MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature

A Clockwork Orange Analysis Bachelor Thesis

Tereza Kuderová

Brno 2018

Advisor: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.

Declaration I declare that I worked on the bachelor thesis independently and I used only the sources listed in the bibliography. Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných zdrojů uvedených v seznamu literatury.

Brno, 30.3.2018 ______Tereza Kuderová

Acknowledgement I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for her guidance, help, patience and advice. Abstract This thesis deals with an analysis of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and its most prominent features and issues. The work analyses issues such as violence, the presence of good and evil, the importance of free will, the significance of the last chapter, The Ludovico Technique, government control, music in A Clockwork Orange and the fictional language Nadsat.

Key words: Violence, good and evil, free will, music, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, Nadsat

Anotace Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá rozborem knihy Mechanický pomeranč od Anthonyho Burgesse. Práce analyzuje nejvýznamnější témata v knize jako je násilí, přítomnost dobra a zla, důležitost svobodné vůle, význam poslední kapitoly, Ludovicovu metodu, vládní kontrolu, hudbu v Mechanickém pomeranči a smyšlený jazyk Týnů.

Klíčová slova: Násilí, dobro a zlo, svobodná vůle, hudba, Mechanický pomeranč, Anthony Burgess, jazyk Týnů Table of contents Intorduction ...... 6 1. Good and Evil ...... 10 2. Violence ...... 15 3. Free will ...... 17 4. Chapter 21 – adulthood – changing priorities...... 20 5. The Ludovico Technique – changing people’s behavior ...... 25 6. Government control - misuse of power ...... 29 7. Music in ACO ...... 33 8. Nadsat...... 37 Conclusion ...... 41 List of References ...... 43

Intorduction

John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born on 25. February 1917 in Manchester as a son of a singer and dancer Elizabeth Burgess and a piano-player Joseph Wilson. He was an English novelist, critic, journalist, composer, and playwriter. He had one older sister, Muriel, but she died, as well as his mother, in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Later his father married a publican Margaret Dwyer (“A brief life”).

He studied English language and literature at the University of Manchester. After graduating, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Army Educational Corps for six years. In 1942 he married his first wife Llewela Jones. After the war, he worked as a college lecturer and as a grammar-school master. Then he moved to Malaya and worked as an education officer at the Malay College. In 1959 he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was told to have only one year left of his life so he returned back to England where he started writing books. Fortunately, the doctors were wrong and Burgess lived for another thirty-three years (ibid).

Anthony Burgess wrote about fifty books, and even though he considered some of his other works to be much better, A Clockwork Orange, which was later made into a film by Stanley Kubrick, is probably the book he is famous for the most.

A Clockwork Orange (1962) is a dystopian novel about a teenager Alex and his friends who enjoy stealing, raping and beating random victims. One day, Alex is caught and sent to prison. After a few years in prison, he has the opportunity to take part in an experiment called the Ludovico Technique which should make him lose interest in violence. As a result, Alex is not able to see violence or be violent without feeling sick. But he is also deprived of the ability to choose what he really wants to do. He is forced to be good. When he is released from prison he meets F. Alexander, one of his victims, who tries to use Alex to overthrow the government. Alex ends up in a hospital and after a blood transfusion the Ludovico Technique stops working and he can enjoy violence again. However, this kind of life is not so satisfying as it was for him before and he starts changing and dreaming about having a proper job, wife, and children.

There are many reasons why the book is so popular among readers. Firstly there is the unusual title, which comes from a Cockney expression “as queer as a clockwork orange” (Morrison viii) and includes the most important statement of the book – that the application of a mechanic morality to a living organism is unnatural. Then there is the young rebellious hero,

6 or anti-hero, who is fond of violence but also classical music. Another interesting aspect of the book is the language Burgess used. By creating Nadsat, the language of the youth in the novel, he added to the originality of the book, but also produced a timeless language, which keeps the novel still up to date as we cannot tell where and when the story takes place. But the most controversial subject in the book is the explicit violence as the Burgess᾽s description of beating and raping is very detailed.

