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This article describes the novel by Anthony Burgess. For other uses of the term 'Clockwork Orange', see 'Clockwork Orange (disambiguation)'. For the Stanley Kubrick film, see A Clockwork Orange (film) A Clockwork Orange is a speculative fiction novel by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962, and later the basis for a 1971 film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick.
Explanation of the novels title Burgess wrote that the title was a reference to an alleged old Cockney expression 'as queer as a clockwork orange'. ¹ Due to his time serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaya, Burgess thought that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) human (orang, Malay for 'person'). 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; or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the almighty state. 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 Alexs world Set in a hypothetical future, the book tells the story of the life of its fifteen-year-old protagonist Alex who, along with his gang--Dim, George and Pete--roams the streets at night, committing crimes for enjoyment. The story begins with Alex and the members of his gang (or "droogs" as he calls them) sitting in the Korova milkbar drinking drug-spiked milk to put them in the mood for "a bit of the old ultraviolence". They then proceed to go out and assault a man leaving a library; then an old homeless man; then they fight a rival gang, steal a car, and break into the house of F. Alexander, where they assault him and rape his wife. The gang return to the Korova milkbar, where Alex hits one of his gang members, Dim, as punishment for Dim's rude behaviour towards a woman who was singing a line from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Mvt. 4 (Alex having a passion for classical music and a particular liking to Beethoven, whom he refers to as "Ludwig van"). This sparks off a tense moment between the two gang members, setting the stage for a confrontation. Upon awakening the next day, Alex decides he is too tired to attend school, so he falls back to sleep and sleeps until he is woken by Dr. P. R. Deltoid, his post-correctional advisor, whom he then has a conversation with. After this, he goes to pick up a copy of Beethoven's symphony No. 9 from a music store where he meets two 10 year old girls, whom he takes to a restaurant and then takes them home and rapes them. In the Stanley Kubrick feature, the scene is showed in fast forward, without the details and dialog. After this he falls asleep again, and when he wakes up he finds that his droogs have come to his block of flats to see him. The gang members, especially Dim and Georgie, are feeling that Alex is not being fair (this attitude is in the main a result of Alex's hitting Dim in the Korova the night before), and implicitly threaten Alex with revolt; so Alex fights them to re-establish his control of the gang. Once he is confident of his position as gang leader, Alex agrees to George's suggestion to rob a house in a rich part of town. When they arrive at the house, Alex tries to persuade the old woman living there to open the door. The woman refuses and without Alex realising, 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, and he slips in a saucer of milk which the woman had placed on the floor for one of her many cats. This leads to a brawl between Alex and the woman, in which Alex knocks her out. When he hears the police arriving, Alex tries to make an escape, but his so-called friends betray him, and Dim lashes him in the face with a length of chain just as he exits the house, leaving him dazed and blinded. The police arrest him, beat him into a car, and take him to the police station, where they beat him again for being uncooperative. P. R. Deltoid arrives and informs Alex that the old woman has died and then spits in his face. Exhausted, Alex gives in and confesses to every crime he has committed since leaving his last correctional school. The Ludovico technique Sentenced to fourteen years for murder, Alex gets a job as an assistant to the prison chaplain. He feigns interest in religion, but amuses himself by reading the Bible for its lurid descriptions of "the old yehoodies (Jews) tolchocking (beating) each other", and imagines himself taking part in "the nailing-in" (the Crucifixion of Jesus). 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. Partially by virtue of taking part in the fatal beating of a cellmate, Alex manages to become the subject in the first full-scale trial of the Ludovico technique. The 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. After prison Alex gets his release, but upon returning home he finds that he is not welcome: his personal belongings have been confiscated, and his parents have taken in a lodger. Dejected, Alex contemplates suicide and visits 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 turn out to be his old cohort Dim as well as Billyboy, the former leader of a rival gang whom Alex fought earlier. They take Alex out to the countryside and almost drown him in a water trough. They then leave him in his pains. Alex stumbles to the nearest house for help, which turns out to be that of F. Alexander, whose wife Alex had raped and beaten earlier in the book. At first Alex is not recognized as he had always worn a mask. The reader discovers that F. Alexander's wife has died from her injuries. F. Alexander recognizes Alex from the newspaper reports surrounding the Ludovico technique, as well as some comments Alex makes; he 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 the fictitious "Symphony Number Three Of The Danish Veck Otto Skadelig" at full volume. That piece was played during the Ludovico experiment, and so produces the same nauseating effects on him as would acts of violence. 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. (This is the point at which the U.S. edition of the book ended, implying that Alex would return to his ways of violent delinquency.) The actual final chapter begins identically to the first; Alex has formed a new gang and reverted to his previous criminality. On this particular night, however, he decides not to join them and goes for a walk on his own instead. He confesses that lately he has been finding the whole lifestyle tiresome, and has even (of all things) begun experiencing latent parenting urges. In a café, he bumps into the last of his old gang members, Pete. To Alex's astonishment, Pete is now married and has become a respectable member of society. After conversing with Pete and his wife, Alex has an epiphany, renouncing violence on the 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. Differences in the American Publication Although the book is divided into three parts, each containing seven chapters (21 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 United States until recently. The film adaptation, which was directed by Stanley Kubrick, follows the American version of the book, ending prior to 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 and criticism 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 Slav words, Cockney rhyming slang and words invented by Burgess himself. It serves various functions: first, 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. Second, 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. Third, the Soviet Union being a big political power at the time, Burgess wanted to show that its culture had influenced slang, just as English influences other languages because of the U.S. being a big political power. One of Alex's doctors explains the language to a colleague as "Odd bits of old rhyming slang; a bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration." Nadsat was a large point of criticism ; some loved the idea and found it to be "genius." Others felt that it made the book inaccessible. 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