A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - ANTHONY BURGESS

There are some who cite A Clockwork Orange as being their most favourite of books and there are others who have written whole academic texts about it, analysing its meaning and its relevance to the modern world. Myself, I concur it's a special book for a lot of reasons not least due to its enduring appeal to academia since being first published in 1962. A Clockwork Orange sits alongside other great dystopian novels such as Brave New World and 1984 so is therefore very much a classic but unlike these others that it shares the same shelf space with it sits there almost reluctantly like a truculent child forced against its will to share its toys. Arguably, unlike Brave New World and 1984, A Clockwork Orange still seems to have the power to provoke and incite reaction which is why it's worth revisiting and potentially revising.

One of the interesting things about Alex - 'your humble narrator' of the book - is that he's only 15 years-old and that after a night of drug-laced milk drinking and mindless sex and violence he has to be up the next morning to go to school. And then the two girls that Alex picks up in the record shop are aged just 10. With this in mind, the dynamic of the book changes somewhat and rather than imagining the characters as depicted by Kubrick, it reminds us that these are children that Burgess is writing about.

The violence that Burgess describes as enacted by Alex and his droogs is nasty and near-touching evil but it's also very theatrical and almost comically slapstick. It's like the violence of a cartoon - like Tom and Jerry - brought to life but with a sense of unreality about it, the only real thing being the victims of it. The whole sense of theatricality is elevated to an almost majestic level, of course, by the language. If the world is a stage then Alex is one of its greatest thespians, treading the boards like a master, his every utterance orated in a very wonderful Shakespearian manner saturated in Russian-based slang. Alex's speech is an art-form in itself. In fact, the language and the style in which Burgess has written A Clockwork Orange is the key to it being such a great book. If Burgess had written it in normal English language all we would have would be the bare bones. Burgess's linguistic inventiveness gives it flesh.

The question of violence is obviously central and very early on in the book Alex shines a light upon it: 'But what I do I do because I like to do' he tells himself during the visit to his home by his social worker (or Post-Corrective Adviser, as Burgess calls him) following the previous night's ultra-violent escapades. And right there is the nub of it. Alex is intelligent, curious of mind and cultured as evidenced by his love of Beethoven. He has awareness, insight and can when required be quite philosophical. On the question of modern youth (Alex being a representative of that) the problem is not his but of society's and its twisting of morality alongside a profound misunderstanding and denial of self. According to Alex, that is.

According to the government, society needs protecting from the likes of Alex and his droogs but rather than just continuously filling the already overcrowded jails a new solution called the Ludovico Technique is put forward, it being basically a chemically-advanced form of aversion therapy. Another solution though made less light of in both book and film is to recruit the likes of Alex as police officers.

The new method of drug treatment to cure the will to violence sits unhappily with some, however, who view it as a step towards totalitarianism. 'A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man' as one of the critics put it. That same critic being the same writer whose home Alex and his droogs had invaded two years earlier and attacked him and raped his wife.

But everyone knows all this already, or at least they should if they've read the book or watched the film. The question is: Has anything changed in our understanding and perception of A Clockwork Orange over the years? Did Burgess's vision of the future come true or has it already happened and we're way beyond it?

The book and the film have slightly different endings and the film has to some extent muddied the meaning of what Burgess was originally saying. That is, that there will always be violence in the young and that the night will always belong to them. Night time as a playground for youth will always be the case but the violence within youth is but a phase that will be grown out of. The violence of the State, on the other hand, is a whole other matter. 

State violence is violence in perpetuity and much greater and far more dangerous than the oftentimes mindless violence of youth because State violence is calculated and used in a very matter-of-fact way. State violence comes in many forms and is ultimately a means to have the individual and society as a whole to bend, submit and succumb to the State's will. And what is the State? Well, the State is a collection of institutions whose power is near-unassailable, where only the representative's faces change whilst the actual power remains steadfast, unshakeable and unmovable through any democratic means.

State power cannot be voted away, only the people (and then only up to a point) who represent and wield that power at any given time. What Burgess is questioning then in A Clockwork Orange is the morality of power, the morality of violence, and ultimately the morality of State power, State violence and consequently State control. A subject that nowadays is hardly ever questioned, hardly ever challenged and hardly ever even thought about let alone discussed.

So is A Clockwork Orange of any relevance nowadays? Interestingly and arguably it's probably not but only because I would hazard a guess that nowadays the book is read (and the film watched) for entertainment only, with the most entertaining part being the first chapter where we follow the exploits of Alex and his droogs as they terrorize, fight and rape their way through the city after dark before sloping off home for a good night's sleep to be up for school in the morning. What follows for the other two thirds of the book though still entertaining is decidedly less so even though it's the most important.

A Clockwork Orange is social commentary through science fiction and to its credit has not actually dated much at all. The real world has changed, of course, and is probably harder to comprehend nowadays than it was when Burgess wrote his book in 1962. Whether youth violence has increased, decreased or remained the same since then is hard to tell. Personally, I'd say it's decreased due mainly to there being a lot more distractions available. State violence on the other hand I would say has increased but only through the shifting of the terrain upon where it's conducted. It's a lot more subtle nowadays, a lot more nuanced but still with the same purpose, that being to bend the individual to the State's will. To forge a compliant, unquestioning and obedient society of happy consumers. A society of clockwork oranges.

John Serpico