A Clockwork Orange

This article is about the novel. For the film, see A Clockwork Orange (film). For other uses, see A Clockwork Orange (disambiguation).
A Clockwork Orange

Dust jacket from the first edition
Author Anthony Burgess
Country United Kingdom
Language English/Nadsat
Genre Science fiction, Novella, Satire, Dystopian fiction
Published 1962 (William Heinemann, UK)
Media type Print (hardback & paperback) & audio book (cassette, CD)
Pages 192 pages (hardback edition) &
176 pages (paperback edition)
ISBN 0-434-09800-0
OCLC 4205836

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novel by Anthony Burgess published in 1962. Set in a near future English society that has a subculture of extreme youth violence, the novella has a teenage protagonist, Alex, who narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him.[1] When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novella asks, "At what cost?". The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat". According to Burgess it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.[2]

In 2005, A Clockwork Orange was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923,[3] and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[4] The original manuscript of the book has been located at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since the institution purchased the documents in 1971.[5]

Plot summary

Part 1: Alex's world

Alex, a teenager living in near-future dystopian England, leads his gang on a night of opportunistic, random "ultra-violence". Alex's friends ("droogs" in the novel's Anglo-Russian slang, 'Nadsat') are: Dim, a slow-witted bruiser who is the gang's muscle; Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command; and Pete, who mostly plays along as the droogs indulge their taste for ultra-violence. Characterized as a sociopath and a hardened juvenile delinquent, Alex also displays intelligence, quick wit, and a predilection for classical music; he is particularly fond of Beethoven, referred to as "Lovely Ludwig Van".

The novella begins with the droogs sitting in their favorite hangout (the Korova Milk Bar), drinking "milk-plus", a drink consisting of milk, prodded with the customer's choice of certain drugs, including "vellocet", "synthemesc", or "drencrom" (which is what Alex and his droogs were drinking, according to Alex's own first-person narration). This drug, referred to as "knives", would "sharpen you up", as it did for Alex, in preparation of the night's mayhem. They assault a scholar walking home from the public library, rob a store, leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, stomp a panhandling derelict, then scuffle with a rival gang. Joyriding through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and maul the young couple living there, beating the husband and raping his wife. In a metafictional touch, the husband is a writer working on a manuscript called "A Clockwork Orange," and Alex contemptuously reads out a paragraph that states the novel's main theme before shredding the manuscript. Back at the milk bar, Alex strikes Dim for his crude response to a woman's singing of an operatic passage, and strains within the gang become apparent. At home in his parents' dreary flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume while fantasizing about more orgiastic violence.

Alex skips school the next day. Following an unexpected visit from P. R. Deltoid, his "post-corrective advisor," Alex meets a pair of ten-year-old girls and takes them back to the flat, where he serves them scotch and soda, injects himself with hard drugs, and then rapes them. That evening, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a "man-sized" job. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting with Georgie, then in a show of generosity takes them to a bar, where Alex insists on following through on Georgie's idea to burgle the home of a wealthy old woman. Alex breaks in and knocks the woman unconscious, but when he opens the door to let the others in, Dim strikes him in payback for the earlier fight. The gang abandons Alex on the front step to be arrested by the police; while in their custody, he learns that the woman has died from her injuries.

Part 2: The Ludovico Technique

Alex is convicted of murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Two years into his sentence, he has obtained a job in one of the prison chapels playing religious music on the stereo to accompany the Sunday religious services. The chaplain mistakes Alex's Bible studies for stirrings of faith (Alex is actually reading Scripture for the violent passages). After Alex's fellow cellmates blame him for beating a troublesome cellmate to death, he is chosen to undergo an experimental behaviour-modification treatment called the Ludovico Technique in exchange for having the remainder of his sentence commuted. The technique is a form of aversion therapy in which Alex receives an injection that makes him feel sick while watching graphically violent films, eventually conditioning him to suffer crippling bouts of nausea at the mere thought of violence. As an unintended consequence, the soundtrack to one of the films, the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, renders Alex unable to enjoy his beloved classical music as before.

