A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
1962

Introduction

Published in 1962, Anthony Burgess's A Clock-work Orange is set in the future and narrated by fifteen-year-old Alex in Nadsat—a language invented by Burgess and comprised of bits of Russian, English, and American slang, rhyming words, and "gypsy talk". The British edition of the novel contains three sections divided into seven chapters, for a total of twenty-one chapters, the number symbolizing adulthood. The original American edition, however, contains only twenty chapters, as the publisher cut the last chapter because he felt it was too sentimental. A new American edition came out in 1987 with the expunged chapter restored. Although Burgess claimed that the book is neither his favorite nor his best, A Clockwork Orange helped to establish his international reputation, owing largely to Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of it in 1971. The novel's title alludes to the Cockney saying, "as queer as a clockwork orange," which means that something can appear to be natural, but on the inside it is actually artificial. Burgess's novel explores issues such as the relation between evil and free will, and the state's role in human affairs.

Burgess, a self-avowed anarchist, visited Leningrad (in what was then the Soviet Union) in 1961 and was appalled at the degree to which the communist state controlled people's lives. He based the character of Alex and his band of thugs ("droogs" in Nadsat) on Russian and British gangs of the 1950s and 1960s. The Russian stilyaqi, or style-boys, reminded Burgess of the teddy boys, a macho British youth subculture. "Inspiration" for a violent scene in the novel stems from an incident in 1943 when a group of AWOL (absent without leave) American soldiers attacked and raped Burgess's then-pregnant wife, Llewela Isherwood Jones, in London, killing their unborn child. Though his wife died more than two decades later, Burgess attributed her subsequent alcoholism and death from cirrhosis of the liver to that incident.

Author Biography

John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born in 1917 in Manchester, England, to Joseph, a cashier and pub pianist, and Elizabeth (Burgess) Wilson. His mother and sister died of the flu in 1919, and Burgess was raised by a maternal aunt, and later by his stepmother. He studied in England at Xaverian College and Manchester University, from where he graduated in 1940 with a degree in English language and literature, though his chief passion was music. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, Burgess pursued a career in education, teaching at Birmingham University and Banbury Grammar School and working for the Ministry of Education.

In 1959, while an education officer in Brunei, Borneo, doctors diagnosed Burgess with a cerebral tumor, giving him a year to live. It was then he began writing in earnest, steadily turning out novels, columns, and reviews. He dropped his first and last names because he felt it was inappropriate for a member of the British Colonial Service to publish under his own name. Burgess did not die within the year, and continued writing at a torrid pace, churning out eleven novels between 1960 and 1964 alone.

In 1962 Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange was published, a satirical work detailing the violent exploits of a futuristic teenage gang and its Beethoven-loving leader, Alex. The novel satirizes psychologist B. F. Skinner's theories of human behavior and the welfare state. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the novel into a feature film in 1971 won Burgess numerous new readers and secured the novel's reputation as one of the most controversial in English literature. Unfortunately for Burgess, because he was financially strapped, he had sold the film rights to A Clock-work Orange for just $500 (U.S.) and received less than $3,000 (U.S.) in payments after the film's release.

Burgess edited and published numerous books after A Clockwork Orange including novels, screenplays, autobiographies, critical studies, documentaries, and an opera. None of them ever achieved the degree of notoriety that A Clockwork Orange received. These works include The Novel Today (1963); The Eve of Saint Venus (1964); Language Made Plain (1964); Here Comes Everybody: A Study of James Joyce's Fiction (1965); Tremor of Intent (1966); The Novel Now (1967); Earthly Powers (1980), winner of the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in 1981; Enderby's Dark Lady (1984); and his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God (1986). Burgess's last novel, Byrne: A Novel, written in ottava rima (a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse with a rhyme scheme of abababcc), was published posthumously in 1995.

Almost all of Burgess's novels explore the conflicts between good and evil, the spirit and the flesh. Born a Catholic in Protestant England, Burgess believed that although people are born depraved, they retain the capacity to choose, and it is this capacity that makes human beings human. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Burgess died of cancer in London, England, in 1993.

Plot Summary

First Section

A Clockwork Orange opens with Alex, the main character of the novel, and his droogs, Dim, Pete, and Georgie, drinking drug-laced milk at the Korova Milkbar. After leaving the Milkbar, the four commit what is to be the first in a string of "ultraviolent" acts, savagely beating up an old man carrying library books and destroying his books. Next, the group comes across a rival gang in a warehouse. Billyboy, the leader, and his five droogs are raping a young devotchka (girl), and Alex's crew attacks them, beating them back until the millicents (police) arrive.

Alex and his gang next come to a house with the word "HOME" on the front gate. This marks a turn in the novel towards the fabular (fantastical), and away from the realistic. After telling the woman answering the door that his friend is sick and he needs to use her phone, Alex breaks into the house with his gang, now wearing masks. They viciously beat the woman's husband and pillage the house, then gang rape the woman. The man, F. Alexander, is a writer working on a book called A Clockwork Orange, which Alex calls a "gloopy" title. The book critiques the welfare state and government oppression of civil liberties. The droogs destroy the book. (This scene echoes an event from 1943 in Burgess's own life, when his wife was raped and brutalized by a gang of American soldiers.)

After returning to the Milkbar, Alex hits Dim for ridiculing a woman singing opera at the bar. Georgie and Pete side with Dim, Pete remarking, "If the truth is known, Alex, you shouldn't have given old Dim that uncalled-for tolchock [blow] … if it had been me you'd given it to you'd have to answer." Alex returns to his parents' flat and falls asleep masturbating while listening to Beethoven. In the morning, his Post-Corrective Advisor, P. R. Deltoid, visits him, warning Alex that one day the police will catch him if he continues with his antics. After Deltoid leaves, Alex visits a music store, where he picks up two ten-year-old girls, brings them back to his apartment, plies them with liquor, and rapes them.

At the Milkbar, Pete, Georgie, and Dim convince Alex that they need to rob a larger house. Alex goes along with the plan, to show he is a good "brother" and leader. That night, they break into the house of an elderly wealthy woman who is feeding her cats. She fights with Alex, and he knocks her out with one of her statues. When Alex tries to escape after hearing the police sirens, Dim hits him with his chain, knocking him out. The police arrive and arrest Alex, as Georgie, Pete, and Dim abandon him. The police take him to a cell, where he is visited by Deltoid, who spits in his face. Alex later learns that the old woman he fought with has died of a heart attack. "That was everything," Alex says. "I'd done the lot, now. And me still only fifteen."

Media Adaptations

• A Clockwork Orange (1971) was adapted as a film by director Stanley Kubrick and stars Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Aubrey Morris, and James Marcus. It is available in both VHS and DVD format.
• Harper Audio publishes an audiocassette of Burgess reading from A Clockwork Orange.

Second Section

The second section, chapters eight through fourteen, describes Alex's life in the "staja" (state penitentiary), after he is sentenced to fourteen years there. A model prisoner—despite killing a fellow prisoner who had been making sexual advances towards him—Alex makes fast friends with the chaplain, who allows him to listen to classical music on the chapel stereo. Prison officials and the Minister of the Interior offer Alex the opportunity to undergo Ludovico's Technique, an experimental treatment that guarantees his release from prison and ensures he will never return, and Alex agrees. Burgess models the idea of Ludovico's Technique on the work of B. F. Skinner. Skinner, a mid-twentieth-century behavioral psychologist, wanted to build a society based on a system of rewards and punishments. He believed that human behavior could be conditioned, once people learned to associate "good" behavior with the pleasure of the reward they received for it, and associate "bad" behavior with the pain of punishment. These methods were used for a time on juvenile delinquents and retarded children. Skinner outlines his ideas in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

For two weeks, Alex is given injections of a drug that makes him physically ill whenever he witnesses violent acts. His eyelids clamped open, Alex is forced to watch films packed with scenes of torture, rape, and beating. After being shown a film detailing Nazi atrocities from World War II, with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as its sound track, Alex develops an aversion to both violence and Beethoven, whose music he loves. At the conclusion of the treatment, Alex is paraded before a panel of prison and state officials, during which time he grovels in front of a tormentor taunting him to fight and is sickened by his own lustful response to a beautiful woman. Alex has been stripped of free will to choose his actions, and Dr. Brodsky pronounces him fit for release from prison.

