A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

I can’t remember why I brought this book, I just remember my 13 year old self dragging my mother round Waterstones in South Kensington, telling her we weren’t leaving the shop until we found it. Then 3 pages into it on the tube, wondering what on earth I had done. However, Ten years on and at least 30 re-reads later, although my book is looking remarkably dog-eared, I am still glad I brought this book. I adore this book, I will rave to strangers on trains about it and give copies away to the needy. The needy of course being those who still need to read it.

Although it is not a very long novel, the reader who is new to "A Clockwork Orange", will probably find themselves faced with somewhat of a marathon ahead of them. Anthony Burgess demands more of a reader in this one book than in any other of his works, or anybody else’s for that matter. The language the narrator speaks, a mixture of made up words, Russian, English and more common slang, will either be the making or breaking of you. Although there are editions of the book available with a "Nadsat" (What Burgess called his "teen-speak") dictionary. Mine does not (although it does have a preface by Blake Morrison, which is very interesting) and that is the way Burgess intended it. Yes, at the first shaky peek the challenge seems impossible, but although it does require some brain use, most of the words can be easily translated by looking at the rest of the sentence. Most of the 200 odd Nadsat words that Burgess uses are wordplay, or at least word association, nor were words picked by random. For example, the Nadsat word for work is “Rabbit”. The Russian word for slave is Rab and the word also contains echoes of the word robot.

But of course, it is much more than the language, otherwise it would just be a strange dictionary of words you will never use.

Published in 1963, "A Clockwork Orange" is set in a bright and seemingly horrific future. Alex, the book’s humble narrator, is the leader of his teenage gang, who pillage and slash their way through their evenings (In 1944 Burgess was an army solider serving in Gibraltar, his then wife was beaten and robbed by a gang of deserting GI’s. In A Clockwork Orange Burgess fictionalises this incident, giving himself a cameo of sorts, in the form of F Alexander, a man whose wife is raped by Alex and also happens to be writing a novel called “ A Clockwork orange”.). Alex is finally imprisoned for his misdeeds and is eventually turned over to the state that choose him as a guinea pig for the controversial rehabilitation treatment which is designed to curb violence and sexual behaviour and allow a prisoner to be rehabilitated back into society in a matter of weeks.

Alex is an unlikely hero, but he is a hero nonetheless. What he and his “Droogs” (Russian for friends) get up to in the first part of the book are likely to make you sick, but the wrongs executed against him by the government and his former victims are far more unspeakable than any crime he himself committed. That Burgess has the reader rooting for a character who steals, rapes and murders is a headscatcher but something I can't fight. It's not that I am condoning Alex's actions, its more complex than that, as you will see.

Although the events that take place in the book are really quite nasty, it is not as graphic as the reality of it would imply. The only thing that makes me feel a bit queasy is the cover. Now I am not an eye person, I have eyes obviously, I just don’t like them. The black and white cover of my Penguin edition features a photograph of part of a human head with the eyeball bulging and eyelid clamped open with pitiless clamps. This is in reference to the films Alex is made to watch while undergoing the reform treatment. (A Quick aside: the treatment Alex has, the Ludovico technique, uses Beethoven’s music to control him, Beethoven is Alex’s “favourite” and provides the books soundtrack. The Ludovico technique is also a play on Beethoven’s first name). Only rather than being handed some popcorn on his way in, Alex is in a straightjacket with his head strapped down and clips on his head so he cannot shut his eyes.

Although the book is occasionally in danger of becoming nothing more than an one-sided protest about brainwashing and mind control, in the main it debates free will and choice. After undergoing treatment Alex ceases to have morel choice. Should we be good because society wants us to be or should we be good because we choose to be? Is it better to choose to be bad than to have goodness force upon you? The state attempts to gain control by turning Alex into a robot (in other words, a clockwork orange). Alex naively welcomes the chance to be free and believes that to be good would be, err, good! The prison Chaplin warns him “it might be horrible to be good.” Burgess himself sums up both the books title and theme in his preface to the modern American edition (better than me!)

“I mean it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness… by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he 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 by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”

It is the morel fibre that runs through the book that is the main reason Burgess so hated the Stanley Krubrick Film. The Film omits the last chapter and therefore some of its message. This may not have been Krubicks fault. He may of genuinely not been aware of the ending, as up until 1988 the American Editions didn’t contain the final chapter either. This may not seem to be a lot to get worked up about, but it changes both the structure and morel integrity. There are 21 chapters, 21 being the age when we are meant to become an adult. The book is also in three parts with seven Chapters in each, referring to Shakespeare’s seven ages of man. The last chapter also completely changes the end of the story, but I shall let you find that one out for yourselves.

I neither love nor hate the film but can no longer read the chapter where F Alexander’s wife is raped without humming “Singing In The Rain” (Yes, I know, Humming while reading a rape scene may sound strange, but this is no ordinary book). As with most books, this one blows its movie adaptation out of the water. So even if you don’t hold the film in high esteem, there is no reason this book can’t enrich your life.