A Clockwork Orange
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{{Infobox Book
| name = A Clockwork Orange | image = Image:Clockworkorange2.jpg | author = Anthony Burgess | country = United Kingdom | language = English | genre = Science fiction | publisher = William Heinemann (UK) | release_date = 1962 | media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette, CD) & Film | pages = 192 pages (Hardback edition) & 176 pages (Paperback edition) | isbn = ISBN 0434098000 (Hardback edition) & ISBN 0141182601 (Paperback edition UK)
}}
- This article describes the novel by Anthony Burgess. For other uses of the term Clockwork Orange, see 'Clockwork Orange (disambiguation)'.
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian science fiction novel by Anthony Burgess, as well as the basis for the 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick.
It is one of Burgess's "terminal novels", written to provide posthumous income for his wife after Burgess was allegedly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.
Plot introduction
Explanation of the novel's title
Burgess wrote that the title was a reference to an old Cockney expression "As queer as a clockwork orange." ¹ Due to his time serving the British Colonial Office in Malaya, Burgess thought that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) non-human (orang, Malay for "person"). The Italian title, "Un'Arancia ad Orologeria" was interpreted to refer to a grenade. Burgess wrote in his later introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked", that a creature who can only perform good or evil is "a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil."
In his essay "Clockwork Oranges"², 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 negatively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will.
Plot summary
Set in the near future, the book centres around the life of the fifteen year old protagonist Alex. Alex and his gang roam the streets at night, committing crimes purely for enjoyment. The crimes described in the book increase in severity from assault, to robbery, to arson, to a fight with rival gang, to a break-in at the house of F.D. Alexander, where the gang rapes his wife. The gang returns to a bar where Alex hits one of his gang members, Dim, as punishment for Dim's rude behaviour towards a woman who was singing the chorus of Ode to Joy; classical music being Alex's other passion apart from violence. This sparks off a tense moment between the two gang members.
The next day, after fighting Dim and George to re-establish his control of the gang, Alex agrees on Pete's suggestion to rob a house in a rich part of town. Alex tries to persuade the woman living in the house to open the door. The woman refuses and calls the police as a precaution. He gains access to the house through a window, but is confronted by the defiant woman, who defends herself with unexpected strength. As he reaches for a bust of Beethoven, she scratches his face, but he manages to knock her out with a silver statue he had previously taken. As he runs out the front door he is struck by Dim, who runs off with the rest of the gang just as the police arrive. At the police station we learn that the woman has died.
In prison, Alex hears about an experimental rehabilitation programme called "the Ludovico technique", which promises that the prisoner will be released upon completion of the two week treatment and will not commit crimes afterwards. He manages to become the first patient. The Ludovico technique itself is a form of aversion therapy, in which Alex is given a drug that induces extreme nausea while being forced to watch graphically violent films. At the end of the treatment Alex is unable to carry out or even contemplate violent acts without crippling nausea.
He is released from prison, but upon returning home he is rejected by his parents. Dejected, Alex contemplates suicide, going to the public library in order to discover what sort of poison he might take to end his life. There he is spotted by one of his former victims, who, accompanied by his friends, exacts his revenge. Alex is unable to strike back and the police are alerted. The police arrive, but they turn out to be his old cohort Dim, as well as Billy Boy, the former leader of a rival gang. They take Alex, beat him up, and dump him by the side of the road out in the country.
Alex stumbles to the nearest house for help, which turns out to be that of F.D. Alexander, whose wife Alex had raped and beaten earlier in the book. At first Alex is not recognised as he had always worn a mask. The reader discovers that F.D. Alexander is in a wheel chair and his wife has died from her injuries. He recognises Alex from the newspaper reports surrounding the Ludovico technique and alerts some friends of his who are interested in proving that such government-sanctioned conditioning should not be supported. Seeking a reaction that will validate their opinions, they lock Alex in a room and play Beethoven's 9th Symphony at full volume. Although previously his favourite piece of music, the Ninth was also used as a soundtrack for one of the films that Alex was forced to watch as part of the Ludovico treatment, hence it produces the same nauseating effects on him. Unable to stand the pain, Alex throws himself out of the window to try to kill himself. He survives the fall with broken bones and wakes up in hospital informed that his tormentors have been arrested and the Ludovico treatment reversed.
The final chapter begins identically to the first - Alex has formed a new gang and reverted to his previous criminality. But on this particular night he decides not to join them and goes for a walk on his own instead. In a cafe he bumps into one of his old gang members, Pete, who is married and has become a respectable member of society. Pete's wife giggles at Alex's rhetoric, and asks Pete "why does he speak like that?" After conversing with Pete and his wife, Alex has an epiphany, renouncing violence on one hand, but on the other concluding that his behaviour was an unavoidable part of youth, and that if he had a son, he would not be able to stop him from doing what he himself did.
Although the book is divided into three parts, each containing seven chapters (twenty-one being a symbolic reference to the British age of majority at the time the book was written) the 21st chapter was omitted from the versions published in the US until recently. The film adaptation which was directed by Stanley Kubrick follows the American version of the book, ending prior the events of the 21st chapter. Kubrick claimed that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, but that he certainly never gave any serious consideration to using it.
Literary significance & criticism
(Analysis) The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang dialect which Burgess invented for the book, called nadsat. It is a mix of modified Russian words, English slang and words invented by Burgess himself. It serves two functions: firstly, Burgess, while wanting to provide his young characters with their own register, did not want to use contemporary slang, fearing that this would "date" the book too much. Secondly, the novel graphically describes horrific scenes of violence, which would be shocking even by today's standards, so nadsat is used as a "linguistic veil" to distance the reader from the action on the page.