Third Section

In the third section, Alex becomes a victim. In his absence, Alex's parents have taken a boarder, Joe, so Alex is forced to the streets, where he encounters the people he victimized in the first section. He is being beaten by a group of old men in the Public Biblio (library), one of whom Alex and his gang had beaten before. Alex is then "rescued" by three policemen, two of whom turn out to be Billy boy and Dim. The government had recruited the two in its efforts to use society's criminal elements for its own repressive purposes. Billy boy and Dim take Alex out to the country, beat him, and leave him for dead. Alex then wanders through a village and comes upon the house with "HOME" written on the gate. F. Alexander, the writer beaten by Alex earlier, recognizes Alex from the newspaper and takes him in, planning to use him in a campaign to "dislodge this overbearing government."

While Alexander and his liberal friends brainstorm how to use Alex as an example of government repression, the writer recognizes Alex as the person who beat him up and raped his wife a few years ago. With his friends' help, Alexander locks Alex in an apartment and plays classical music, Otto Skadelig's Symphony Number Three, driving Alex into a suicidal frenzy because of the sickness and pain he feels listening to the music. Alex jumps out the window, but does not die. He awakens in the hospital, his love for violence restored. Mean-while, the Minister of the Interior visits Alex, telling him that Alexander and his friends have been imprisoned, and offering Alex a well-paying job in exchange for his support of the government.

In the last chapter, Alex is back at the Korova Milkbar, this time with a new group of droogs, who resemble the old group. Although they engage in ultraviolent acts, Alex says that he mostly gives orders and watches. He is "old" now, eighteen. He meets one of his former gang members, Pete, who is married and works for an insurance company, and Alex begins to fantasize about also being married and having children. "Youth must go, ah yes," he says. "But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal."

Characters

Alex

Alex is the fifteen-year-old narrator and protagonist of the novel. Like his "droogs," Dim, Georgie, and Pete, he speaks in Nadsat. He is witty, charming, intelligent, violent, sadistic, and totally without remorse for his actions. He leads his gang on crime sprees, raping, beating, and pillaging, and becomes upset when his gang does not engage in their crimes with style. Alex's love of music, particularly Beethoven, marks him as an aesthete, and this attitude carries over to the way he "performs" his violent acts, often dancing. His attitude towards others is primarily ironic; he calls his victims "brother" and speaks as if with a perpetual smirk. The extent of Alex's evil nature is evident in his fantasies. For example, he dreams about nailing Jesus to the cross. Authorities are perplexed as to how Alex became the way he is. His guidance counselor, P. R. Deltoid, asks him, "You've got a good home here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside you?" Alex remains his evil self, even after two years in prison and Ludovico's Technique, though he behaves differently. In the last chapter, however, Alex matures and begins to weary of his violent ways, fantasizing about having a wife and children. Burgess notes that among other things, Alex's name suggests nobleness, Alexander meaning "leader of men."

F. Alexander

F. Alexander—whom Alex describes as "youngish" and with horn-rimmed glasses the first time he sees him, and "a shortish veck in middle age, thirty, forty, fifty" the second time he sees him—is a liberal and a writer, outraged at the government's repression of individual liberties. Ironically, he is writing a book called A Clockwork Or-ange, which addresses "[t]he attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness … laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation." In the novel's first section, Alex breaks into Alexander's house, where he and his gang beat him and viciously rape his wife. Beaten almost to death by Billyboy and Georgie in the third section, Alex winds up back at Alexander's house. At first, Alexander wants to use Alex as an example of the government's repressive policies, and he befriends Alex, who considers him "kind protecting and like motherly." However, when Alexander realizes that Alex is the person responsible for beating him and raping his wife a few years past, he plots revenge. Along with his liberal friends, Alexander locks Alex up in an apartment, and plays classical music loudly on the stereo. Alex, who has been conditioned by Ludovico's Technique to become violently ill when hearing the music, attempts suicide by jumping out a window. He wakes up in the hospital badly injured. The suicide attempt leads government scientists to remove Ludovico's clockwork from Alex's brain. In an ironic reversal, F. Alexander is himself imprisoned for his actions and Alex is made a hero.

Alex's Parents

Alex's parents, whom Alex sometimes refers to as "pee and em," are passive though decent people. They behave in loving, if stereotypical, ways. His mother, for example, prepares meals for him to have when he returns from his adventures. They are afraid of Alex, though, and show no interest in knowing what he really does when he goes out with his friends. Although they do not take him back when he is released from prison, their interest in Alex returns after his suicide attempt and after the newspapers run stories about how he is a victim of government repression.

Billyboy

Billyboy leads a rival gang with whom Alex and his droogs battle. In the first section, when Alex, Dim, Georgie, and Pete come across Billy-boy and his thugs attempting to rape a young girl in a warehouse, Alex's gang routs them. Billyboy's ugliness upsets Alex's aesthetic sensibility. Alex says of him: "Billyboy was something that made me want to sick just to viddy [see] his fat grinning litso [face]." In their new capacity as police, Billy-boy and Georgie beat up Alex after he is released from prison and leave him for dead.

Dr. Branom

Dr. Branom works with Dr. Brodsky to rid Alex of his free will and humanity through Ludovico's Technique. He is friendly but insincere.

Dr. Brodsky

Dr. Brodsky is the psychologist in charge of administering Ludovico's Technique on Alex. He is a hypocrite and in many ways morally worse than Alex. He is a philistine of sorts, knowing nothing about music, which is, for Burgess, a "figure of celestial bliss." Materialist and scientist that he is, Brodsky considers music merely an "emotional heightener." He plainly takes pleasure in Alex's misery, laughing at the pain he experiences during the treatment. Before Alex is released from prison, Brodsky demonstrates to state and prison officials how Ludovico's Technique has turned Alex into a "true Christian."

D. B. daSilva

DaSilva is one of F. Alexander's liberal friends who helps him with Alex in the book's third section. Alex describes him as having effeminate behavior and a strong scent (aftershave or body odor).

P. R. Deltoid

Deltoid is Alex's state-appointed "Post-Corrective Advisor." He visits Alex after his night of ultraviolence in the novel's first section. Alex describes him as overworked and wearing a "filthy raincoat." Deltoid cannot understand why Alex, with a good home and parents, has turned out to be a juvenile delinquent. He visits Alex in jail and contemptuously spits in his face.

Dim

Dim is one of Alex's droogs. He is loud, brutish, stupid, and irritates Alex with his crassness and vulgarity. When Dim insults a woman singing opera at the Korova Milkbar, Alex punches him in the mouth, triggering the gang's resentment against Alex's tyrannical leadership. Alex also fights Dim the next day, cutting his wrist with a knife to show the gang that he is still the leader. By the novel's third section, Dim has joined the police force, along with Billyboy. The two of them rescue Alex, who is being attacked by a gang of old men, and take Alex to the country, where they beat him up and leave him for dead. As Burgess's characters are composites of Anglo and Russian youth culture, Dim could be read as an abbreviation for the Russian name, Dimitri.

Z. Dolin

Z. Dolin is one of F. Alexander's liberal friends who helps him with Alex in the novel's third section. Alex describes him as "a very wheezy smoky kind of veck" who is fat and sloppy, wears thick glasses, and chain smokes.

Georgie

Georgie is one of Alex's droogs, and second-in-charge. He attempts to take over the gang after Dim rebels against Alex at the Korova Milkbar, and leads the mutiny resulting in Alex's arrest at the end of the book's first section. More interested in money than violence per se, Georgie dies after being hit on the head by a man he and his droogs terrorize while Alex is in prison.

