A Clockwork Orange (novel)

Did You Know?

• The original manuscript of the book has been kept at McMaster University's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since 1971.
• In 2022, the novel was included on the 'Big Jubilee Read' list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
• Roald Dahl called it 'a terrifying and marvellous book'.

Plot summary

Alex is a 15-year-old gang leader in a near-future dystopian city. His droogs—Dim, Georgie, and Pete—join him in acts of ultra-violence. They drink milk-plus at the Korova Milk Bar, then assault a scholar, rob a shop, beat a beggar, and fight a rival gang. They break into a cottage, beat the husband, and gang-rape his wife; the husband is a writer whose manuscript is titled A Clockwork Orange. Alex later strikes Dim at the Korova, causing tension. At home, he plays classical music loudly before sleeping. The next day, after feigning illness, he meets two pre-teen girls at a record store, drugs and rapes them. That night, his droogs mutiny; Georgie challenges Alex's leadership. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting Georgie, then agrees to rob a wealthy elderly woman's home. Alex knocks her unconscious, but Dim strikes him as he tries to flee, and the gang abandons him to police. Alex learns the woman died from her injuries.

Characters

Alex, the protagonist and gang leader, calls himself 'Your Humble Narrator' and later 'Alexander the Large' while raping two ten-year-old girls. Georgie, the greedy second-in-command, tries to take over the gang and is later killed during a botched robbery. Pete, who avoids taking sides, later marries Georgina, renounces violence, and loses his Nadsat speech; a chance encounter with him influences Alex to grow bored with violence. Dim, an idiotic but formidable fighter who uses a bike chain, later becomes a police officer and exacts revenge on Alex. P. R. Deltoid, a criminal rehabilitation social worker, lacks empathy and spits on Alex after his arrest. The Prison Chaplain questions the morality of turning a violent person into a behavioral automaton and is the only character truly concerned about Alex's welfare. Billyboy, a rival gang leader, later becomes a police officer and beats Alex.

Analysis

Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in Hove, a senescent English seaside town, after returning from abroad to find a youth culture based on coffee bars, pop music, and teenage gangs, amid fears of juvenile delinquency. The novel's inspiration was his first wife Lynne's beating by drunk American servicemen during World War II, which caused her to miscarry. The book targets behaviorism, pioneered by figures such as B. F. Skinner. Burgess stated he wrote it in three weeks. He offered several explanations for the title: he overheard 'as queer as a clockwork orange' in a London pub in 1945 and assumed it was Cockney; it may be a pun on the Malay word 'orang' meaning 'man'; and he described it as a metaphor for an organic entity turned into a mechanism. In a letter, he wrote that when a man ceases to have free will, he is no longer a man but 'just a clockwork orange', a toy to be wound up by God, the Devil, or the State.

Adaptations

A 1965 film by Andy Warhol titled Vinyl adapted the novel. The best-known adaptation is the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex. In 1987, Burgess published a stage play titled A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, featuring songs inspired by Beethoven and Nadsat slang. A 1988 German adaptation at the Bad Godesberg theater used a musical score by Die Toten Hosen, released on the album Ein kleines bisschen Horrorschau; the track Hier kommt Alex became a signature song. In February 1990, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced A Clockwork Orange: 2004 at the Barbican Theatre in London, with a script by Burgess and a score by Bono and The Edge of U2. The production received mostly negative reviews; Burgess called the score 'neo-wallpaper' and was disappointed. In 1994, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater staged a production directed by Terry Kinney, with K. Todd Freeman as Alex. The Canadian premiere of the play was presented in 2001 by UNI Theatre in Mississauga, Ontario, directed by Terry Costa.