Anthony
Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange,
published in 1962, endures as one of the most iconic dystopian works despite
the fact Burgess considered his novella manipulative and preachy. While the book thrives under its dystopian
label and does address the plight of the individual versus the collective
state, A Clockwork Orange is
primarily a discussion of free will as the defining characteristic of humanity.
Told in first-person from the perspective
of “your humble narrator” Alex, the story follows Alex and his group of
droogs—friends—chronicling their horrifying crimes until Alex is imprisoned and
undergoes state-supported involuntary conditioning to rid him of his violent
tendencies. The book is divided into three parts: the first details Alex’s
gang’s crimes, the second Alex’s stay in prison and “rehabilitative”
conditioning, and the third Alex’s return to society with his new involuntary
aversion to violence. The first and the
third part mirror each other, illustrating the complete reversal of Alex’s life
as soon as he is deprived of his free will.
In both the first and third parts, Alex is out on the streets; however,
while in the first Alex is portrayed as a lively degenerate who commits
horrifying crimes by choice, the third part shows him as hapless and
purposeless, incapable of committing any crime.
Set in a post-war, fictionalized,
lifeless England, Alex’s crimes seem no better or no worse than the society he
lives in. At the milkbar, listless
citizens drink down beverages laced with mind-numbing, incapacitating drugs—the
legal alternative to escaping society in lieu of Alex’s liberating violence. When
viewed in light of the apathy of the rest of the population, Alex’s choice of
violence becomes almost justified for readers—at least he is making a choice.
Burgess hammers the importance of
choice home even more as he begins each part with the question, “What’s it
going to be then, eh?” automatically underscoring the role of free will with
the very opening lines of his novella. Burgess
then blatantly discusses free will through Alex’s involuntary “rehabilitation”
conditioning. The procedure—Ludovico’s
Technique—uses Alex as its test subject, and Alex is conditioned to have
intense physical sickness in response to violence, thereby depriving him of
choice. As the prison chaplain argues,
“Goodness is something chosen. When a
man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
The chaplain also raises the point that humanity is defined by free
will, and to deprive someone of choice is to deprive them of their humanity,
making them a machine.
The
title itself—A Clockwork Orange—refers
to mankind becoming machinery. “A
clockwork” refers to the automatic operation of machinery, and “orange” can
refer to man (referencing ‘orangutan’), as well as nature, the natural world,
or humanity in general. Within the
novella, Alex reads from a book also titled A
Clockwork Orange: “The attempt to impose upon man… laws and conditions
appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.” Here, Burgess uses the book to discuss not
only mankind’s relation to machinery when deprived of choice but also the
dystopian motif of the government’s role in this loss of humanity.
Similar
to the collectivism and loss of individuality seen in George Orwell’s 1984, the State in A Clockwork Orange is preoccupied with maintaining power and
ignores the needs of the individual, even going so far as to turn mankind into
machinery by depriving people of their free will through Ludovico’s Technique. This discussion of the government’s
oppression of its people in the name of “the greater good” makes A Clockwork Orange one of the most
iconic dystopian works; however, Burgess takes the discussion a step further by
nullifying the idea of “the greater good” with the State’s removal of choice
because, as Burgess emphasizes, good is a choice.
Burgess harnesses language to
wonderful effect: the entire story is told in Nadsat, the Russian/Cockney slang
Alex speaks. Even excluding Burgess’s
discussions of free will and governmental roles, this novella is likely the
most linguistically engaging work of fiction ever created. Without glossary or
footnote, readers must learn the language as the story progresses. This allows Burgess to manipulate his readers
by language alone. Because Alex is “your
humble narrator,” everything is filtered through his perspective, and this
filtering allows even a despicable criminal to become a sympathetic character
since readers are only exposed to his version of events. The readers’ acclimation to the language also
provides an initial barrier to understanding during the first part; Burgess
uses this barrier to his advantage and details the most horrifying of Alex’s
crimes in this part where readers will understand and care the least, making
Alex’s crimes appear less significant. Nadsat
itself is manipulative in the sense that readers are presented with
nadsat—teen—slang that only has the capacity to convey certain limited
meaning. Because Nadsat is heavily
Russian-based, Burgess may have been alluding once again to the story’s
communist/collectivist backdrop; however, if this was his intent, it was
executed poorly because Nadsat serves as a rebellious language in his story and
functions in opposition to the State rather than in accordance with it.
Originally, the novella was written
with twenty-one chapters. Prior to 1986,
all American publications only included the first twenty chapters. While Burgess insisted the final chapter was
necessary to make the story complete through Alex’s development, American
publishers disagreed and thought American audiences would find the darker
ending of the twentieth chapter more believable and more appealing. Both forms are valid: with the inclusion of
the last chapter, the novella becomes a story about a character’s choice,
whereas the novella becomes more of a hard-hitting parable describing the
simultaneous danger and necessity of free will if the last chapter is excluded. Either way, A Clockwork Orange is a necessity for any literary discussion
pertaining to free will, especially in relation to government.