Joe

Joe is the boarder Alex's parents take in when Alex is sent to jail. Alex describes him as "a working-man type veck, very ugly, about thirty or forty." Joe has become a kind of surrogate son to Alex's parents, and he almost comes to blows with Alex when Alex comes home to see him eating eggs and toast with his parents.

Marty

Marty is one of the two ten-year-old girls that Alex picks up at the music store, plies with liquor, and rapes. He calls them "sophistos," meaning they are pretentious and try to act like adults. When the girls come to their senses and discover what Alex has done to them, they call him a "[b]east and hateful animal."

Minister of the Interior

The Minister of the Interior is a manipulative politician who symbolizes governmental repression and mindless bureaucracy. He chooses Alex—who refers to him as the "Minister of the Interior Inferior"—as a guinea pig for Ludovico's Technique, believing the treatment has the possibility to rid the country of undesirable elements. He turns Alex's attempted suicide to his favor by imprisoning F. Alexander, whom he describes as a "writer of subversive literature," and tricking Alex into a photo opportunity with him while Alex is still in the hospital. He wins Alex's favor by offering him a government job, a new stereo, and by playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for him.

Pete

Pete is the quietest of Alex's droogs, and the least questioning of his authority. In the last chapter, Alex runs into Pete and his wife. Pete now works for an insurance company and goes to harmless wine and scrabble parties at night, having given up his criminal ways. He represents maturity, and after seeing him, Alex begins thinking of marrying and settling down.

Prison Chaplain

The chaplain, a careerist and an alcoholic, befriends Alex in prison, permitting him to pick the music for services and listen to the stereo in chapel while reading the Bible. The chaplain finally speaks out against Ludovico's Technique when Alex is about to be released, arguing that human beings should be able to choose their actions. He is the character perhaps closest to Burgess's own philosophical position in the novel, and demonstrates this when he asks Alex, "What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?" Alex, however, is clueless, and wants nothing more than to be released from prison. When the chaplain speaks out against the treatment in front of prison and state officials, he jeopardizes his own career.

Rex

Rex is a policeman and the driver who waits in the car, smoking and reading, while Billyboy and Dim beat Alex in the novel's third section.

Rubinstein

Rubinstein is one of F. Alexander's liberal friends who helps him with Alex in the third section of the novel. Alex describes him as "very tall and polite," and with an "eggy beard" (blonde).

Sonietta

Sonietta is one of the two ten-year-old girls that Alex rapes.

Themes

Free Will

A Clockwork Orange explores the ideas of good and evil by asking what it means to be human. Burgess asks and answers the question, "Is a man who has been forced to be good better than a man who chooses evil?" Alex chooses evil because it is in his nature to do so. His impulse towards good is artificial because it comes from outside of him, instilled by a government bent on controlling the populace by controlling their desires. By eliminating all of the bad in Alex through the Ludovico Technique, the government also eliminates that very thing that constitutes his humanity: his freedom to choose. They treat the symptom, not the cause of Alex's evil, oblivious of their own complicity in his behavior. For Burgess, an evil Alex is a human Alex and, hence, preferable to an Alex who has been programmed to deny his own nature. F. Alexander, the writer Alex and his droogs beat up, is one of the mouthpieces for this idea. At one point he says to Alex, "They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good." Later, he adds, "The essential intention [of the Ludovico Technique] is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man." The repetition of Alex's phrase "What's it going to be then, eh?" throughout the novel also underscores the theme of free will and individual choice.

Power

A Clockwork Orange pits the intrusive powers of the state against the liberties of the individual. Burgess looks at the relationship between the state and the individual in a society that has deteriorated and is on the brink of anarchy. Left to its own devices, the state will attempt to control the individual through regulation, law, and brute force. This is evident in the manner in which Alex is used by the state as an example of its power to "rehabilitate" criminals. Rather than rehabilitate them, they reprogram them, brainwashing them. The cynical power-mongering of the state is embodied in the character of the Minister of the Interior, who manipulates Alex first into "volunteering" for the Ludovico Technique, and then into siding with the government after Alex's suicide attempt and return to his evil nature. A society in which the state has so much power, Burgess suggests, is one in which individual liberties such as freedom of speech and expression are crushed.

Topics for Further Study

• The setting for Burgess's novel is a dystopian society. What are some of its dystopic elements? Does the United States share any of these elements? Are there ways in which the United States can be described as a dystopia? Provide examples.
• Burgess claimed that A Clockwork Orange emphasizes the idea that free will is a central ingredient of what it means to be human. Write an essay agreeing or disagreeing with this notion and provide support for your argument from the novel.
• With your classmates, make a list of all the crimes that Alex and his droogs commit, then assign appropriate punishment for each crime. Be as specific as possible. On which items do you disagree with others in your group? What does this say about your own ideas of justice and the role of society in punishing criminals?
• With members of your class, draw up a list of slang terms or other words you use that older generations would not recognize. To what degree does using these words define your interaction with friends?
• Research the punishment for first-degree murder in your state. If possible, would you recommend that convicted murderers be given the opportunity to undergo the Ludovico Technique in lieu of the state sentence for murder? Why or why not? Explain if there are certain conditions you would attach.
• Research cases of political scandal in your own city or state and describe how that scandal is represented in newspaper or television accounts. How did the accused characterize their situation or their attackers? What does this tell you about the role of media in shaping public opinion?
• The Korova Milkbar symbolizes the decadence of Burgess's society in the novel. Name an analogous institution that symbolizes twenty-first-century American values and support your claim.

Selfhood

To fully grasp the human condition, Burgess implies in A Clockwork Orange, individuals must both recognize and accept their evil nature and recognize how society attempts to stifle it. Although Alex does not seem to understand the implications of the Ludovico Technique when it is initially explained to him, he does have an understanding of his own nature and how society has helped to form it. At one point he waxes philosophical, expressing an understanding of his "essential" self:

More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies [lonesome], and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty [joy]. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they allow the self.

Alex knows he is evil, telling readers, "What I do I do because I like to do." The novel implies his degree of insight is greater than most people's insight. He accepts himself for who he is, rather than hiding behind illusions of what he should be according to others and the government. He experiences no guilt for his actions but embraces and revels in his evil side.

Morality

Burgess's moral universe in A Clockwork Orange, as in his other novels, can be described as a conflict between Augustinianism and Pelagianism. Augustinianism is derived from St. Augustine (354–430), who believed in humankind's innate depravity. Pelagianism is derived from Pelagius (c. 355–c. 425), whose doctrine held roughly that human beings were perfectible, and that evil was the result of superstition, social forces, the environment, and the like. In Burgess's novel, the government adhered to Pelagius-like thinking in that it tried to change human beings, to turn them away from their evil behavior through whatever means necessary. In Alex's case, it is the Ludovico Technique. Alex, who embraces his evil nature as if it were a second skin, chooses to be that way, but shows promise of choosing a different way in the book's final chapter, demonstrating that Burgess is not the consummate Augustinian that some critics have made him out to be. The tug between Augustinianism and Pelagianism creates the moral tension that sustains Alex's story, but it is a tension that remains largely unresolved.

Dystopia and Dystopian Ideas

A Clockwork Orange describes a dystopian society. The opposite of utopias, or ideal societies, dystopias are severely malfunctioning societies. Dystopian novels such as George Orwell's 1984 portray bleak landscapes, corrupt social institutions, and characters among whom trust or authentic communication is impossible. The Korova Milkbar, where fifteen-year-olds can drink druglaced milk, symbolizes the decadence of the novel's setting, as does the fact that Alex—a charming rapist, killer, and thief—is the most appealing character in the story. Dystopian novels have a rich history and include works such as Jonathan Swift's eighteenth-century classic, Gulliver's Travels. However, they became especially prevalent and popular after World War II, as people increasingly took a dim view of human nature and the possibility for social change. Twentieth-century dystopian works include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Style

Language

Nadsat, which means "teen" in Russian, is the language spoken in A Clockwork Orange. It is a mixture of Russian, English, and American slang, and rhyming words and phrases, with a touch of Shakespearean English. The singsong rhythm of the speech underscores the heavily stylized world of the novel and of Alex's own mind. Although many readers often initially struggle with understanding this slang of futuristic teenagers, they quickly pick up the speech patterns and the few hundred new words through the context in which they are used. By mirroring the violent acts the characters commit, Nadsat has a kind of onomatopoeic quality. That is, the words sound like the actions they describe. For example, "collocoll" means bell, and it also sounds like a bell ringing. Nadsat is also often highly metaphoric and ironic. The word "rabbit," for example, means to work, and the word "horrorshow" means beautiful. The former is metaphoric because working, for Alex, means engaging in meaningless and frenetic activity, which he associates with a rabbit's behavior. The latter is ironic because "horrorshow" suggests the opposite of what it means. Some of the words are just plain silly rhymes, reflecting a child's playful constructions. For example, "eggiwegg" for egg and "skolliwoll" for school.

