Christopher Owens with a foray into the literary world of nihilistic violence.


“What’s it going to be then, eh?”

One of the most famous and oft-quoted intros in literary history, it eases our descent into the hell on earth that is A Clockwork Orange, first published in 1962.

The reader, not sure if it is intended to be voiced in a pleasant tone or an aggressive one, is then introduced to Alex and his droogs (Pete, Georgie, Dim) getting ready for some ultraviolence which we as readers witness, before ructions in the ranks leave Alex to serve time for the murder of a woman. While in prison, he volunteers to undergo treatment for his violent and sexual urges. This treatment, known as The Ludovico Technique, reduces Alex to a simpering wreck unable to defend himself from provocations. After being released, Alex finds that there is truth in the old saying “what goes around, comes straight back at you.”

Of course, everyone knows the tale from Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing (and genuinely iconic) 1971 film adaptation. But the bleak visuals of a failed socialist world and the pop-art look of the droogs obscure the humble origins of the tale.

According to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, the novel was partially inspired by the fledging:

…new youth culture…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.

This period (where the concept of the teenager was born) was a genuine moral panic, with stories about delinquency, the corrupting influence of American comics and rock n’roll horrifying middle England. 

On the flipside, texts like Brave New World and the writings of behaviourists like B.F Skinner acted as the ideological backbone for Burgess while writing the novel, thus leading to the main metaphor of a clockwork orange: something once filled with vitality now reduced to a machine.

With Alex acting as narrator of this tale, the reader initially feels forced to choose which side to be on. The use of Nadsat (a mixture of Russian and English slang) not only shows how easy it is to come up with youth terminology but also reinforces that Alex is still himself a teenager. Therefore, it’s easy to be horrified as he gleefully details beating up tramps and breaking into people’s houses for kicks. However, when he describes the techniques used to brainwash him, we find ourselves conflicted: are we happy to see this bastard suffer, or should we be concerned at the torturous methods employed by the legal establishment?

It all depends on whether you think Alex a truly irredeemable character or, according to the prison chaplain who mistakes his interest in the bible’s more violent imagery, whether you think goodness is “…something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

Ultimately, my reading of the scenario was that this was a state that had collapsed into nihilistic violence and so I found myself becoming numb to what was happening to Alex, even whenever he is taken away and beaten by several police officers (who happened to be his droogs at the beginning of the tale). It’s a bleak world, regardless of whether Alex is a scumbag or not, but the fact that he is a scumbag means that a little Schadenfreude can be enjoyed at his expense, while still being non-surprised at the violence around him.

Controversy still surrounds the final chapter, which was left out by both the American publishers (until 1986) and Kubrick’s film. Both end with Alex saying “I was cured alright”, leaving us to imagine he’ll go back to robbing and raping his way around the city, which leaves us in a moral quandary: was it better for Alex to be a passive bootlicker under the control of the state or a murdering rapist acting on his own free will? It definitely chills the reader to think that, in the battle of free will, we must accept that there will be some who use it for evil or the alternative is a bland, homogonised, cold and bleak future where re-education by the state is a necessary tool to keep control.

However, chapter 21 (note the number) actually sees Alex restless and unsatisfied, despite having a new gang of droogs. He ends up bumping into Pete, who has settled down with a family. And suddenly Alex feels that he would like a family of his own as well.

Some have argued that this is completely out of character with the rest of the book, which depicts Alex as a sex crazed, violent sociopath. I can certainly sympathise with such a reading. However, the notion that we can become good (voluntarily) without the need for the state to impose its jackboots on our neck is a powerful one and one that resonates with me much more these days as someone in their mid-30’s. Plus, Burgess was of the belief that violence is something all young men experiment with, but that most grow out of it and only use it in defence of their families. Indeed, it’s something I have seen myself: various hoods I went to school with (who were properly nasty and vicious people) seemingly grew up and settled down. Of course, that’s no guarantee that they’re completely reformed citizens (and that is certainly the case when it comes to Alex) but their days of trouble making are long behind them. Hence the significance of the chapter number being 21: the supposed age of maturity.

Regardless of which version you read, this book is a masterpiece. While both endings are strong and pose questions to the reader long after they’ve finished the text. It also helps that the pace is quick, that Burgess (in Alex) gives us an engaging narrator, the Nadsat is easy to pick up on and the philosophical arguments remain terrifyingly potent today.

Anthony Burgess, 1962, A Clockwork Orange. Penguin Books ISBN-13: 978-0241951446.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

A Clockwork Orange

Christopher Owens with a foray into the literary world of nihilistic violence.


“What’s it going to be then, eh?”

One of the most famous and oft-quoted intros in literary history, it eases our descent into the hell on earth that is A Clockwork Orange, first published in 1962.

The reader, not sure if it is intended to be voiced in a pleasant tone or an aggressive one, is then introduced to Alex and his droogs (Pete, Georgie, Dim) getting ready for some ultraviolence which we as readers witness, before ructions in the ranks leave Alex to serve time for the murder of a woman. While in prison, he volunteers to undergo treatment for his violent and sexual urges. This treatment, known as The Ludovico Technique, reduces Alex to a simpering wreck unable to defend himself from provocations. After being released, Alex finds that there is truth in the old saying “what goes around, comes straight back at you.”

