Literature Review
Peer to Peer Journal Article
Knowledge Based
Clockwork Orange is Anthony Burgess’s most famous novel and its impact on literary, musical and visual culture has been extensive. The novel is concerned with the conflict between the individual and the state, the punishment of young criminals, and the possibility or otherwise of redemption. The linguistic originality of the book, and the moral questions it raises, are as relevant now as they ever were. This resource aims to explore the relevance of A Clockwork Orange, and present valuable information from the archive to anyone interested in learning more about the text. It draws on the collections of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, delving into the archives and harnessing different media to tell the story of the novel and its legacy.
With its prophetic mixture of drugs, music, fashion and juvenile violence, Burgess’s novel developed a countercultural following in the 1960s. Yet A Clockwork Orange did not reach a mass audience until Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was released in January 1972. Later on, Burgess sought to distance himself from Kubrick’s ‘highly coloured and explicit’ film and expressed frustration that he would be remembered for this ‘very minor work’, when there were other novels that he valued more highly. Yet he never stopped writing about the book, giving interviews about it, defending it, sometimes disowning it. A Clockwork Orange continued to tick away in Burgess’s imagination until the end of his life.
Burgess began writing the novel in early 1961. He returned to England from colonial teaching posts in Malaya and Brunei in 1959 and noticed that England had changed while he had been abroad. A new youth culture was beginning to appear, with pop music, milk bars, drugs and Teddy Boy violence. Burgess was interested by this emergence of a world that had not existed in his own youth, and he anticipated the arrival of Mods and Rockers when he presented Alex and his droogs as a gang with a tribal fashion sense and a predilection for motiveless violence. This violence, so brutally rendered in the novel, could have been inspired by an incident from Burgess’s own experience. He claimed that the kernel for Alex’s brutal behaviour lay in an attack suffered by his first wife Llewela (Lynne) Jones. During the wartime blackout of 1944 London, Lynne was beaten up and robbed by a gang of American soldiers. A similar attack happens in the novel, when a writer’s wife is beaten and raped by Alex and his droogs.
Despite this, much of Burgess’s inspiration for the novel lay in literature. The dystopian writings of George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited), Diana and Meir Gillon (The Unsleep) and Yevgeny Zamyatin (We) all provide literary context for A Clockwork Orange. Burgess wrote of his fascination with ‘the ultimate totalitarian nightmare’ as well as ‘the dream of liberalism going mad’. This reading of other novels, coupled with Burgess’s response to the determinism of psychologists such as B.F. Skinner (who denied the importance of culture, environment and free will) provide the background to the book described by Time magazine as ‘that rare thing in English letters: a philosophical novel’.
An archetypal depiction of a dystopia is one dominated by bleakness and roboticism, a totalitarian government enforcing upon the people a lifestyle that lulls them into a state of obedience. Anthony Burgess’ 1963 novel, A Clockwork Orange, is a nightmarish vision of future Britain, one in which behavioral modification is taken to dangerous extremes in the quest for preserving the order of a disconnected society. In many ways, A Clockwork Orange differs from the standard prototype of the dystopian sub-genre. First, the novel is self-described as a society in its pre-dystopian hours, in the beginnings of totalitarianism.
Second, the audience perceives the world through an adolescent lens. Alex, a fifteen year-old criminal, is the protagonist of the story, a youth who fights to feel alive in a corrupt society that he does not quite understand. Through these two paradigms, Burgess shows the audience that the prime characteristic that marks a society as ‘dystopian’ is the lack of moral choice. Burgess utilizes this to expose the raw agenda of a dystopia: the prioritization of social control and efficiency over human nature. The dystopian journey of A Clockwork Orange is told through the first-person narration of Alex, the fifteen year-old anti-hero of the novel. Alex, together with his band of “drugs,” takes the night life into his own hands, sadistically committing crimes of murder, rape, and theft. In one of their most horrendous crimes, Alex and his cronies forge their way into the home of a couple, where they rape the woman as her husband is forced to watch. The turning action comes when Alex learns that his friends are traitors, setting him up one night to be caught by the police. After extensive time in an over-crowded prison, Alex is told there is a way to be released back into society: he must undergo the “Ludovico technique”, an innovative and primitive form of therapy that “cures” criminals. Alex volunteers to be the guinea pig for this experiment, only to discover the truth about the procedure. Pumped with nauseating drugs and strapped down to a chair with his eyelids probed open, Alex is forced to watch horrendous scenes of violence on film. Under the distress of nauseating drugs and lacking the ability to move his body, he is classically conditioned to associate scenes of violence and feelings of pain with overwhelming physical sickness. Upon being “cured,” he is released back into society.