There are several causes that inspired Burgess to write A Clockwork Orange. One of the impulses came when Burgess returned from Malaya and Brunei where he worked as a teacher. He noticed that England changed since he was a young boy. “A new youth culture was beginning to appear, with pop music, milk bars, drugs and Teddy Boy violence” (“A Clockwork Orange”). The brutal violence of his protagonists is also inspired by his own experience when his wife, Llewela Jones, was beaten up and robbed by American soldiers in London during the wartime. He was also influenced by other authors, for example, George Orwell and his Nineteen Eighty-Four, and by fear of a totalitarian world. Another inspiration was the claim of some psychologists such as B.F. Skinner that free will is not important. Burgess came up with the Nadsat language when he was in Leningrad and therefore a lot of words originate in Russian (ibid).

Burgess’s work was strongly influenced by music. As a composer, he wrote music of many genres and styles including symphonies, opera, musicals and music for a film. His music was influenced mainly by classical music, specifically by Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but also by jazz and popular music. The scenes of robbery, murder, and fantasy in A Clockwork Orange are combined with songs by real or imagined composers. He uses classical music mainly by Ludwig van Beethoven, which is unusual for the teenage culture of the 1950s and 1960s, as the popular or rock and roll music would be more obvious (“The Music of ACO”).

According to The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) the reviews on the book were mixed. Burgess was praised for the use of language and for his directness in dealing with current social issues, but he was also criticised for expressing too much brutality in his work. Other reviews claimed that it is difficult to read. But fellow writers were mostly impressed by the book. Kingsley Amis said: “Mr Burgess has written a fine farrago of outrageousness, one which incidentally suggests a view of juvenile violence I can't remember having met before” (“ACO reviewed”), and Malcolm Bradbury stated: “All of Mr Burgess’s powers as a comic writer, which are considerable, have gone into the rich language of his

7 inverted Utopia. If you can stomach the horrors, you’ll enjoy the manner” (“ACO and the Critics”).

In the beginning, the book did not sell very well. It took a while to become it popular. One of the reasons that it became so famous was that Stanley Kubrick made the novel into a film adaptation. After the film came out, Burgess was invited to many interviews to talk about his book, Kubrick’s adaptation, and violence. He did not like the book as much as some of his other works so he did not understand why this book earns so much attention. However, he kept returning to the book, if it was in articles he wrote about it or in his book The Clockwork Testament (1974). A Clockwork Orange is considered to be one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature and still inspires new readers (ibid).

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) explains that there had been attempts to make a film ever since the book came out, but as the society was not prepared to see a film with such explicit violence and rape, the idea was to make a film on a very low budget and only for a small audience in film clubs. The members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles were suggested to play the droogs in the film. Burgess wrote a script for the film himself and the director Nicolas Roeg was supposed to make it into a film, but for unknown reasons, it was never carried out (“ACO on film”).

Before Stanley Kubrick filmed A Clockwork Orange, a different adaptation by Andy Warhol was made. In 1965, Andy Warhol filmed the film Vinyl based on Burgess’s novel. However, the film was not as popular as Kubrik’s adaptation. Even though Vinyl is inspired by A Clockwork Orange, it follows the book so loosely that an average audience may not notice. It contains violent scenes full of brutality, torture, and masochism as well as pornography (ibid).

The Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation was filmed about ten years after the book was published and was based on the American version, which does not include the last chapter. The reason is that Kubrick actually had not read the original British version which contains the twenty-first chapter until the screenplay was finished and after reading it he was convinced that the ending is too optimistic and does not correspond with the rest of the story (ibid).

The film made the novel so famous that Burgess was afraid that he will be remembered mainly for writing the novel from which Kubrick made the film. The adaptation depicts the violent scenes of brutality and therefore caused a lot of controversy. In the press, there were headlines like “Coming Shortly, a Film for None of the Family” or “What Good Can This Film Possibly Do?”, and later they claimed that some people tried to copy those crimes they saw in

8 the film. Due to so much controversy, the movie caused, and death threats made against Kubrick’s family, Kubrick asked the Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from British screens. It was banned in the UK until his death in 1999 (ibid).