The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated to a group of VIPs, who watch as Alex collapses before a walloping bully, and abases himself before a scantily-clad young woman whose presence has aroused his predatory sexual inclinations. Although the prison chaplain accuses the state of stripping Alex of free will, the government officials on the scene are pleased with the results and Alex is released from prison.

Part 3: After prison

Since his parents are now renting his room to a lodger, Alex wanders the streets homeless. He enters a public library where he hopes to learn a painless way to commit suicide. There, he accidentally encounters the old scholar he assaulted earlier in the book, who, keen on revenge, beats Alex with the help of his friends. The policemen who come to Alex's rescue turn out to be none other than Dim and former gang rival Billyboy. The two policemen take Alex outside of town and beat him up. Dazed and bloodied, Alex collapses at the door of an isolated cottage, realizing too late that it is the house he and his droogs invaded in the first part of the story. Because the gang wore masks during the assault, the writer does not recognize Alex. The writer, whose name is revealed as F. Alexander, shelters Alex and questions him about the conditioning. During this sequence, it is revealed that Mrs. Alexander died of injuries inflicted during the gang-rape, while her husband has decided to continue living "where her fragrant memory persists" despite the horrid memories. Alex reveals in his description that he has been conditioned to feel intolerable deathly nausea on hearing certain classical music. Alexander, a critic of the government, intends to use Alex's therapy as a symbol of state brutality and thereby prevent the incumbent government from being re-elected, but a careless Alex soon inadvertently reveals that he was the ringleader during the night two years ago. Frightened for his own safety, Alex blurts out a confession to the writer's radical associates after they remove him from F. Alexander's home. Instead of protecting him, however, they imprison Alex in a dreary flat not far from his parents' residence. They pretend to leave, and then while he is sleeping in a locked bedroom subject him to a relentless barrage of classical music, prompting him to attempt suicide by leaping from a high window.

Alex wakes up in a hospital, where he is courted by government officials anxious to counter the bad publicity created by his suicide attempt. With Alexander placed in a mental institution, Alex is offered a well-paying job if he agrees to side with the government. As photographers snap pictures, Alex daydreams of orgiastic violence and reflects upon the news that his Ludovico conditioning has been reversed (through an unexplained process involving hypnopædia) as part of his recovery: "I was cured, all right".

In the final chapter, Alex finds himself half-heartedly preparing for yet another night of crime with a new trio of droogs. After a chance encounter with Pete, who has reformed and married, Alex finds himself taking less and less pleasure in acts of senseless violence. He begins contemplating giving up crime himself to become a productive member of society and start a family of his own, while reflecting on the notion that his own children will be just as destructive—if not more so—than he himself.

Omission of the final chapter

The book has three parts, each with seven chapters. Burgess has stated that the total of 21 chapters was an intentional nod to the age of 21 being recognised as a milestone in human maturation. The 21st chapter was omitted from the editions published in the United States prior to 1986.[6] In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that U.S. audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost all energy for and thrill from violence and resolves to turn his life around (a slow-ripening but classic moment of metanoia—the moment at which one's protagonist realises that everything he thought he knew was wrong).

At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed their editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the U.S. version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex succumbing to his violent, reckless nature—an ending which the publisher insisted would be 'more realistic' and appealing to a U.S. audience. The film adaptation, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is based on the American edition of the book (which Burgess considered to be "badly flawed"). Kubrick called Chapter 21 "an extra chapter" and claimed[7] that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, and that he had never given serious consideration to using it. In Kubrick's opinion, the final chapter was unconvincing and inconsistent with the book.