Shunned by his parents and beaten by cops on the street, he becomes distressed by anything associated with violence or suffering, from the physical beatings he takes by the police, to the cacophonous rhythms of the musical symphonies he once loved. Homeless and alone, he stumbles into the house of the man whom he once forced to watch the rape of his wife. He discovers that this man, named F. Alexander, is a revolutionary who wants to use him as proof of the evils of “the Government,” the near-totalitarian party that is looking for re-election.
Feeling used by everyone and treated more like a tool than a human being, Alex tries to kill himself by jumping out of a window. Upon coming out of a coma, Alex learns that the Government has reversed the effects of the Ludovico technique after the bad press they received when the story of Alex’s near-suicide was publicized. Given back the power of human choice, Alex returns to his life of crime, but only briefly. He decides in the end that he would like to have a child and become a productive member of society. Class discussions have established that the main distinguishing factor between a utopia and a dystopia is the ability to leave the society, with a utopia obviously being the one which allows for such an action. While this is true, it also rests on a faulty premise that utopias can, if necessary, use the same methods as a dystopia to attract and sustain true believers, as long as there is “an option to leave”. However, it runs much deeper than this. Dystopias are mainly distinguished from utopias because they do not operate on free will. Citizens are not aware of options. Utopias, while imprinting certain beliefs on their followers, still act on a level of consciousness.
The people understand their options and freely give up their own individual desires for the good of the community. This is not the case in a dystopian society, and it is the essential premise that A Clockwork Orange builds upon. Burgess’ vision bears many similar characteristics to those of prototypical dystopian novels, like 1984 and Brave New World, but this work feels wholly unique through the paradigms by which these characteristics are focused. The first paradigm that Burgess filters his vision through is the notion of a dystopia in its early stages.
F. Alexander, the revolutionary figure in this novel, describes the society as slowly becoming “the full apparatus of totalitarianism” (Burgess 160), and such a distinction is made very clearly in the plot. The government has not yet reached a state of censorship, as seen in how the media is able to expose the damage done to Alex (Burgess 176), but there is a distinctly passive and emotionless attitude that permeates throughout the society.
Alex’s friends are revealed to be traitors at the mercy of the government (Burgess 65- 67), and upon being released from prison, he also discovers that his parents have effectively disowned him, leasing out his bedroom to a tenant (Burgess 134). As a criminal, he is a pariah of society. This very distinct attitude—the lack of empathy shown to him by his friends, parents, and the law—illustrates a culture that is slowly becoming one, all-consuming machine. In his essay about the dangers of too much power residing in the hands of the government, English philosopher John Stuart Mill writes, “Their [the people’s] passivity is implied in the very idea of absolute power” (Mill 47). This notion truly echoes in A Clockwork Orange. It raises a similar sentiment upheld by F. Alexander. He emphasizes, “There are great traditions of liberty to defend…The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life” (Burgess 161). At the hands of “the Government,” one sees the effects of totalitarianism beginning to operate in the minds of the people, only being taken to dangerous extremes in the Ludovico technique. This leads into the second paradigm, which is that of youth. Alex is a fascinating protagonist for a dystopian novel because he is not a
discontent individual, nor is he someone seeking to revolutionize his society. He commits horrendous crimes because it is all that allows him to feel emotion in an increasingly robotic world. Heller and Kiraly state, “…_A Clockwork Orange_ portrays a detached, uncaring society where ultraviolence is the only method of saying, ‘I am alive’” (Heller and Kiraly, Jr. 199). Typically, adolescence is associated with the struggle to find one’s self in a world that wishes to mold the individual to fit its needs, rather than the other way around. Though Alex’s actions are horrendous, his struggle to simply feel alive in an alienating society is something the audience regards with empathy. It is a shocking portrait of the mindset of this state, for only those who commit unspeakable obscenities are the ones allowed to feel human emotion. Robbie Goh argues that Alex’s alienation is further emphasized through his use of an invented slang, a language called ‘Nadsat’ that “represents conditioning and entrapment” (Goh 264). The language is used pervasively throughout the novel, to such an extent that it is often difficult to decipher Alex’s narration. But