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) claims that since the book was first published, Burgess had been asked for permissions to write a play based on the novel. The requests came mainly from amateurs and were so bad that Burgess decided to publish his own play in 1986 called A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music to provide a play that a group at any age can perform with songs and use the Nadsat. The songs are funny, playful and influenced by Beethoven as well as music-hall traditions. There is even a scene where a bearded man (reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick) comes onto the stage playing “Singing in the Rain” on a trumpet and is kicked off the stage. The play has been performed by university drama groups as well as professional theatre groups all over the world (“ACO on stage”).

According to The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) the novel has also had a big impact on popular culture. There are many bands that were inspired by Burgess’s work and was named after elements from the novel: The Clockwork Oranges, Moloko, The Devotchkas, Ultra Violence or Heaven 17(also a band in the novel). Many songs were inspired by the novel: ‘Ultraviolence’ by New Order, ‘Horrorshow’ by The Libertines or album A-Lex by Sepultura. Musicians like David Bowie, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Blur, Kylie Minogue or My Chemical Romance copied the looks from A Clockwork Orange and used it in their live performances or their music videos. There are a lot of references to the book and film in other films or TV series. In one of the episodes in The Simpsons, there is a segment titled ‘A Clockwork Yellow’ dedicated to A Clockwork Orange. The torture scene in Reservoir Dogs filmed by Quentin Tarantino was a reference to the scene where Alex and his droogs beats up the writer and rape his wife. The club in Trainspotting and the bar in A Clockwork Orange has a similar text art on walls. The Joker in The Dark Knight was partly inspired by Alex. And also many writers were influenced by it, for example, Martin Amis, J.G. Ballard, A.S. Byatt and William Boyd (“The legacy of ACO”).

This thesis focuses on an analysis of the novel A Clockwork Orange and its most prominent issues and features such as good and evil, violence, free will, misuse of power, the Ludovico Technique and the importance of the last chapter. The thesis also deals with the Nadsat language and music which are also relevant aspects of the story.

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1. Good and Evil

There is good and evil in everything. Nothing can be purely evil or purely good. Even a cruel criminal can feel love towards others. We label things as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ based on the impact it has on our lives. According to Taylor (2013), the justice system of a lot of countries says that ‘bad’ people commit crimes, therefore, they should be locked away from other people to not do them any harm. This has caused many wars and conflicts. People believe that they fight against an ‘evil’ enemy and when the evil people have been killed the ‘good’ will rule. But human nature is more complex. People are rather a combination of those two qualities (“Good and Evil”).

Burgess (2012) himself claims that we use the term ‘evil’ without defining it. We cannot say that it is a synonym for ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. Even the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not fixed in their meaning because what is right at one time can be wrong at another. So we cannot take them very seriously as they often shift. We need more absolute words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’. We are more often told not to commit evil than to do good. But unlike right and wrong, evil is always evil. It is evil to kill somebody even if it is sometimes right, for example in defense (“The Clockwork Condition”).

Taylor (2013) states that to be ‘good’ means to be emphatic, to feel compassion and to put others᾽ needs before our own. It also means altruism, selflessness, and self-sacrifice. It means not to judge people based on their race, gender and nationality but we relate to a human soul. There are many people in history having these qualities. For example Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King who stood up for the freedom and rights of others. ‘Evil’, on the other side, are people who are unable to empathize with others. Their own needs and desires come first. They can be labeled as selfish, self-absorbed and narcissistic. These people often exploit others. This relates to serial killers, rapists and also dictators such as Hitler or Stalin. These people lack empathy, are not able to see the world from the perspective of others and can not sense their rights. Of course, most people are somewhere between these two extremes. Sometimes we are egocentric in our actions and put our needs before others᾽ and sometimes we are empathic and kind and put the needs of others before our own. However, this empathy or lack of empathy is not fixed. Most of the people can work with their level of empathy and develop it (“Good and Evil”).