Structure

The novel is divided into three sections of seven chapters each. In his introduction to the 1987 American edition of the novel, Burgess notes that "Novelists of my stamp are interested in what is called arithmology, meaning that [a] number has to mean something in human terms when they handle it." At twenty-one, citizens in Great Britain, the United States, and Russia can vote; the age sym-bolizes a mature human being. The novel is the story of one human being's growth into an adult, among other things.

Historical Context

1960s

In 1961, the year after Burgess had written his first draft of A Clockwork Orange, he and his wife took a trip to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in what was then the Soviet Union. During that trip, Burgess was appalled and intrigued by the roaming gangs of hoodlums he saw, called stilyaqi. Burgess noted how the police, preoccupied with ideological crimes against the state, had a difficult time controlling these unruly youths. He also noted the similarities of the Russian and British youth subcultures and was inspired to fashion a hooligan character who was a composite of the ways in which youth spoke, acted, and dressed in Russia and England.

Hence, Alex and his droogs—"droog" derived from the Russian word "drugi," which means "friends in violence." The stilyaqi, or style-boys, sprung up in Russia during the 1940s and were roughly contemporaneous with American beats. The stilyaqi listened to jazz and later to American rock and roll. The Soviet government considered them troublesome juveniles.

Compare & Contrast

• 1960s: Following years of heated protests and demonstrations, the United States passes the Civil Rights Act. The Act enforces the constitutional right to vote, guarantees relief against discrimination in public accommodations, and authorizes the Attorney General to initiate suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education.
  
  Today: Some states have enacted hate crime legislation, which penalizes criminals for committing crimes based on a person's race, sexuality, religion, gender, ancestry, or national origin.
• 1960s: The space race between the Soviet Union and the United States gathers momentum, as the Soviets send the first man into space to circle the earth, and the Americans land a man on the moon.
  
  Today: The space race of the 1960s has given way to international cooperation to explore the heavens. Led by the United States, the International Space Station draws upon the scientific and technological resources of sixteen nations: Canada, Japan, Russia, eleven nations of the European Space Agency, and Brazil. Launch of the space station is set for 2004.
• 1960s: The "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union causes each country to be deeply suspicious of the other.
  
  Today: After the Soviet Union's dissolution, relations between Russia and the United States become warmer and more productive.
• 1960s: The Beatles and the Rolling Stones gain international popularity and help shape the desires and tastes of youth culture.
  
  Today: The influence of rock and roll on contemporary youth is still strong, but other kinds of music such as techno, heavy metal, and world pop also exert strong influence.

The London youth subculture included groups known as teddyboys, mods, and rockers. Teddyboys emerged in the 1950s, as England was economically recovering from World War II and at the beginning of a consumer boom. Like many youth subcultures, they dressed to shock the status quo, wearing Edwardian-style drape jackets, suede Gibson shoes with thick crepe soles, narrow trousers, and loud ties. Like the greasers in movies such as American Graffitti, the teddyboys listened to rock and roll, fought rival gangs (often with razors and knives), and engaged in random vandalism. With the British popmusic boom of the 1960s, many teddyboys became rockers, wearing leather jackets, hanging out in working-class pubs, and riding motorcycles.

The mods, short for modernists, also emerged during the late 1950s in England. A more elitist group than the teddyboys, they wore their hair short; rode scooters; donned army anoraks; danced to groups such as the Creation, the Jam, and the Small Faces; and took amphetamines. The mods were sometimes referred to as "rude boys," and evolved into the "punks" and "skinheads" of the 1970s and later. For Burgess, however, being a mod, a stilyaqi, or a teddyboy, did not mean one practiced individual freedom. The trendy consumerism in which these group members engaged signaled a mindlessly slavish conformity.

Burgess also hated the control the state had over the individual, believing this control curtailed individual freedom. This state control was nowhere more evident than in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, where Burgess saw firsthand the extent to which the communist government regulated the individual's life. Burgess especially detested the way in which communism shifted moral responsibility from the individual to the state. Though Britain was and is a democratic government, by the 1950s the Labour Party had nationalized many industries including coal (1946), electricity (1947), and the railways (1948). Also, in 1946, the National Health Service was founded to take care of British citizens' medical needs. This welfare state was odious to Burgess, who believed that it put the needs of society over the freedom of the individual.

Critical Overview

When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, it had twenty-one chapters. Its American edition, however, was published with only twenty chapters a year later, the publisher W. W. Norton having removed the last chapter because they thought it was too sentimental. It was not until 1987 that American editions were published with the last chapter included. Of the controversy, Burgess writes in his essay "A Clockwork Orange Resucked," found in the 1987 edition: "My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it."

The reviews the novel received were generally favorable and emphasized both its thematic elements and its style. An anonymous reviewer for the New York Times calls the book "brilliant," and writes, "A Clockwork Orange is a tour-de-force in nastiness, an inventive primer in total violence, a savage satire on the distortions of the single and collective minds." The 1987 American edition carries a blurb from Time magazine which states, "Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker, but is really that rare thing in English letters—a philosophical novel."

The novel has received its share of attention from academic critics as well. John W. Tilton, writing in Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel, praises Burgess's use of Nadsat, saying that Burgess used it "[t]o assure the survival of the novel by creating a slang idiom for Alex that would not grow stale or outmoded as real slang does." In his study of Burgess's novels entitled The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess, critic Richard Mathews writes that "A Clockwork Orange is a masterpiece as both a novel and a film."

Comparing the kind of government in the novel to "a rotten mechanical fruit," Mathews argues that Alex's "disturbed spirit may somewhere awaken our sleeping moral sensibilities." Robert O. Evans, in his essay on Burgess in British Novelists since 1900, considers the work "an expression of disgust and revulsion about what has happened to society in our lifetimes." In her essay, "Linguistics, Mechanics, and Metaphysics: Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange," Esther Petix writes, "The reader is as much a flailing victim of the author as he is a victim of time's finite presence." Petix notes that, like Alex, the reader also comes of age in reading the book, and "is charged with advancement and growth."

Criticism

Chris Semansky

Semansky teaches literature and composition online. His essays, stories, and poems appear regularly in magazines and journals. In this essay, Semansky examines Burgess's narrative technique.

When we tell stories or listen to them, there is always a teller, someone describing the situation and relating the action, often commenting on it. When the person telling the story is also involved in the story, the teller is called a first-person narrator. When novelists use such narrators, they must choose between a first-person central narrator and a first-person peripheral narrator. Both use the first-person pronoun "I," but the latter involves a narrator who, although telling the story from his or her point of view, is a minor player in the events described, often an observer of things happening to others. A first-person central narrator, on the other hand, also involves a narrator who tells the story from his or her point of view, but who is a major player in them—that is, the narrator describes events directly related to him or her. In A Clockwork Orange, Burgess uses a first-person central narrator, Alex, who details his violent antisocial crimes in an often humorous and intimate manner. In so doing, Burgess creates sympathy for a character who in most ways is abominable.