Characters

Analysis

Background

A Clockwork Orange was written in Hove, then a senescent seaside town.[9] Burgess had arrived back in Britain after his stint abroad to see that much had changed. A youth culture had grown, including coffee bars, pop music and teenage gangs.[10] England was gripped by fears over juvenile delinquency.[9] Burgess claimed that the novel's inspiration was his first wife Lynne's beating by a gang of drunk American servicemen stationed in England during World War II. She subsequently miscarried.[9][11] In its investigation of free will, the book's target is ostensibly the concept of behaviourism, pioneered by such figures as B. F. Skinner.[12]

Burgess later stated that he wrote the book in three weeks.[9]

Title

Burgess gave three possible origins for the title:

In his essay, "Clockwork Oranges," 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 positively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will. To induce this conditioning, the protagonist is subjected to a technique in which violent scenes displayed on screen, which he is forced to watch, are systematically paired with negative stimulation in the form of nausea and "feelings of terror" caused by an emetic medicine administered just before the presentation of the films.

Point of view

A Clockwork Orange is written using a narrative first-person singular perspective of a seemingly biased and unreliable narrator. The protagonist, Alex, never justifies his actions in the narration, giving a sense that he is somewhat sincere; a narrator who, as unlikeable as he may attempt to seem, evokes pity from the reader by telling of his unending suffering, and later through his realisation that the 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.

Use of slang

Main article: Nadsat

The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang argot which Burgess invented for the book, called Nadsat. It is a mix of modified Slavic words, rhyming slang, derived Russian (like baboochka), and words invented by Burgess himself. For instance, these terms have the following meanings in Nadsat: droog = friend; korova = cow; gulliver ("golova") = head; malchick or malchickiwick = boy; soomka = sack or bag; Bog = God; khorosho ("horrosho") = good; prestoopnick = criminal; rooka ("rooker") = hand; cal = crap; veck ("chelloveck") = man or guy; litso = face; malenky = little; and so on. Compare Polari.

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." Some words are not derived from anything, but merely easy to guess, e.g. "in-out, in-out" or "the old in-out" means sexual intercourse. Cutter, however, means "money," because "cutter" rhymes with "bread-and-butter"; this is rhyming slang, which is intended to be impenetrable to outsiders (especially eavesdropping policemen). Additionally, slang like appypolly loggy ("apology") seems to derive from school boy slang. This reflects Alex's age of 15.

In the first edition of the book, no key was provided, and the reader was left to interpret the meaning from the context. In his appendix to the restored edition, Burgess explained that the slang would keep the book from seeming dated, and served to muffle "the raw response of pornography" from the acts of violence. Furthermore, in a work of literature where a form of brainwashing plays a role, the narrative itself brainwashes the reader into understanding Nadsat.

The term "ultraviolence," referring to excessive and/or unjustified violence, was coined by Burgess in the book, which includes the phrase "do the ultra-violent." The term's association with aesthetic violence has led to its use in the media.[16][17][18][19]

Banning and censorship history in the US

In 1976, A Clockwork Orange was removed from an Aurora, Colorado high school because of "objectionable language". A year later in 1977 it was removed from high school classrooms in Westport, Massachusetts over similar concerns with "objectionable" language. In 1982, it was removed from two Anniston, Alabama libraries, later to be reinstated on a restricted basis. Also, in 1973 a bookseller was arrested for selling the novel. Charges were later dropped.[20] However, each of these instances came after the release of Stanley Kubrick's popular 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, itself the subject of much controversy.

Writer's dismissal

Burgess in 1986

In 1985, Burgess published Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence, and while discussing Lady Chatterley's Lover in his biography, Burgess compared that novel's notoriety with A Clockwork Orange: "We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me until I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation, and the same may be said of Lawrence and Lady Chatterley's Lover."[21] Burgess also dismissed A Clockwork Orange as "too didactic to be artistic".[22]

Awards and nominations and rankings

A Clockwork Orange was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language books from 1923 to 2005.[24]

Adaptations

Stanley Kubrick film version's theatrical release poster by Bill Gold

The best known adaptation of the novella to other forms is the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex.[25]

A 1965 film by Andy Warhol entitled Vinyl was an adaptation of Burgess' novel.