We can notice that Alex in A Clockwork Orange has no empathy for his victims. He is intelligent, confident and brave just like all the criminals and psychopaths in history. The act of

10 violence is a pleasure to him: “… so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful” (A Clockwork Orange 7). Another example is when Alex and his droogs are in F. Alexanders᾽ house and beat him and his wife up: “They went haw haw haw, viddying old Dim dancing round and fisting the writer veck started to platch like his life᾽s work was ruined, going boo hoo hoo with a very square bloody rot” (A Clockwork Orange 19).

But Alex and his droogs are not the only ones not having enough empathy for others. The people who try to force Alex to recover and change his behavior seem to fail in treating him with empathy and equality as well. He is forced to watch films full of violence, torture, blood and raping and they are so evil that Alex has no freedom to even close his eyes so he does not see what is on the screen:

I don not wish to describe, brothers, what other horrible veshches I was like forced to viddy that afternoon. The like minds of this Dr Brodsky and Dr Branom and the others in white coats… they must have been more cally filthy than any prestoopnick in the Staja itself. Because i did not think it was possible for any veck to even think of making films of what I was forced to viddy, all tied to this chair and my glazzies made to be wide open. (A Clockwork Orange 79)

At one point, Alex is so horrified that he starts to scream and beg them to stop the film. But the Dr Brodsky and the others show no mercy and just laugh at him: “‘Stop the film! Please, please stop it! I can’t stand any more.’ And then the gloss of this Dr Brodsky said: ‘Stop it? Stop it, did you say? Why, we hardly started.’ And he and the others smecked quite loud’” (A Clockwork Orange 79).

Also, the police and F. Alexander can be evil. When Alex is arrested and asks for a layer, the policemen, who should protect people and should be righteous to everyone, just beat him up and laugh at him: “But after that they all had a turn, bouncing me from one to the other like some very weary bloody ball, O my brothers, and fisting me in the yarbles and the rot and the belly and dealing out kicks, and then at last I had to sick up on the floor” (A Clockwork Orange 52). When Alex is released from jail he meets his old friend Dim who is now a policeman. Although Alex did not do anything bad, Dim and another policeman take him away from the city and practice violence on him. Then Alex finds the house of F. Alexander and asks him for help and F. Alexander says that this happens often: “‘You are not the first to come here

11 in distress,’ he said. ‘The police are fond of bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village’” (A Clockwork Orange 114).

F. Alexander is very nice and understanding when Alex comes to his house looking for help: “Come in, said this veck, whoever you are. God help you, you poor victim, come in and let’s have a look at you…You are the poor victim of this horrible new technique? If so, then you have been sent here by Providence. Tortured in prison, then thrown out to be tortured by the police. My heart goes out to you, poor poor boy” (A Clockwork Orange 113-114). He makes him dinner and lets him sleep in his house. But when he finds out that Alex is one of the boys who raped and killed his wife, he starts to feel rage and is willing to do anything to get revenge on him. Although Alex says that he has paid for his sins F. Alexander and his friends try to force Alex to commit suicide. They want to use him to prove that the government is wrong in its actions: “‘There are certain men who wanted to use you, yes, use you for political ends. They would have been glad, yes, glad for you to be dead, for they thought they could then blame it all on the Government… There is a man,’ said the Intinfmin, ‘called F. Alexander… who has been howling for your blood. He has been mad with desire to stick a knife in you’” (A Clockwork Orange 131).