Alex refers to himself as "your humble narrator" or "handsome young narrator," calling attention to the reader's role, as well as his own. Often Alex addresses readers, "Oh brother," or "Oh, my brothers," asking them to share in his own reaction to events as he recalls them. This technique draws readers into the story, lessening the emotional distance between themselves and Alex. In "A Clockwork Orange Resucked," Burgess's introduction to the 1987 American edition of the novel, Burgess writes that he wanted to "titillate the nastier propensities of my readers." He certainly succeeds, as readers are positioned as voyeurs to the lurid and violent acts detailed. In this way, they are both shocked and intrigued by Alex's brutality. This is the same kind of fascination that readers have when reading confessions of a serial killer, or other first-person true crime stories. But Alex's story is no confession; he does not seek forgiveness. Rather, he revels in his exploits and celebrates them, and if anything, is nostalgic at the end of the novel for his violent past and diminishing violent desires. He wants readers to share this sense of loss with him, hence his appeal to them throughout the book. Readers are "brothers" because Alex assumes that at some level they share his fascination with evil and their dark side, just as he does his own. Alex's apparent scrupulous honesty in relating his tale also appeals to readers, especially in comparison to other characters such as the Minister of the Interior and P. R. Deltoid, both of whom Alex represents as manipulative, deceitful, and oppressive. Alex appears to be honest because he relates things about himself that most people would feel uncomfortable or embarrassed doing.

Readers also sympathize with Alex when he returns home from prison only to be rejected by his parents, and when he is beaten by Dim and Billyboy and cannot defend himself because of his conditioned aversion to violence. Alex's honesty, his willingness to share the details of his crimes and his thinking surrounding those crimes, his emotional vulnerability, and his role as a victim of governmental oppression, however, do not make him a hero. Rather, he is a kind of antihero. In contrast to heroes—who, according to Aristotle, are of noble birth and intentions but have a tragic flaw—antiheroes are defined by their status as outsiders who often exist in an absurd or incomprehensible universe and feel defeated and trapped in their lives. Antiheroes live on the fringes of society and often come from poor or working-class backgrounds. Readers typically feel superior towards them. Oddly, the cartoon character Charlie Brown is a kind of antihero, as he is unloved and unwanted by his "friends," and dogged by bad luck. Arthur Miller's character Willy Loman, of Death of a Salesman, is another antihero, in that he lives an absurd existence and can find no meaning in his life. Even Jesus Christ can be seen as a kind of antihero, as he was an outsider who was beaten down and persecuted for beliefs he would not surrender. In his study of Burgess entitled Anthony Burgess, critic A. A. DeVitis notes that other characteristics of antiheroes can include the character's knowledge of his or her lack of opportunity, the character's self-pity, the presence of a large ego, and a will to dominate others. Often, the antihero cannot comprehend the nature of his rebellion and struggles.

Alex makes a compelling antihero. His will to dominate is evident in his control of his droogs, especially Dim and Georgie, and in his sexual domination of women such as F. Alexander's wife and the two ten-year-old girls he meets at the record store and rapes. His parents work in a factory, and he is sufficiently "bad" enough to warrant a post corrective advisor provided by the state. DeVitis notes that Burgess said of Alex, he "asks little from life … but society has so organized things that he cannot have even this little." This is what makes Alex appealing to readers. It is almost irrelevant that the little he does ask entails beating, raping, killing, and maiming others, because he proves himself human and vulnerable at the same time. Readers pity Alex, just as he pities himself, for his inability to fully be his evil, violent self after undergoing the Ludovico Technique. Burgess scholar John J. Stin-son offers another view for readers' reaction to Alex: his language. In Anthony Burgess Revisited, Stinson observes that because of Burgess's "linguistic inventiveness" with Nadsat, "Readers come to have ambivalent feelings only when their moral reactions, linguistically stupefied into unwatchful-ness, suddenly rouse themselves and come up panting indignantly." Stinson claims that the language acts as a kind of distancing device by which readers can shield themselves from the impact of so much violence. In a New York Times article titled "On the Hopelessness of Turning Good Books into Films," Burgess himself said, "It is as if we were trying to read about violence in a foreign language and finding its near-incomprehensibility getting in the way of a clear image."

In Anthony Burgess, Samuel Coale notes another way that Burgess has made Alex a sympathetic character: by giving him an artistic conciousness. Alex not only dresses sharply and describes his fights as if they were choreographed, but he also loves classical music, especially Beethoven. For many readers, this suggests that he cannot be all bad. Coale observes:

There are, then, at least two Alexes confronting the reader. Is he merely a clockwork automaton, a creature of his mechanized society, whose violence is merely an extension of his own boredom and sense of worthlessness? Or is he, in fact, better than his clockwork society, an artistic and intelligent person? His appreciation of music emphasizes this dichotomy.

Coale's quotation, however, tells us more about his own assumptions as to what makes a person "worthy" than it does about Alex's own actual worth. Alex is, in fact, both an effect of a "mechanized society" and "an artistic and intelligent person." But being artistic and intelligent does not in and of itself give a person worth. The flaw in Burgess's Manichean universe, and in Coale's reading of the apparent choice of Alexes the novel offers readers, is that a developed intellect and aesthetic sensibility are somehow valuable in them-selves, without any relation to their use. There can be no real criticism of the welfare state when there are no realistic people representing its values and ideals. In the end, Alex serves as an index of sorts for readers' own ideological leanings. Their responses to him will differ according to their politics, and to their own capacity to recognize the potential for evil in themselves.

Source: Chris Semansky, Critical Essay on A Clockwork Orange, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Rubin Rabinovitz

In the following essay, Rabinovitz examines ethical values in Burgess's Clockwork Orange.

In Anthony Burgess's most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, the most obvious clash of values is between the lawless hero and a society that hopes to control him. This struggle obscures another conflict which is nevertheless very important: the opposing views of libertarians and authoritarians on how best to provide social controls. The theme of libertarian-authoritarian opposition recurs throughout Burgess's novels, often as a conflict between points of view Burgess has called Pelagian and Augustinian. The best exposition of this idea is given by Tristram Foxe, the protagonist of Burgess's novel The Wanting Seed.

Foxe (who is a history teacher) explains that Pelagianism is named for Pelagius, a monk whose teachings were condemned by the church. Pelagius argued against the doctrine of original sin and advocated the idea of human perfectibility; hence he is the patron of libertarian societies. St. Augustine, a contemporary of Pelagius, reaffirmed the doctrine of original sin; human perfectibility, he said, was possible only with God's grace. Because grace is not universally granted, there must always be sin, war, crime, and hence the need for social controls. Augustine therefore emerges as patron of the authoritarians.

Burgess often presents social history as a cyclical alternation of Pelagian and Augustinian parties which oppose one another like yin and yang. With the Augustinians in power there is a period of social stability which comes as the result of a rigidly enforced authoritarian moral code. Such controls make it appear that the populace is inherently ethical and encourage a growing faith in human perfectibility; eventually the strictness of the Augustinians seems superfluous. The populace begins to demand more freedom, libertarian arguments gain credibility, and finally there is a transition to a Pelagian form of government.

The Pelagians fare no better. Their libertarianism gives way to permissiveness and then to an anarchic period of crime, strikes, and deteriorating public services. After a transitional phase, the popular outcry for more law and order heralds the rise of a new Augustinian party and the beginning of another cycle.

This issue comes up in The Clockwork Testament, one of Burgess's more recent novels. Enderby, the hero, is obsessed with Augustine and Pelagius and decides to write about them. He finishes a dozen pages of a film script (included in Burgess's novel) which culminate in a debate between the two, Augustine arguing in favor of the doctrine of original sin and Pelagius disagreeing. The script is never completed and, fittingly, the dispute is never settled.

In A Clockwork Orange, the anarchic quality of the society portrayed early in the novel indicates that Pelagian liberals are in power. Upon Alex's release from prison he finds that a broken elevator has been repaired and that the police force has been enlarged; these are signs that a more authoritarian party has taken over. But the new regime is not as strong in its authoritarianism as, for example, the Augustinian society in The Wanting Seed. It avoids the extremes of Augustinianism—wars and religious fanaticism—because Burgess in portraying libertarian and authoritarian parties in a society committed to an underlying Pelagian dogma is satirizing the Labor and Conservative Parties of the English Welfare State.