In 1986 Burgess published a stage play titled A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music. The play includes songs, written by Burgess, that are inspired by Beethoven and Nadsat slang. [26]

In 1988, a German adaptation of A Clockwork Orange at the intimate theatre of Bad Godesberg featured a musical score by the German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen which, combined with orchestral clips of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and "other dirty melodies" (so stated by the subtitle), was released on the album Ein kleines bisschen Horrorschau. The track Hier kommt Alex became one of the band's signature songs.

Vanessa Claire Smith, Sterling Wolfe, Michael Holmes, and Ricky Coates in Brad Mays' multi-media stage production of A Clockwork Orange, 2003, Los Angeles. (photo: Peter Zuehlke)
Vanessa Claire Smith in Brad Mays' multi-media stage production of A Clockwork Orange, 2003, Los Angeles. (photo: Peter Zuehlke)

In February 1990, another musical version was produced at the Barbican Theatre in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Titled A Clockwork Orange: 2004, it received mostly negative reviews, with John Peter of The Sunday Times of London calling it "only an intellectual Rocky Horror Show," and John Gross of The Sunday Telegraph calling it "a clockwork lemon." Even Burgess himself, who wrote the script based on his novel, was disappointed. According to The Evening Standard, he called the score, written by Bono and The Edge of the rock group U2, "neo-wallpaper." Burgess had originally worked alongside the director of the production, Ron Daniels, and envisioned a musical score that was entirely classical. Unhappy with the decision to abandon that score, he heavily criticised the band's experimental mix of hip hop, liturgical and gothic music. Lise Hand of The Irish Independent reported The Edge as saying that Burgess' original conception was "a score written by a novelist rather than a songwriter." Calling it "meaningless glitz," Jane Edwardes of 20/20 Magazine said that watching this production was "like being invited to an expensive French Restaurant - and being served with a Big Mac."

In 1994, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater put on a production of A Clockwork Orange directed by Terry Kinney. The American premiere of novelist Anthony Burgess' own adaptation of his A Clockwork Orange starred K. Todd Freeman as Alex. In 2001, UNI Theatre (Mississauga, Ontario) presented the Canadian premiere of the play under the direction of Terry Costa.[27]

In 2002, Godlight Theatre Company presented the New York Premiere adaptation of A Clockwork Orange at Manhattan Theatre Source. The production went on to play at the SoHo Playhouse (2002), Ensemble Studio Theatre (2004), 59E59 Theaters (2005) and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2005). While at Edinburgh, the production received rave reviews from the press while playing to sold-out audiences. The production was directed by Godlight's Artistic Director, Joe Tantalo.

In 2003, Los Angeles director Brad Mays[28] and the ARK Theatre Company[29] staged a multi-media adaptation of A Clockwork Orange,[30][31] which was named "Pick Of The Week" by the LA Weekly and nominated for three of the 2004 LA Weekly Theater Awards: Direction, Revival Production (of a 20th-century work), and Leading Female Performance.[32] Vanessa Claire Smith won Best Actress for her gender-bending portrayal of Alex, the music-loving teenage sociopath.[33] This production utilised three separate video streams outputted to seven onstage video monitors - six 19-inch and one 40-inch. In order to preserve the first-person narrative of the book, a pre-recorded video stream of Alex, "your humble narrator," was projected onto the 40-inch monitor,[34] thereby freeing the onstage character during passages which would have been awkward or impossible to sustain in the breaking of the fourth wall.[35]