Alex᾽s parents have an ‘evil’ side too. They are not very good parents. They seem to be afraid of Alex and do not do much to try to change his irresponsible behavior as he does not go to school very often and obviously lies to their parents about a lot of things and they do not care much for what he is doing at night. Their relationship with their son is apparently poor. There is no parental love. And this lack of love is possibly the reason for Alex’s violent behavior. When Alex comes back home after being in prison and undergoing the Ludovico Technique, they tell him that they are sorry, but someone else is living in his room and he has to find himself a place to live. Alex’s parents are probably not very glad to see him at home again and they think that he escaped from prison:“‘Oh, you’ve broken out. You’ve escaped. Whatever shall ve do? We shall have the police here, oh oh oh. Oh, you bad and wicked boy, disgracing us all like this...‘Not,’ he said, and he said it very like gloomy, ‘that we’re not very pleased to see you again and a free man, too’” (A Clockwork Orange 100).

Taylor (2013) notes that changeability of goodness is recognized by the process of ‘restorative justice’. It means that criminals have the opportunity to meet their victims and see how they have been affected by the injustice, which can often lead to a feel of empathy for their victims and lead to rehabilitation (“Good and Evil”).

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In A Clockwork Orange Alex is forced to feel empathy by watching violent films and realizing his bad behavior and Alex soon starts to feel sick whenever he sees an act of violence. Dr Branom explains to Alex what is happening: “Violence is a very horrible thing. That᾽s what you᾽re learning now…What is happening to you now is what should happen to any normal healthy human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil, the workings of the principle of destruction. You are being made sane, you are being made healthy” (A Clockwork Orange 80-81). After Alex undergoes the Ludovico Technique, he is released from prison and meets F. Alexander whose wife did not survive the attack. Alex asks him about his wife and when he finds out she is dead he feels sick and maybe empathy towards F. Alexander, but we cannot say for sure whether it is due to the Ludovico Technique or if he really regrets what he did: “I really wanted to know about his wife, remembering it very well… I viddied all clearly, my brothers, what had happened that far-off nochy, and viddying myself on that job, I began to feel I wanted to sick and the pain started up in my gulliver” (A Clockwork Orange 116).

The first-person narrator perspective in A Clockwork Orange draws the reader into the story and makes us feel empathy towards the narrator. We tend to trust the main character much more if we can see his perspective of the story. “A fundamental convention in narrative fiction is that we believe the narrator, unless the text at some point gives us a signal not to do so” (Lothe 25). People are more immersed in stories told from first-person perspective and tend to indentify with them.

The good and evil in this case is the narrator᾽s power to choose whether to say the truth or not. They can tell the reader what they want and how they want it to be interpreted and can also leave some things out, therefore, they manipulate the reader. As we can hear the story only from one side we are forced to rely on the narrator.

In A Clockwork Orange, the main character᾽s behavior is controversial. He rapes, kills and beats up people. The reader is trapped inside the narrator’s mind and has to accept his or her behavior even though they do not agree with it and find it inadequate. Estournel (2013) points out that the reader sympathizes with the main character due to the first-person narrative. Unlike in third-person narrated novel, where the reader cannot connect with the character on such high level. The first-person narrator gives us only one perspective of the story so we can not see the other points of view and therefore are likely not to feel any guilt for others’ pain or bad happenings. It even does not matter whether the character is a victim or a criminal, the reader tends to feel empathy towards the narrator anyway. Especially in A Clockwork Orange, Alex is depicted as both-criminal at the beginning and victim at the end. Although the book

13 pushes the reader to adopt the point of view of a rapist, murderer, and thief he soon understands them and how their mind works. “The unethical first-person narrative paradoxically makes the book ethical: the reader is uncomfortably led into the realm of unethicality, and it is his or her own responsibility to question it or not” (1).

Estournel (2013) indicates that in the first-person narrative the character has to see himself or herself in a mirror to paint the external picture of himself. This “mirror” for Alex is, in this case, F. Alexander. There is a lot they have in common. They are both writers – Alex mentions it when he says “this evening I’m starting off the story” (A Clockwork Orange 3), they both write a book titled A Clockwork Orange and at the end of the book Alex even wants to settle down and have a wife just like F. Alexander did. Alex also comments on F. Alexander’s name when he finds his book that he “is another Alex” (A Clockwork Orange 135). Therefore F. Alexander can be perceived as Alex in the future (4-5).