The new government in A Clockwork Orange therefore is only in a subdued way Augustinian. Its leaders, however, do indicate their lack of faith in human perfectibility by utilizing the Ludovico technique and by getting their jails ready for great numbers of political offenders. The characters in the novel who most oppose this government are naturally those who are extreme libertarians.

A principal spokesman for the libertarians is the writer F. Alexander. His book proclaims his belief in human perfectibility and free will but Alexander's histrionic prose style makes his Pelagian sentiments somewhat suspect. When a friend ascertains that it was young Alex who raped his wife, Alexander gives up his liberalism and agrees to collaborate in a plan to drive Alex to suicide. Another Pelagian character is P. R. Deltoid, Alex's rehabilitation officer. He epitomizes the libertarian belief that criminals should be reeducated and not punished; but despite Deltoid's efforts Alex remains incorrigible. "Is it some devil that crawls inside you?" Deltoid asks hardly the sort of question one would expect from a Pelagian. After learning that Alex has killed an old woman, Deltoid spits in his face: like F. Alexander, he has been reduced to a betrayal of his principles.

These failures of Pelagianism make it appear that Burgess, as some critics have maintained, favors an Augustinian point of view. But in The Wanting Seed, where he gives his most vivid portrayal of each type of society, Burgess seems to take the side of the Pelagians. In that novel the Pelagians undermine family life and encourage homosexuality as a form of population control; the Au-gustinians solve the population problem by staging pseudowars in which the participants are decimated and their flesh canned for human consumption. Even at their moral nadir, the Pelagians seem restrained when compared to the cannibalistic Augustinians.

In Tremor of Intent Burgess again seems to favor the Augustinian side when the views of a Pelagian scientist are satirized. Burgess's unsympathetic presentation of the scientist's views may, however, have another explanation. In The Novel Now he is critical of writers like H. G. Wells whose enthusiasm for technology leads them to rhapsodize over scientifically organized utopian societies. For Burgess, science deals only with external factors: it may improve living conditions, but it cannot alter the human condition. In Tremor of Intent, the shallowness of the scientist's arguments may be as much related to his profession as to his Pelagian beliefs.

It seems imprecise, then, to assume that Burgess consistently favors either an Augustinian or a Pelagian point of view. Similarly, those of Burgess's characters who are strongly committed to a single side in the Pelagian-Augustinian cycle fare badly. During one phase they are frustrated because they are out of power; during the next they are disappointed when their social theory fails to live up to its promise. Many of Burgess's heroes learn to change; like Alex, they begin to see how their old unilateral views fit into a cycle of interacting polar opposites. In Tremor of Intent, for example, the hero achieves this kind of understanding when he says, "Knowing God means also knowing his opposite. You can't get away from the great opposition."

An interaction of polar opposites in A Clock-work Orange emerges from Burgess's juxtaposition of the Augustinian views of Alex and the Pelagian views of F. Alexander. Many of Alex's characteristics are Augustinian: his dictatorial domination of his friends, his brutality, and his belief that criminals deserve punishment and not rehabilitation. Alex thinks that the world is wicked and does not believe in human perfectibility; F. Alexander, on the other hand, writes that man is "a creature of growth and capable of sweetness." Alexander's arguments in favor of free will indicate his Pelagianism; the connection Alex makes between evil and determined behavior recalls St. Augustine's concept of predestinarian grace. Like St. Augustine himself, Alex is redeemed after a sinful youth and, as an author, favors the confessional mode.

Many of the characteristics of Alex and F. Alexander may be resolved into examples of extremes that follow the pattern of polar antitheses: predator and victim; uncontrolled libido (rapist) and controlled libido (husband); youth and adult; man of action and man of ideas; destroyer and creator; conservative and liberal; alienated man and integrated man. The similarity of the names Alex and Alexander indicates an underlying kinship between the two which emerges if their opposing values are seen as the polar extremes of the same cycles. Alex (who comments on the similarity of the names) refers to his antagonist as "the great F. Alexander"; he himself is often called "little Alex."

The relativism resulting from this evenhanded treatment of contrasting values, however, sometimes leaves Burgess open to a charge of moral ambiguity. Burgess seems to be aware of this possibility, and in Tremor of Intent he tries to show that a belief in his cyclical system need not lead to a weakened moral stance. Here, an important ethical criterion is the degree of commitment to the cyclical system itself. Life and reality are expressed in polar oppositions which alternate cyclically; a com-mitment to the cyclical system, then, is tantamount to a commitment to life and reality. For Hillier, the hero of Tremor of Intent, an involvement with the cyclical system is the beginning of moral behavior. Those who ignore the cyclical system or attempt to disengage themselves from it—Hillier calls them "neutrals"—are guilty of immoral behavior which may be extremely destructive because, deceptively, it seems innocuous.

Hillier concludes that the neutrals are morally inferior to evildoers: the wicked are at least morally committed, albeit to a polar extreme which Hillier (recently ordained a priest) opposes. "If we're going to save the world," he says, "we shall have to use unorthodox methods. Don't you think we'd all rather see devil-worship than bland neutrality?"

The superiority of evildoers to neutrals is perhaps a reason for Alex's redemption in the original version of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is firmly committed to evil: he enjoys a sadistic fantasy in which he helps to crucify Christ, and, in a discussion of goodness, calls himself a patron of "the other shop." The neutrals are the scientists who destroy Alex's freedom of choice by administering the Ludovico technique. Dr. Brodsky, for example, cares little about the ethical questions raised by the treatment: "We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime." Alex—one would think he had little right to throw stones—calls Brodsky and his fellow scientists "an evil lot of bastards," and complains that their use of Beethoven's music in the treatment is "a filthy unforgivable sin." Burgess apparently feels that science lends itself easily to the neutrality he detests; though Alex is often beaten in the novel and once driven to attempt suicide, this is the only place where he moralizes about his oppressors.

There are a number of reasons why Burgess considers the scientists who rob a man of his capacity for ethical choice morally inferior to the criminals they treat. In Christian terms, Alex as a sinner must be permitted to enhance the possibilities for his salvation by choosing good over evil. A man rendered incapable of moral choice can never attain salvation; but a sinner may choose to repent and win redemption.

In terms of Burgess's cyclical system, Alex in his youth may be predestined to do evil; but with maturity comes freedom, when his determined phase is transformed into its polar opposite. The Ludovico treatment, invented by ethical neutrals, forces its victims to become neutral; it removes them from the cyclical process and prevents their transition into a mature phase. The neutralizing treatment turns Alex into a perpetual victim whose weakness provokes violence in those who encounter him. But when Alex's ability to choose is restored he finally grows tired of violence, and reforms.

What Do I Read Next?

• Like A Clockwork Orange, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1939) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949) explore what a future dystopian society might look like.
• Burgess's novel, The Wanting Seed (1962), published the same year as A Clockwork Orange, looks at a dystopian society dealing with overpopulation and food shortages. Critics often compare the novel to Orwell's 1984.
• B. F. Skinner's novel Walden 2 (1948) attempts to show how it is possible to build a good community based on positive reinforcement of good behavior. Burgess's novel can be seen as a critique of Skinner's ideas.
• In 1971, Thomas Churchill interviewed Burgess for the Malahat Review (Vol. 17). In this interview, Burgess discusses a range of subjects including his novels A Clockwork Orange, En-derby, and Nothing Like the Sun.
• In a 1972 issue of Transatlantic Review (Vol. 42-43), Carol Dix interviews Burgess about the film version of A Clockwork Orange, and Burgess discusses a range of subjects including his plans for future novels.