Of course, everyone knows the tale from Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing (and genuinely iconic) 1971 film adaptation. But the bleak visuals of a failed socialist world and the pop-art look of the droogs obscure the humble origins of the tale.

According to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, the novel was partially inspired by the fledging:

…new youth culture…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.

This period (where the concept of the teenager was born) was a genuine moral panic, with stories about delinquency, the corrupting influence of American comics and rock n’roll horrifying middle England. 

On the flipside, texts like Brave New World and the writings of behaviourists like B.F Skinner acted as the ideological backbone for Burgess while writing the novel, thus leading to the main metaphor of a clockwork orange: something once filled with vitality now reduced to a machine.

With Alex acting as narrator of this tale, the reader initially feels forced to choose which side to be on. The use of Nadsat (a mixture of Russian and English slang) not only shows how easy it is to come up with youth terminology but also reinforces that Alex is still himself a teenager. Therefore, it’s easy to be horrified as he gleefully details beating up tramps and breaking into people’s houses for kicks. However, when he describes the techniques used to brainwash him, we find ourselves conflicted: are we happy to see this bastard suffer, or should we be concerned at the torturous methods employed by the legal establishment?

It all depends on whether you think Alex a truly irredeemable character or, according to the prison chaplain who mistakes his interest in the bible’s more violent imagery, whether you think goodness is “…something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

Ultimately, my reading of the scenario was that this was a state that had collapsed into nihilistic violence and so I found myself becoming numb to what was happening to Alex, even whenever he is taken away and beaten by several police officers (who happened to be his droogs at the beginning of the tale). It’s a bleak world, regardless of whether Alex is a scumbag or not, but the fact that he is a scumbag means that a little Schadenfreude can be enjoyed at his expense, while still being non-surprised at the violence around him.

Controversy still surrounds the final chapter, which was left out by both the American publishers (until 1986) and Kubrick’s film. Both end with Alex saying “I was cured alright”, leaving us to imagine he’ll go back to robbing and raping his way around the city, which leaves us in a moral quandary: was it better for Alex to be a passive bootlicker under the control of the state or a murdering rapist acting on his own free will? It definitely chills the reader to think that, in the battle of free will, we must accept that there will be some who use it for evil or the alternative is a bland, homogonised, cold and bleak future where re-education by the state is a necessary tool to keep control.

However, chapter 21 (note the number) actually sees Alex restless and unsatisfied, despite having a new gang of droogs. He ends up bumping into Pete, who has settled down with a family. And suddenly Alex feels that he would like a family of his own as well.

Some have argued that this is completely out of character with the rest of the book, which depicts Alex as a sex crazed, violent sociopath. I can certainly sympathise with such a reading. However, the notion that we can become good (voluntarily) without the need for the state to impose its jackboots on our neck is a powerful one and one that resonates with me much more these days as someone in their mid-30’s. Plus, Burgess was of the belief that violence is something all young men experiment with, but that most grow out of it and only use it in defence of their families. Indeed, it’s something I have seen myself: various hoods I went to school with (who were properly nasty and vicious people) seemingly grew up and settled down. Of course, that’s no guarantee that they’re completely reformed citizens (and that is certainly the case when it comes to Alex) but their days of trouble making are long behind them. Hence the significance of the chapter number being 21: the supposed age of maturity.

Regardless of which version you read, this book is a masterpiece. While both endings are strong and pose questions to the reader long after they’ve finished the text. It also helps that the pace is quick, that Burgess (in Alex) gives us an engaging narrator, the Nadsat is easy to pick up on and the philosophical arguments remain terrifyingly potent today.

Anthony Burgess, 1962, A Clockwork Orange. Penguin Books ISBN-13: 978-0241951446.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

2 comments:

  1. Christopher

    Didn't Anthony Burgess ask for the withdrawal of Clockwork Orange from cinemas after the violent mugging of an elderly man for just 50 pence which was said to have been encouraged by the violence of the Droogs?

    Fascinating insights into the capacity of violence by humans and of the youth culture milieu of the late 50s and early 60s which the book is set.

    Worth comparing the apparent nihilism of Clockwork to the voices of disaffected working-class youth in another literary masterpieces of the time such as Albert Finney's "Loneliness of the long distance runner" and "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Barry,

      no, it was Kubrick who asked Warners to withdraw the film (allegedly down to death threats). Burgess fell out with Kubrick over this as he felt that he'd been left alone to defend the book/film against charges of copycat violence. One of the many reasons why Burgess developed an antagonistic relationship towards the tale: he would regularly proclaim it one of his least favourite of his novels, but would regularly return to it (as in the case of the RSC musical, with U2 supplying the music).

      Two great texts mentioned by yourself that have fallen out of favour in the last twenty years. Nowadays, if you mentioned them, most would think you were referring to Iron Maiden and The Specials.

      Delete