural references to A Clockwork Orange

I have cut the Influences sections out and merged both this and the film's Influences sections into Cultural references to A Clockwork Orange (Still needs cleanup). I hope this will help in keeping the articles about book and film reasonably clean and separate. Oh, and I removed the merge tags. Kusma (talk) 06:42, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, I was going to remove all references to the film (i.e. "he wore an Alex costume"), but I think having a separate article might be better. --BadSeed 13:42, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Renamed it to List of cultural references to A Clockwork Orange per WP:NC —Fitch 16:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Novel confused with film

This article appears to treat the details of the novel and the film as synonymous. For example, it suggests that in the novel, F. Alexander tortures Alex with Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This is true of the film, but not of the book (a scant reference to the 21st chapter seems to be the only distinguishing feature, according to this article). Can someone produce a more accurate summary?

That whole sequence was different in the book, Alex never sang singing in the rain in the book. How that whole series of events happened is
  • Alex meets the group wanting to use him against the government
  • Alex is angered at the way they talk about using him like a tool, and say's he's not "Dim"
  • F. Alexander suddenly says he recognises the name Dim, and struggles with it as Alex changes the subject
  • As F.A slowly seems to be going insane, the others say that they will be keeping Alex at another place to sleep
  • They lock him in the flat, with just a bed and a window, he goes to sleep, and wakes up to symphony number three, of the Danish Van Otto Skadelig
  • Feeling the sickness, he throws himself out of the window to try to end it

I might update that section --Getalifebud 09:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alex DeLarge?

I thought this was only his name in the movie, and that his last name was never revealed in the book.

In the book Alex picks up a pair of girls at a record shop and takes them back to his room, inviting them to "hear angel trumpets and devil trombones". He gets them thoroughly medicated, injects himself with "jungle juice" and then introduces them to "Alex the Large". This was the source of the name in the movie. Djdaedalus 20:06, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
True but his name is definitely just Alex

[edit] 21st chapter

Why was the 21st chapter omitted from early U.S. editions?

According to Burgess in his introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked", to the 1986 reprint of the book, the New York Publisher insisted on removing the 21st chapter. Burgess says that he needed the money and he didn't think the book would be published by anyone else so he accepted the change. "But my New York publisher believed that my twenty-first chapter was a sellout. It was veddy veddy British, don't you know. It was bland and showed a Pelagian unwillingness to accept that a human being could be a model of unregenerable evil. The Americans, he said in effect, were tougher than the British and could face up to reality." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 167.206.235.5 (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Literary significance

Yes, not sure how else to do this considering that I have not ever edited or such before but would like to add that this section needs expanding. There doen't seem to be much actual discussion on the significance part from the invention of a subcultural register. Would like to know how it was recieved and perhaps the main themes of the book. Thanks

[edit] A recent addition to the article

I've removed the following:

"As the colour orange can be a symbol for protestantism, the title may be making a specific statement about British Christians or British Christianity."

Errr...I thought Burgess got the "orange" bit from the Cockney phrase (earlier in the paragraph) and even if he did get it from the colour, there is only a very vague link between the colour and Protestantism. It reeks of OR and it's very worrying to connect Protestantism with a film about "rape and ultra-violence" without citing any sources. And why are all British (and why only British) Christians (including Roman Catholics) involved? It makes no sense. - THE GREAT GAVINI {T-C} 10:25, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Dystopian"

I observe that the novel is described in the opening paragraph as "dystopian", but I struggle to match it against the definition of dystopia in Wikipedia. Does anyone have any view on this? Do critics class it as such? (Original arguments from editors aren't what matters, I think, it's critical appraisal or other references) Notinasnaid 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)



I believe that it is dystopian, especially by the Wikepedia article's definition.

A dystopia is usually characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government, or some other kind of oppressive social control.

Several elements in the novel contribute to the theme that this futuristic London belongs to a socialist government that is heading in the direction of totalitarianism (i.e. the law that every able bodied person must work, "Statemart" or "Statefilm," as well as "Municipal Power Plant," the Government's arrest of political opponents, control of media, etc) Casey.Kitty 19:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander

Why does it say the authors name is F. D. Alexander. I have a copy of the book with me and it is F. Alexander. Where has the D come from?

Also, it is definitley a Dystoptian novel.


I also own the book and have read it several times and I do not recall nor could I find "F. D. Alexander" anywhere in the book. Maybe somebody got confused (F. Alexander's friends have names such as Z. Dolin and D. B. da Silva). It should probably be edited though. Casey.Kitty 19:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] brain tumour

I removed this from the article:

It is one of Burgess's 'terminal novels', written to provide posthumous income for his wife after Burgess was allegedly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.

this is contradicted by Anthony Burgess:

There were reports that he had been diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour, with the likelihood of only surviving a short time, occasioning the alleged breakdown. These turned out to be inaccurate.

bogdan 20:53, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

I reworded the section on comparison to The Warriors, but frankly I'm not sure there's much point in it being there. MKV 03:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

A few fans of both The Warriors and this piece would argue that Alex's gang is actually part Baseball Furies and part Hi-Hats, the gang seen in the beginning that looks a fair bit like mimes. One way or the other, it's fair to say that Kubrick's work greatly inspired The Warriors.--207.218.96.3 15:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too much plot detail?

I have a suspicion that Wikipedia articles tend to attract too much plot detail for their own good. That is, the presence of a plot summary tends to attract more people who "can add something" and add another detail, until any encyclopedic value of the summary is swamped like a high school book report with detail. Things like " sleeps until he is woken by Dr. P. R. Deltoid, his post-correctional advisor, whom he then has a conversation with." I propose radical surgery on the plot to reduce it to the relevant points. This might also reduce the constant need to pick out contributions from people who have confused film and book. Any thoughts?

No comments? Shall I reduce the plot summary to a shell? Notinasnaid 20:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Literary significance and Nasdat

Two points here: first, it seems to me this section should be named "Nasdat" as that is the only topic covered in the section.

Secondly, the theories put forth about Bugress' invention and use of Nasdat seem to be either "original research" (and hence should be removed), or require citations. Is it true that Burgess used Nasdat to avoid the book getting dated? Or that he wanted to distance readers from the violence by using a "linguistic veil?" Neither argument seems compelling to me, but regardless of my opinion, they are opinions (original research), in need of citation, or striking.

This slavic connections seems stupid to me, so what if some names could be russian WHO CARES, people dont read these articles to find out if dim could be a russian name shortened. im deleting it from the article. Mackinaw 22:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References to other works

I have spent a great deal of time analyzing this book and i have read and edited the article, but what I really want to know is why is there no section on references to other literary works? I mean, while reading it i picked up several parallels to fight scenes in Shakespeare and references to Greek mythology. Am I the only one who noticed? NargleFishHat 22:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it isn't really about what you or I noticed. What did critics and literary analysts notice? Everything in the article should be from a reliable source; Wikipedia's editors shouldn't be seeking or finding stuff in the text. At least, that's my interpretation of the Wikipedia:No original research policy. Notinasnaid 23:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, I understand that, but i spoke with one of my teachers and he said that it was an important part of the novel, and that Wikipedia should have them listed. I tragically am too dumb to recognize all of them to make an accurate listing or even suggest adding the topic, the discussion page is fine with me. 71.113.44.5 05:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

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