My students have been nagging me to start a post about Anthony Burgess' novel, A Clockwork Orange, so here it is. The novel (novella if you like, I'm not bothered) was published in 1962 and personally I have no problem calling it science-fiction, in the same way I call Frankenstein science fiction (in the gothic mode) and 1984 science fiction (in the allegorical mode). CO is science fiction in the psychological mode- it explores questions of free will, and it's also richly comic and satirical. Why do people always slag off genre fiction? Jane Eyre is romantic fiction, Dracula's horror. They're just very good examples of those genres. Call a spade a spade, everyone. If it's a really good spade, it doesn't become a 'personal excavatory device', does it? No. A Clockwork Orange is very good science fiction, thank-you.
Having said that, a lot of people don't rate it that highly in literary terms. Including Burgess himself- "It is not, in my view, a very good novel," Burgess wrote, "but it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the view that some people were criminal and others not. A denial of the universal inheritance of sin is characteristic of Pelagian societies like that of Britain, and it was in Britain, about 1960, that respectable people began to murmur about the growth of juvenile delinquency and suggest [that the young criminals] were a somehow inhuman breed and required inhuman treatment... There were irresponsible people who spoke of aversion therapy... Society, as ever, was put first." In other words, not an especially good novel, but an important statement. You can say the same about George Orwell's 1984- with more justification, I reckon, I think Burgess did a better job with plot and character than Orwell, but that's just my opinion.
A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London. 15-year-old Alex, the main character, and his three friends are devoted to ultra-violence and 'horrorshow'. They beat up old men, torture and murder, with no qualms. Despite this diabolical orgy of criminality, they are merry and spirited and horribly, horrilby likeable. Alex is the only one in his gang who has fully conscience of what he's doing; on the contrary, his 'droogs' arrange horrorshow in a rather childish way, without knowing why. While committing ruthless acts of violence, Alex mantains an 'elevated' attitude. He doesn't listen to pop, but only to classic music. After the government decides to brainwash him by the 'Ludovico therapy', he'll be no more able to appreciate his favorite composers. (The name 'Ludovico' alludes to Ludwig van Beethoven.) That's the big question of the novel- can we, should we, protect humnity as a whole by destroying the individual humanity of the individual? How happy would we be to be obedient robots in paradise? More happy than rugged individuals in a violent anarchy? Or, put it another way, if a man has to do good, has no option to be bad, then he's not good at all, is he?
So why is it called A Clockwork Orange, then?
1. When Alex is treated to become sick at the thought of violence, he turns into 'A Clockwork Orange'. Or as the prison chaplain says, "When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man." A clockwork orange is not an orange, in the same was as a man who can make no decisions is not a man.
2. It's something to do with the contradiction and jarring tragedies involved in trying to force soemthing organic, complex and natural (an orange) into a mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian (you know- like Isaac- he was big on fruit in all kinds of ways and not just oranges...) and ordered (clockwork).
3. Burgess says there's a Cockney phrase, 'weird as a clockwork orange' that he just liked. I'm not sure- I asked my dad once (who was a card-carrying Cockney of Burgess's generation) and he said he's never heard of the phrase- the phrase he used for something odd was much ruder (email me and I'll tell you what it was- if you're over 18...)
4. Burgess knew some Malay, and the word for 'man' is 'orang' or 'orange' (as in 'orang utang'- which means 'man of the forest'. Honest!) So, in a way 'a clockwork orange' is 'a mechanical man'.
5. It's a really cool title. I can only think of five titles that are cooler. Write me a comment and I'll tell you what they are!
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