Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange may not at first seem like a “lovable” novel, as I’ve titled my list, since it seems to glorify violence—or at least it seems to do so for people who only know Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film version of the book, after viewing which nobody will ever innocently hear “Singin’ in the Rain” again. But you can love a book because of the ideas it makes you think about, and that is why so many people appreciate Burgess’s novel, which he himself called “didactic.” But I have a feeling he saw the lessons of the book as more obvious than they are.
Burgess’s dystopian satire is demonstrably one of the most honored British novels of the past 75 years. It was ranked #65 on Modern Library’s famous “100 Greatest Novels” and #68 on the BBC’s list of the “100 Greatest British Novels.” It was also named on Time Magazine’s “100 Greatest Novels Since 1923” and Guardian’s “100 Best Novels Written in English.” And to show that its popularity remains as high as ever, it was one of ten novels from the 1960s selected for the list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors named to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee in 2022. I’m including it here as #14 (alphabetically) on my list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
The novel is admittedly filled with violence—Burgess coined the term “ultraviolence” to describe the youth culture of meaningless and random aggression engaged in by the teenaged gangs in the near-future society depicted in the book. The protagonist and “humble narrator” Alex, a 15-year-old gang leader and sociopath, is highly intelligent, witty, and a big a fan of irony, classical music, and sadistic mayhem. In Part I of the novel, he and his gang sit drinking “milk-plus” (i.e., drug-laced milk) at their favorite milk bar, planning their evening activities which, as it turns out, include beating up a scholar coming from the library, robbing a store and beating up the owner and his wife, fighting a rival gang, beating a beggar, stealing a car, and terrorizing a couple at an out of the way country home, culminating with a gang-rape of the wife. It seems to be just business as usual for the gang. Next day, skipping school, Alex meets two ten-year-old girls at a record store, invites them to his home and rapes them. That night, he and his gang rob and beat an elderly woman, but as he attempts to flee the scene, Alex is betrayed and left behind by one of his cohorts with a grudge against him. He is arrested by the police.
The old woman having died, Alex is sentenced to 14 years in prison for murder in Part II of the novel. In prison, Alex, in trouble again after the violent death of a cellmate, is given the option of taking part in an experimental treatment for behavior modification known as the “Ludovico Technique.” This involves a radical form of aversion therapy in which Alex is forced to view scenes of graphic violence while at the same time being injected with nausea-inducing drugs that ultimately condition him to become severely ill at the very thought of any form of violence. Unfortunately, since the violent films are presented with a soundtrack including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Alex’s enjoyment of his beloved “Ludwig Van” is also affected. Burgess was applying the conditioned-response techniques of B.F. Skinner to his fictional futuristic correctional strategy. The technique seems to work, though, and Alex is re-released into society as a rehabilitated felon.
I won’t go into Part III here in case you haven’t read the book, but you might guess that Alex does have some problems in his readjustment to society. You might also have realized what is the chief question addressed by the novel. It’s a significant and persistent question in religion as well. Given the existence of a deity who is conceived of as both all-powerful and totally good, why would He/She allow evil in the universe He/She created? And from this follows the corollary question: Why are human beings created with the ability to do evil? The novel’s Ludovico Technique demonstrates what happens when human free will is taken away, and one cannot freely choose between good and evil. Can the being who is left even be called human? Here the loss of Alex’s enjoyment of Beethoven is an important detail: The one positive human aspect of Alex’s personality has been destroyed along with his negative characteristics. He seems now nothing more than an automaton.
A Clockwork Orange was originally written in 21 chapters, but when it was published in the U.S., Burgess’s American publisher insisted on cutting the final chapter, in the belief that it ended the novel more positively than seemed realistic. Kubrick shot his movie based on the American version of the novel, and when he was made aware of the final British chapter, he still decided to end the film as he had originally intended, agreeing with the American publisher’s assessment. But thematically, I think the final chapter is necessary, and the more recent, “restored” version of the novel, containing that final chapter, is what is now generally available here. When you read it, as I hope you do, make sure your book has 21 chapters.
Why “A Clockwork Orange,” by the way? Burgess has answered that question several times in several different ways, but the gist of it is that the title juxtaposes two contrasting images: The orange is a natural, living thing. Clockwork is a thing mechanized, something that moves in a predictable, predestined manner. Alex, thus, after his Ludovico Technique, is an orange that has become clockwork.
I can’t let this review go without commenting on the futuristic youth slang invented by Burgess for his novel. The slang, called Nadsat, is mainly a colorful mix of adapted and modified Russian words and occasional Cockney rhyming slang. A friend is called a droog in this patois, God is known as Bog, your face is your litso, and that drug-doped glass of milk is a glass of moloko. Horrorshow is the ironic slang word for “good” (I suppose the prescient Burgess was anticipating the later use of “bad” for “good”). Money is called cutter, rhyming with “bread-and-butter.” In itself, the language is I suppose merely a curiosity, but it serves as a hook to get you involved as a reader from the novel’s very first sentences:
What’s it going to be then, eh?
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pet, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.
How can you not want to read on after that? So read on, Dear Readers. And I definitely recommend that you read A Clockwork Orange if you haven’t already.