Burgess's moral point of view, however, still seems ambiguous. The neutrals, both in Tremor of Intent and in A Clockwork Orange, are given rather small roles; and in his zeal to condemn the neutrals Burgess seems to be condoning criminal behavior. It was perhaps with this problem in mind that Burgess made the following comment in an article entitled, appropriately enough, "The Manicheans":

The novelist's need to be adventurous, to pose problems, to shock into attention, is bound to lead him to ground perilous for the faithful. And there is something in the novelist's vocation which predisposes him to a kind of a Manicheeism. What the religious novelist often seems to be saying is that evil is a kind of good, since it is an aspect of Ultimate Reality; though what he is really saying is that evil is more interesting to write about than good.

It may be that Burgess is speaking of himself; like Milton writing Paradise Lost, Burgess may occasionally be distracted by aesthetically interesting wickedness. But this hardly explains Hillier's enthusiasm for devil-worship, an endorsement which perhaps makes him unique among even the most liberal of modern clergymen.

The apparent inconsistencies in Burgess's dualistic moral views are sometimes seen as the result of his utilization of the Eastern yin-yang principles. Yin and yang may be expressed in morally relevant categories like good and evil, or in categories like hot and cold which have no moral connotations: such a view can lead to moral relativism. The Christian idea of an omnipotent, benevolent God, on the other hand, implies a belief in the superiority of good over evil and leads to moral absolutism.

In an attempt to make use of the Eastern yin-yang idea as well as elements of Christian belief from his background, Burgess has turned to Manichaeism, an eclectic religion which flourished both in the Orient and in the West. Manichaeism incorporates a number of Christian doctrines; moreover, one of its central ideas is a dualistic opposition both in nature (light and darkness) and in ethics (good and evil) which in some ways resembles the opposition of yin and yang. Very often, Burgess's use of Manichean dualism does work to reconcile differences in Eastern and Western thought; but problems arise when a choice must be made between relativism and absolutism. In Eastern terms, where a thing may be seen as both itself and its opposite, such a choice may not be necessary; but to a Westerner, part-time absolutism is self-contradictory. Absolutism seems to demand absolute fidelity, and in this sense Burgess's moral point of view appears ambiguous or inconsistent.

In places Burgess seems to be an absolutist; in others, a relativist. A Clockwork Orange, for example, seems to be dominated by moral relativism when one examines the values of Alex and F. Alexander in the light of the yin-yang principles. But this apparent inconsistency is at times explained by another conflict, a struggle between the individual and the state. Here Burgess makes no attempt to maintain the balance of the yin-yang principles: he is vehemently on the side of the individual.

An emphasis on individualism becomes apparent after a series of symmetrical events in which many of the characters who have been abused by Alex find him helpless and avenge themselves. The revenge is no harsher than the act which provoked it, but an important difference does emerge: though the state condemns Alex's brutal crimes, it sanctions and encourages the avengers' brutality—even though it has already exacted its own vengeance in the form of a prison term. For Burgess, society's brutality is more threatening than the individual's; its power is inhuman, enormous, and unrestrained. Burgess, commenting on A Clockwork Orange, has indicated that he meant to encourage a comparison between Alex's brutality and society's: "The violence in the book is really more to show what the State can do with it."

Alex is an enemy of the state and, as he predicts early on, the state will attempt to destroy not only what is evil in him but also his individuality: "The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?" Unlike Alex, whose violence is subdued when he outgrows the role of clockwork man, the state remains a machine, always inhuman and conscienceless in its violence.

The hero of The Wanting Seed, like Alex, learns that it is unwise to trust the state: "he that saw whatever government was in power he would always be against it." And Burgess himself takes the same stand: "My political views are mainly negative: I lean towards anarchy: I hate the State. I loathe and abominate that costly, crass, intolerant, inefficient, eventually tyrannical machine which seeks more and more to supplant the individual." Like Alex, Burgess sees the state as an evil mechanism against which individual humans must defend themselves.

It becomes clear, then, that Burgess's moral values are far less ambiguous than they first appear. When he is speaking in his own voice, Burgess reacts to youthful violence with a conventional sense of dismay. If this tone had been introduced in A Clockwork Orange, the novel could easily have become polemical. Without redeeming qualities, the morally repulsive Alex would be a cardboard vil-lain; and similarly the ethically attractive qualities of F. Alexander must be balanced by a personality which is, like his prose style, devoid of grace. Nor is the effect of these characterizations unrealistic; a charming psychopath usually makes a better impression than a righteous neurotic. In this fashion Burgess's system leads to the creation of characters who are round in E. M. Forster's sense.

Burgess's cyclical system works best when it is applied to the subject which concerns him the most, human individuality. Here it becomes a useful metaphor for portraying psychological complexity, for delineating the unpredictability of human beings responding to conflicting urges.

Burgess has indicated that he feels these conflicts within himself just as he observes them in others. One might make a comparison between Burgess the young composer and Alex the musiclover, or between Burgess the middle-aged novelist and the writer F. Alexander. Like Anthony Burgess, F. Alexander has written a book called A Clockwork Orange; and Alex, who tells his own story, is in a sense also the author of a book with the same title. Burgess is hinting that he detects within his own personality elements of both characters, that they form a yin-yang opposition which he sees within himself. But if he indicts himself, Burgess also invites the reader to examine his own capacity for playing the roles of both Alex and F. Alexander.

Source: Rubin Rabinovitz, "Ethical Values in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 1979, pp. 43-50.

Rubin Rabinovitz

In the following essay, Rabinovitz explores the dichotomies that coexist within the protagonist in Burgess's Clockwork Orange.

In his most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess explores a number of interesting issues such as free will, the meaning of violence, and a cyclical theory of history. Resolving these issues, however, is complicated by an extraneous factor: the American editions of the novel lack Burgess' original conclusion and end with what is the penultimate chapter of the first English edition.

A good summary of the deleted section is provided by Burgess himself:

In the final chapter of the British edition, Alex is already growing up. He has a new gang, but he's tired of leading it; what he really wants is to have a son of his own-the libido is being tamed and turned social—and the first thing he now has to do is to find a mate, which means sexual love, not the old in and out.

The hero's abrupt decision to turn away from his old pattern of violence has caused some unrest among Burgess' critics. Shirley Chew, writing in Encounter feels that with Alex's fantasy of domestic life "the novel loses its integrity and falls into the sentimental." The ending, Chew says, makes it appear that Burgess condones and even shares the hero's taste for violence. And A. A. DeVitis, author of a recent study of Burgess' fiction, says that the last chapter was "wisely omitted from the American edition."

The American publisher, like Shirley Chew, felt that the last chapter was too sentimental; but Burgess has defended the original conclusion:

When they were going to publish it in America, they said "we're tougher over here" and thought the ending too soft for their readers. If it was me now, faced with the decision I'd say no. I still believe in my ending.

On the face of it, publisher and critics seem right: the novel did enjoy better sales in America than in England, and Stanley Kubrick chose to use the shortened American edition for his film version of the book. But the original ending is not as sentimental as it first appears; there is truth, even poetic justice, in the idea of yesterday's reprobate changing diapers for his own neophyte reprobate.

If Alex remains violent, as he does in the American version, the reader's attitude towards him is mainly one of condemnation; but Burgess' inquiry into the origins of violence requires a hero who cannot be so easily condemned and dismissed. The original version in a sense provides the less sentimental ending if Alex is transformed from a monster into an ordinary human being with whom the reader can identify. Obdurate Alex is a threat to safety; Alex reformed threatens moral complacency, by suggesting that a love of violence is universal.

Regardless of which ending one prefers, Burgess wrote his novel assuming that it would appear intact, and it deserves to be considered in the complete version. As it turns out, many of his ideas are clarified when the last chapter is restored. An example is Burgess' treatment of the theme of freedom and determinism. Burgess appears in A Clockwork Orange to disapprove of the Ludovico technique (a scientific process for forcing criminals to reform); the loss of free will seems to be too great a price to pay. But if this is true, and if Burgess shares the point of view of the Chaplain and F. Alexander who oppose the Ludovico technique for similar reasons, it is unclear why Burgess portrays these characters in a sardonic fashion.

The novel's final statement about free will comes in the deleted chapter, when Alex says that in his youth he had not been free but determined. In his violent phase, he says, he had been

one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.