But at one point, Alex becomes a third person as well. And it is when he is sent to jail:“... I was 6655321 and not your little droog Alex not no longer” (A Clockwork Orange 57). Estournel (2013) states that Alex becomes a stranger even to himself. After going through the Ludovico Technique he becomes a different person by changing from a violent youngster to a well-behaved citizen (5-6).

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2. Violence

Jacquin (2018) explains that violence is a physical force that causes harm. Violence is a quite common type of human behavior. It can cause physical and psychological damage and has other negative effects on victims and witnesses. There are four main categories of violence based on the nature of the behavior: homicide, assault, robbery, and rape. Another kind of categorizing violence can be by the motivation. Reactive violence usually involves anger in response to a provocation. Proactive violence is more calculated, is used as means to reach a goal and usually appears when there is some kind of reward. Causes of violence can vary. There is usually a combination of factors causing violent behavior such as genetic predisposition, neurochemical abnormalities, personality characteristics (lack of empathy), information- processing deficits (tendency to view others᾽ actions as hostile), and the experience of abuse and neglect in childhood. Victims or witnesses of violence can develop several problems including anxiety, depression, lack of empathy, insecurity, anger, pathological lying and so on (“Violence”).

Violence is one of the most prominent topics in A Clockwork Orange. Not only the main character and his friends are violent, but also the government, police, doctors using aversion therapy on criminals to make them good and harmless to the society and even the victims of Alex and his droogs are violent when they want a revenge on Alex.

Alex lacks empathy. He does not care for the feelings of others. Violence is a pleasure for him:“…Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beauty” (A Clockwork Orange 7-8).

A significant message of Burgess᾽ novel is that violence creates more violence. Alex is for his behaviour punished by being a Guinea pig in a cruel treatment. The people that take part in this experiment do not care for why he is violent. They just want criminals to stop being violent and protect the society from them. The society and government think that it is only right to make the criminals suffer for their actions: “An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also?” (A Clockwork Orange 70). Although they do not use physical force they make him suffer by watching violent films and using some kind of drugs that make him feel sick when seeing violence: “Now every time I was watching this I was beginning to get very aware of a like not feeling all that well…The pains I felt now in my belly and the

15 headache and the thirst were terrible” (A Clockwork Orange 77-79). Another example of violence creating more violence is when Alex is forced by F. Alexander to commit suicide. F. Alexander is furious and wants to get revenge on Alex for killing his wife:“F. Alexander… has been howling for your blood. He has been mad with desire to stick a knife in you” (A Clockwork Orange 131).

We do not know the family background of Alex᾽s friends, but we can notice that Alex does not have a good relationship with his parents. It is apparent that he has been neglected since his childhood. They do not force him to go to school, they even do not act like parents and are a bit afraid of him:

‘…my mom called in in a very respectful goloss as she did now I was growing up big and strong: ‘It’s gone eight now, son. You don’t want to be late again.’ So I called back: ‘A Bit of a pain in my gulliver. Leave us be and I’ll try to sleep it off and then I’ll be right as dodgers for this after.’ I slooshied her give sort of a sigh and she said: ‘I’ll put your breakfast in the oven then, son. I’ve got to be off myself now.’ (A Clockwork Orange 28)

There is a lack of communication between Alex and his parents. They do not function as a role model for him. They also do not show any sign of parental love towards their son: “Dad looked at me with a not-so-pleased suspicious like look but said nothing, knowing he dared not, and mum gave me a tired like little smeck, to thee fruit of my womb my only son sort of ” (A Clockwork Orange 37). Even though they suspect him of doing something bad at night instead of working, as he claims he does, they do not argue with him: “‘Papapa said: ‘Not that I want to pry, son, but where exactly is it you go to work of evenings?’... ‘it’s mostly odd things, helping like. Here and there, as it might be.’ I gave him a straight dirty glazzy, as to say to mind his own and I’d mind mine… ‘Sorry son,’ he said, ‘but I get worried sometimes’” (A Clockwork Orange 37). When Alex returns back from prison he gets no support from his parents. They just tell him that they cannot take him back because they did not expect him to return so soon and so he has to take care of himself as his room is being rented by somebody else. This lack of support and love makes Alex think that:“Nobody wants or loves me. I suffered and suffered and suffered and everybody wants me to go on suffering” (A Clockwork Orange 102).