essentially, that is the point, for Alex is alienated from the audience as well. What Burgess presents to the audience through these two paradigms is a very raw and embryonic vision of a dystopia, for one sees how it acts in its new and emerging form, and specifically, how it preys upon those who struggle to escape its effects. So, how does an emerging totalitarian society learn to effectively control its population? By learning how to control those who threaten to disrupt the order of it. And thus, the corrupt government takes in Alex as their guinea pig for the Ludovico technique. Burgess utilizes this set-up to expose the defining characteristic of a dystopia: the forceful revocation of free will from the people. It is the underlying characteristic of all aspects of a dystopia, from oppression, to censorship, to lack of individual rights, to surveillance. The inherent evil that lingers underneath all of these qualities is that moral choice is not an option. Burgess states in the introduction:
he associates it with the cacophonous sounds of the music used in the violent recordings he watched (Burgess 139). It is a key moment in the novel when the audience realizes that those qualities one associates with individualism—creativity, art, personality—are being eradicated from him. In attempting to eliminate the conflict that arises out of free will, a dystopia eliminates the human. F. Alexander remarks 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… Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure, but of pain” (Burgess 156). There is a conflict between humanity and the control of a state. For a state to be completely efficient, human frailty must be removed from the system. However, what many governments will fail to recognize is that suffering and happiness are symbiotic. One cannot exist without the other, and one cannot be human without the ability to choose between good and evil
Significance of the Study:
A Clockwork Orange is set in a dystopian version of England, where society feels crumbling and chaotic. The story centers on Alex, a 15-year-old delinquent who’s equal parts charming and terrifying. He’s the self-proclaimed leader of a gang of “droogs”—Dim, Georgie, and Pete—and together, they wreak havoc on their city. Their exploits are nightmarish: assault, robbery, destruction, and even murder. Alex and his droogs hang out at the Korova Milkbar, where they drink drug-laced “milk-plus” to amp themselves up for their escapades. Alex narrates the story in Nadsat, a mix of Russian slang, English, and invented words, pulling readers into his twisted perspective.
From the start, it’s clear Alex is more than a thug. He’s got a love for classical music, especially Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which he calls “Ludwig van.” Music is almost a religion for Alex—a sharp contrast to his violent tendencies. But Alex’s control over his gang begins to unravel. Georgie and Dim challenge his leadership, tired of his dominance, and things come to a head during a break-in. They invade a writer’s home, brutally assault his wife, and Alex’s love for control pushes him too far. The gang turns on him during another botched crime, leaving Alex to take the fall. He’s arrested, convicted of murder, and sent to prison.
Prison isn’t the end of Alex’s story—it’s a pivot. Inside, he manipulates guards and other inmates with his charm but ends up volunteering for an experimental government program, the Ludovico Technique. This “treatment” promises to reform criminals by conditioning them against violent behavior. What Alex doesn’t realize is how invasive—and devastating—the process will be. During the treatment, Alex is forced to watch scenes of extreme violence while being drugged to feel excruciating sickness. The goal is to make him physically ill at even the thought of violence. But there’s a catch: Beethoven’s Ninth, his great love, is part of the soundtrack to these films. Soon, Alex can’t listen to his beloved music without feeling the same nauseating disgust.
When Alex is released, he’s a completely different person. He’s incapable of defending himself, even against attacks, because the very idea of violence makes him sick. He becomes a target for revenge. First, former victims come after him, like the writer he terrorized, who uses Alex in his own political crusade against the government. Then there’s a chilling moment where Alex runs into Dim and Georgie, who have become police officers. They beat him senseless and leave him for dead.
At his lowest point, Alex tries to end his life, throwing himself out a window after being pushed too far by the writer. But he survives, and the government intervenes, quietly reversing the Ludovico Technique to avoid scandal. Alex regains his free will, but something’s changed. In the controversial final chapter (omitted from the first U.S. editions), Alex begins to grow weary of his old life. He starts longing for something more than violence—a family, stability, and a sense of purpose. It’s not a sweeping redemption, but it suggests that people can change—not through force, but through the natural course of maturity.