Allusions/references from other works
Template:Main Both the story and individual elements have had a strong influence on popular culture in general and popular music in particular.
Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
~description how this novel mentions other incidents and subject matter outside the world of literature and criticism~
Awards and nominations
- 1983 - A Clockwork Orange Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (Preliminary Nominee)
- 1999 - A Clockwork Orange Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (Nomination)
- 2002 - A Clockwork Orange Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (Nomination)
- 2003 - A Clockwork Orange Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (Nomination)
- 2006 - A Clockwork Orange Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (Nomination)[1]
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Excerpts from the first two chapters of the novel were dramatised and broadcast on BBC TV's Tonight programme, 1962 (now lost, believed wiped)
Trivia
- Alex's age at the end of the novel is the same age that the Burgesses' miscarried child would have been at the date of publication, had the child survived the attack on Lynne.
- The allegedly Cockney phrase A Clockwork Orange is totally unknown to history: the first recorded use of it is Burgess's title. Quoted in a Rolling Stone article, Burgess claimed to have first heard the expression "from a very old Cockney in 1945."
- Burgess claimed that he had typed the title A Clockwork Orange and then sat down to think of a story to go with it. One early idea apparently involved a strike or riot among apprentices under Elizabeth I.
- This was one of Burgess's least favourite of the books he wrote, and he thought it was overrated.
- Because in A Clockwork Orange, the author F. Alexander wrote a book entitled A Clockwork Orange and it is his wife who is attacked by the droogs, it seems likely Burgess directly inserted some of his own feelings and characteristics into the novel in the form of this character.
- The novel is broken into three parts, each with 7 chapters, said to be a reference to Shakespeare's 7 ages of man (one theme of the book is maturity/aging)
- The book was partly inspired by an event in 1943, when Burgess' pregnant wife Lynne was robbed and beaten by four U.S. GI deserters in a London street, suffering a miscarriage which further resulted in chronic gynaecological problems³. According to Burgess, writing the novel was both a catharsis and an "act of charity" towards his wife's attackers - the story is narrated by and essentially sympathetic to one of the attackers rather than their victim.
Release details
- 1962, UK, William Heinemann (ISBN 0434098000), Pub date ? December 1962, Hardcover
- 1962, US, W W Norton & Co Ltd (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1962, Hardcover
- 1963, US, W W Norton & Co Ltd (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1963, Paperback
- 1965, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1965, Paperback
- 1969, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1969, Paperback
- 1971, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN 0345026241), Pub date ? ? 1971, Paperback
- 1972, UK, Lorrimer, (ISBN 0856470198), Pub date 11 September 1972, Hardcover
- 1973, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 0140032193), Pub date 25 January 1973, Paperback
- 1977, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN 0345273214), Pub date 12 September 1977, Paperback
- 1979, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN 0345314832), Pub date ? ? 1979, Paperback
- 1983, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN 0345314832), Pub date 12 July 1983, Unbound
- 1986, US, W. W. Norton & Company (ISBN 0393312836), Pub date ? November 1986, Paperback
- 1987, UK, W W Norton & Co Ltd (ISBN 0393024393), Pub date ? July 1987, Hardcover
- 1988, US, Ballantine Books (ISBN 0345354435), Pub date ? March 1988, Paperback
- 1995, UK, W W Norton & Co Ltd (ISBN 0393312836), Pub date ? June 1995, Paperback
- 1996, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 0140188827), Pub date 25 April 1996, Paperback
- 1996, UK, HarperAudio (ISBN 0694517526), Pub date ? September 1996, Audio Cassette
- 1997, UK, Heyne Verlag (ISBN 3453130790), Pub date 31 January 1997, Paperback
- 1998, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 014027409X), Pub date 3 September 1998, Paperback
- 1999, UK, Rebound by Sagebrush (ISBN 0808581945), Pub date ? October 1999, Library Binding
- 2000, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 0141182601), Pub date 24 February 2000, Paperback
- 2000, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 0140291059), Pub date 2 March 2000, Paperback
- 2000, UK, Turtleback Books (ISBN 060619472X), Pub date ? November 2000, Hardback
- 2001, UK, Penguin Books Ltd (ISBN 0141008555), Pub date 27 September 2001, Paperback
- 2002, UK, Thorndike Press (ISBN 0786246448), Pub date ? October 2002, Hardback
- 2005, UK, Buccaneer Books (ISBN 1568495110), Pub date 29 January 2005, Library Binding
See also
- A Clockwork Orange (film)
- Aestheticization of violence
- Nadsat, a fictional slang used in the book
- Dystopia
- The Adicts
- Lower Class Brats
- A Clockwork Orange (computer game)
Sources, references, external links, quotations
- Prometheus Hall Of Fame Nominees
- Template:Isfdb title
- A Prophetic Masterpiece: http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_1_oh_to_be.html
- A Clockwork Orange: A play with music. Century Hutchinson Ltd. (1987). — An extract is quoted on several web sites: [2], [3], [4].
- Burgess, Anthony (1978). Clockwork Oranges. In 1985. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0091360803 (extracts quoted here)
- Vidal, Gore. "Why I am eight years younger than Anthony Burgess," in At home : essays, 1982-1988, p. 411. New York: Random House, 1988. ISBN 0394570200.de:A Clockwork Orange (Buch)
es:La naranja mecánica fr:L'Orange mécanique he:התפוז המכני nl:A Clockwork Orange ja:時計じかけのオレンジ ko:시계 태엽 오렌지 pl:Mechaniczna pomarańcza pt:Laranja Mecânica