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3. Free will

One of the most obvious and often discussed topics in A Clockwork Orange is free will - the ability of every person to make a decision without being forced to choose goodness. Burgess says that forced goodness is not real or human. Our own choice is more important and more natural than to do good just because we are forced to do it. The freedom of individual should not be limited or encroached on. This quote by the Prison Chaplain, who is against the Ludovico Technique and does not want Alex to undergo this cruel treatment and to lose his free choice, shows it the best: “Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man” (A Clockwork Orange 71). Burgess (2012) explains it himself in an article for The New Yorker: “What I was trying to say was that it is better to be bad of one’s own free will than to be good through scientific brainwashing. When Alex has the power of choice, he chooses only violence. But, as his love of music shows, there are other areas of choice” (“The Clockwork Condition”).

When Alex speaks to the Prison Chaplain he warns Alex that if he consents to this treatment he will lose his moral choice:

Very hard ethical questions are involved. You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321. Never again will you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State’s Peace. I hope you take all that in. I hope you are absolutely clear in your own mind about that… It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good... Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? (A Clockwork Orange 71)

Alex does not believe in the Ludovico technique and mistakenly thinks that it is the beginning of his freedom. He does not take the Chaplain’s warning seriously and makes fun of the whole thing: “‘Oh, it will be nice to be good, sir.’ But I had a real horrorshowsmeck at that inside, brothers” (A Clockwork Orange 71). Davis (2002) says that Alex understands the idea of free will as “a radically truncated and undeniably immature philosophical position based upon nothing more than desire and self-indulgence…Blinded by his immaturity and self- indulgence, Alex offers an irreconcilable system of good and evil” (27): “This biting their toe- nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t interfere with their pleasures” (A Clockwork Orange 40). When Alex finishes the therapy and is about to be released he is introduced to the society as a

17 changed person who is not able to do any harm to anyone, but he also helpless when it comes to physical attacks as he can no longer defend himself without becoming ill. This situation is best described by Alex:“…dealing out tolchock after tolchock. And I daren’t do a solitary single veshch… it is better to be hit at like that, than to want to sick and feel that horrible pain” (A Clockwork Orange 108). The Prison Chaplain perceives this as taking Alex his freedom. “Choice. He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement... He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice” (A Clockwork Orange 94). Alex is not able to decide for himself, the only thing he can do is to be good according to what is believed to be the right behavior in society. He is not even able to defend himself because using any kind of physical force towards anyone would make him feel sick.

Burgess᾽s book points out that free will is more important than being good by being forced to fit social norms. And even if our decision is wrong it is our choice and we have to deal with the consequences. Also to feel rage is a part of human nature, anger and similar 'negative' feelings. This is what makes us human beings. We should have the choice to feel them and deal with it in what we think is the right way. Waugh (1995) states that violence in the book is introduced as “a necessary evil which is closed to social amelioration or rational planning” (145). Burgess’s theological approach synthesizes a Pelagian liability to the doctrine of free will with an Augustian conviction of sin. He was convinced that evil lives inside the soul of every person and can be destroyed only by his or her death (145). Newman (1991) comments that Burgess was influenced by two thinkers and Catholic monks and in A Clockwork Orange “the factions contesting an election are easily recognized as inspired by Pelagius the ‘liberal’ and Augustine the ‘consevative’” (64). Burgess as a Catholic believed in heaven and hell. He believed that our future and destination is in our hands. If we wish to sin it is our choice as well as kindness and good behavior. Burgess (2009) states that if god is omniscient and knows everything then he knows how we will lead our lives and if we are going to end up in heaven or hell which means that our destiny is already decided (“ACO Resucked”). Burgess (2012) claims that we are predisposed to sin as Adam sinned and his guilt was transmitted to his descendants (“The Clockwork Condition”).