The young are like clockwork men; their proclivity towards violence is built into them. His son, Alex says, will also go through a violent phase, and Alex "would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers."

Alex concludes that there is a cycle of recurring phases in which each young man undergoes a period of existence as a violent, mechanical man; then he matures, gets greater freedom of choice, and his violence subsides. The cycle, says Alex, will go on forever: "and so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round … " The circularity of the repeating pattern leads Alex to compare the progress of generations to an image of God turning a dirty, smelly orange in his hands, "old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers." The determined progress of the clockwork man, who must move in a straight line, is thus contrasted with the circular shape and movement of God's orange, symbol of life and organic growth. The "vonny grahzny" orange is also like the world, which on the same page is called "grahzny vonny." For Alex, life has aspects both of determinism and free will, line and circle, clockwork and orange.

Burgess used similar line-circle imagery in The Wanting Seed, which was published in the same year as A Clockwork Orange. In both novels, determinism and mechanical progress are associated with lines, while freedom and organic growth are associated with circles. Reality for Burgess often emerges from the interaction of contrary principles like these; in A Clockwork Orange Alex's linear, determined youth is contrasted with his freedom in maturity when he decides to marry, have a child, and give up his violence. But the cycle continues, and paradoxically Alex's freedom will lead him to have a child who once more will be subjected to the deterministic phase of the process.

By the end of the novel, Alex is mature enough to deal with this paradox. Troubled as he is by the idea that his son will be violent, he remains resolute in his desire to have children. The growth of Burgess' heroes is often indicated by their willingness to accept life and the mixed bag of contradictory values it offers.

The sense that Alex has accepted life is enforced when he finally answers the question which introduces each part of the novel and which is repeated eleven times: "What's it going to be then, eh?" Initially the question seems only to be about what sort of drink to order, but as it recurs it acquires existential overtones. The answer finally comes towards the end of the deleted chapter:

But first of all, brothers there was this vesch of finding some devotchka or other who would be a mother to this son. I would have to start on that tomorrow, I kept thinking. That was something like new to do. That was something I would have to get started on, a new like chapter beginning. That's what it's going to be then, brothers …

The question is answered just after Alex sees himself as a participant in the historical cycle and his life as a microcosmic version of the cycle. He has understood that history grows out of the struggle of opposing forces and has accepted a similar clash of contradictory urges in his own personality.

Alex's ideas suggest that Burgess has been influenced by Hegel's theory of history; and some of the characters in his other novels (like the history teacher who is the protagonist of The Long Day Wanes) actually discuss Hegel's theory Burgess' system, however, differs in a number of respects from Hegel's. In the Hegelian dialectic, the opposition of thesis and antithesis produces a synthesis which resembles the stages that preceded it, but which is also different in some ways from these stages. The new element in the synthesis leads to the idea—very important in Hegelian thought—that progress comes with the dialectical historical cycle.

Burgess' theory denies this idea of progress. His system posits two antithetical, alternating stages; the third stage is actually only a repetition of the first. In this system, innovations are never permanent; the changes in one era are undone by a regressive process in the next, so there can be no true historical progress.

The idea that history repeats itself and the pessimistic outlook which it engenders may come from Toynbee or Spengler, whose cyclical theories of history were in vogue when Burgess was a student. Vico, whom Burgess mentions in his Joyce criticism, may also be a source. Burgess calls himself a Manichean, and he often takes a dualistic Manichean view of contending moral forces.

Another important source of Burgess' theory is the opposition of yin and yang principles in Chinese philosophy. Burgess refers to the yin-yang in his autobiographical first novel, A Vision of Battlements, and in a number of essays. According to Robert Morris, the yin-yang principles help to explain the historical dilemma of Crabbe, the hero of The Long Day Wanes:

The East, as Burgess sees it, is both active and passive, containing the principles of yin-yang, humming at both poles of the dialectic at once. It is a phenomenon alien to the West, which, nurtured on Hegelian propositions, submits to the certainty of either cyclical or lineal progression.

Morris' comment is useful for understanding how yin and yang are related to dichotomies in A Clockwork Orange such as line and circle, organism and mechanism, and determinism and free will.

Burgess feels that it is his work as an artist to portray conflicting elements which eventually blend into a single confluent entity. In Urgent Copy, a collection of reviews and essays, he gives an example: impressed by the juxtaposition of Spanish and British cultures in Gibraltar, he composed a symphony in which disparate themes relating to these cultures clash initially but ultimately harmonize. The symphony was written before any of his novels, and this process of juxtaposing conflicting values provided him with a method he later used in his writing. A good discussion of how this principle works elsewhere in Burgess' oeuvre may be found in Thomas LeClair's study of his fiction.

Burgess, then, follows the yin-yang principles in understanding change as a clash and interaction of opposed values which can lead either to chaos or to harmony. In the concluding essay of Urgent Copy, he explains that, though one would like to live by a single set of values, reality is most often apprehended in sets of opposing values like good and evil, white and black, rich and poor. Politicians and theologians, who claim they can find unity in merging these values, actually offer either promises (a classless society, for example) or intangibles (God, metaphysical ideas). Only a work of art, says Burgess, can achieve a synthesis of opposites which presents an immediate vision of unity, Obviously, A Clockwork Orange is meant to serve as an example of the sort of work that can truly reconcile opposing values.

Source: Rubin Rabinovitz, "Mechanism vs. Organism: Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter 1978–1979, pp. 538-41.

Sources

"Books of the Times," in New York Times, March 19, 1963.

Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange, Ballantine Books, 1988.

――――――, A Clockwork Orange, W. W. Norton, 1987.

――――――, "Introduction: A Clockwork Orange Resucked," in A Clockwork Orange, W. W. Norton, 1987.

――――――, "On the Hopelessness of Turning Good Books into Films," in New York Times, April 20, 1975, pp. 14-15.

Coale, Samuel, Anthony Burgess, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1981.

DeVitis, A. A., Anthony Burgess, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972.

Evans, Robert O., "The Nouveau Roman, Russian Dystopias, and Anthony Burgess," in British Novelists Since 1900, edited by Jack I. Biles, AMS Press, 1987, pp. 253-66.

Mathews, Richard, The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess, The Borgo Press, 1978.

Petix, Esther, "Linguistics, Mechanics, and Metaphysics: Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange," in Critical Essays on Anthony Burgess, edited by Geoffrey Aggeler, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. 121-31.

Rabinovitz, Rubin, "Ethical Values in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring, 1979, pp. 43-50.

――――――, "Mechanism vs. Organism: Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter 1978, pp. 538-41.

Stinson, John J., Anthony Burgess Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1991.

Tilton, John, Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel, Bucknell University Press, 1977.

Further Reading

Aggeler, Geoffrey, Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist, University of Alabama Press, 1979.

Aggeler examines Burgess's books thematically. Burgess read and commented on Aggeler's book as it was being written.

Burgess, Anthony, Little Wilson and Big God, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.

Burgess's autobiography is entertaining and illuminating, and well worth reading. He discusses his attitudes towards the reception both of his novel, A Clockwork Orange, and its film adaptation.

Hammer, Stephanie Barbe, "Conclusion: Resistance, Metaphysics, and the Aesthetics of Failure in Modern Criminal Literature," in The Sublime Crime: Fascination, Failure and Form in Literature of the Enlightenment, Southern Illinois University Press, 1994, pp. 154-74.

Hammer discusses A Clockwork Orange as an example of criminal literature.

Pritchard, William H., "The Novels of Anthony Burgess," in Massachusetts Review, Vol. 7, No. 3. Summer 1996.

Pritchard explores the reader's feelings towards Alex and notes the novel's ability to almost make the reader feel relieved when Alex returns to his violent self.

Tilton, John, Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel, Bucknell University Press, 1977.

Tilton's chapter on A Clockwork Orange explores the novel's main theme of free choice and suggests that Alex illustrates the belief that moral oppression violates individual civil rights as well as spiritual existence.