Release details

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Books of The Times". The New York Times. 19 March 1963.
  2. ↑ "A Clockwork Orange - The book versus the Film". Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Grossman, Lev; Lacayo, Richard (16 October 2005). "All-Time 100 Novels: The Complete List". Time.
  4. ↑ "100 Best Novels". Modern Library. Retrieved 31 October 2012
  5. ↑ Humphreys, Adrian (11 November 2012). "A clockwork original: McMaster University bought manuscript of iconic novel for $250". National Post. Retrieved 13 November 2012.
  6. ↑ Burgess, Anthony (1986) A Clockwork Orange Resucked in A Clockwork Orange, W. W. Norton & Company, New York.
  7. ↑ "The Kubrick Site: Kubrick's comments regarding 'A Clockwork Orange'". Visual-memory.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  8. ↑ A Clockwork Orange Resucked. The Floating Library. Retrieved on 2013-10-31.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Ahmed, Samira (3 July 2012). A Clockwork Orange - interview with Will Self. (Interview). Nightwaves. BBC.
  10. ↑ A Clockwork Orange (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback) by Anthony Burgess, Blake Morrison xv
  11. ↑ Burgess, A. A Clockwork Orange, Penguin UK, 2011, introduction by Blake Morrison, page 17 : « his first wife, Lynne, was beaten, kicked and robbed in London by a gang of four GI deserters ».
  12. ↑ A Clockwork Orange (Paperback) by Anthony Burgess, Will Self
  13. ↑ An examination of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange Camera Three: Creative Arts Television, 2010-08-04. (Video)
  14. ↑ Clockwork Orange: A review with William Everson. Retrieved: 2012-03-11.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Dexter, Gary (2008). Why Not Catch-21?: The Stories Behind the Titles. Frances Lincoln Ltd. pp. 200–203. ISBN 0-7112-2925-2.
  16. ↑ AFP (29 October 2007). "Gruesome 'Saw 4' slashes through North American box-office". Archived from the original on 16 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
  17. ↑ "Q&A With 'Hostel' Director Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino - New York Magazine". Archived from the original on 9 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
  18. ↑ "ADV Announces New Gantz Collection, Final Guyver & More: Nov 6 Releases". Archived from the original on 5 February 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
  19. ↑ CBS News (30 October 2007). ""Manhunt 2": Most Violent Game Yet?, Critics Say New Video Game Is Too Realistic; Players Must Torture, Kill - CBS News". Archived from the original on 2 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
  20. ↑ "Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century". American Library Association, 29 March 2007. (Accessed 24 April 2012)Document ID: a6b9d0cb-cf04-dcc4-e1b3-acda735f48bd
  21. ↑ Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann, London 1985) Anthony Burgess, p 205
  22. ↑ A Clockwork Orange (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback) by Anthony Burgess, Blake Morrison xxii
  23. ↑ "Libertarian Futurist Society". Lfs.org. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  24. ↑ "The Complete List | TIME Magazine — ALL-TIME 100 Novels". Time magazine. 16 October 2005. Archived from the original on 19 August 2007. Retrieved 20 August 2007.
  25. ↑ Canby, Vincent (20 December 1971). "A Clockwork Orange (1971) 'A Clockwork Orange' Dazzles the Senses and Mind". The New York Times.
  26. ↑ "A Clockwork Orange on Stage". anthonyburgess.org. International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
  27. ↑ "Mirateca Arts". Mirateca.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  28. ↑ "Brad Mays". Brad Mays. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  29. ↑ "Ark Theatre". Ark Theatre. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  30. ↑ "Production Photos from ''A Clockwork Orange,'' 2003, ARK Theatre Company, directed by Brad Mays". Bradmays.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  31. ↑ Kavner, Lucas (20 July 2011). "'A Clockwork Orange' Songs To Be Performed For First Time In History". Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2011-11-28.
  32. ↑ A A A Comments (0) Thursday, Feb 12 2004 (12 February 2004). "LA Weekly Theatre Awards Nominations ''A Clockwork Orange'' - nominations for "Best Revival Production," "Best Leading Female Performance," "Best Direction"". Laweekly.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  33. ↑ A A A Comments (0) Thursday, Apr 29 2004 (29 April 2004). "LA Weekly Theatre Awards ''A Clockwork Orange'' - Vanessa Claire Smith wins for "Best Leading Female Performance"". Laweekly.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  34. ↑ "Brad Mays (image)". Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  35. ↑ "Brad Mays Gallery: A Clockwork Orange". Bradmays.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.
  36. ↑ "A Clockwork Orange | W. W. Norton & Company". Books.wwnorton.com. Retrieved 2014-01-03.

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: A Clockwork Orange
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Comparisons with the Kubrick film adaptation