On the other hand, even our own freedom should have some limits. A Clockwork Orange shows that often people trying to keep their own freedom can easily encroach on someone else’s freedom and inhibit them in their actions. Alex and his friends restrain the liberty of their victims. The government is trying to cure criminals by a new technique, but in fact, they deprive

18 them of free will. Even F. Alexander, who does not agree with the government making puppets from people, wants to revenge on Alex and drives him to suicide. “The brutality displayed by both the state and Alex’s former victims is a chilling commentary on how victims of violence and brutality can easily become victimizers. Alex’s former victims are no less brutal than Alex in their attempts to enact revenge on him” (Scorzo 2016).

Davis (2002) argues that Alex hardly admits that his behavior often “infringe upon the free will of others, nor does he recognize the wide ranging forces at play in his own life that temper, if not destroy, any semblance of free will. Thus Alex’s immaturity drives his desire for adopting such a free-market approach to the ethics of good and evil” (27). Burgess (2012) says that evil is a destructive and intentional negation of life. It is always bad to kill somebody even if it is sometimes the right thing to do. It is even bad to kill an animal which we need in our diet (“The Clockwork Condition”). Burgess says that behavior which is not accepted by society should be punished but we should not try to completely change the man᾽s thinking or personality:“An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust” (A Clockwork Orange 70). Burgess (2012) states that after all, we all want to belong somewhere and conform to something. Even rebels want to find a conformity. For example, belonging to a group of people with the same thinking, same hairstyle, same taste in music, fashion… A man has to somehow conform to society to be able to take care of himself and his family – go to work, socialize. But we have the right to be frightened when the conformity is imposed by the state. “Unfortunately, the political conformity which leads to a colored uniform, a flag, a slogan, a muzzle on free speech tends to work on a willingness to conform in nonpolitical areas” (“The Clockwork Condition”). Burgess (2012) says that “to be tied to the necessity of deciding for oneself is to be a slave to one’s will… It is easier to be told: smoke hale – ninety percent less tar; read this novel, seventy-five weeks on the best-seller list; don’t see that movie, it’s artsy-shmartsy” (“The Clockwork Condition”). Dix (1971) indicates that Burgess’s anti-hero is actually likable and charming even when he is violent. He is assertive and tries to fight against society. And that is what Burgess tried to say, that passivity and “spiritual death” is worse than violence (16).

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4. Chapter 21 – adulthood – changing priorities

In the penultimate chapter, we learn that due to the loss of a lot of blood, Alex has to have a blood transfusion and The Ludovico Technique stops working on him and he can again do things he used to do before and without being sick. Alex is happy, listens to his favourite Ludwig van again and says that he“was cured all right” (A Clockwork Orange 132). In the last chapter, Alex is back doing bad things with his new group of friends. In the beginning, he enjoys all the things he used to do, but after some time he realizes he is not so interested in doing all the things he used to do before like stealing and beating people but he rather tells his new group of friends what to do. He is also quite bored by this all. “Perhaps I was getting too old for the sort of jeezny I had been leading, brothers” (A Clockwork Orange 139). He is now older and more than in violence he is interested in proper life with a good job and a nice wife and children. “I kept viddying like visions, like these cartoons in the gazettas. There was Your Humble Narrator Alex coming home from work to a good hot plate of dinner, and there was this ptitsa all welcoming and greeting like loving… I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up... Youth must go, ah yes” (A Clockwork Orange 140). He grows up from his violet behavior. He chooses to be good out of his free will without any help of medical treatment.

Davis (2002) notes that Alex is dissatisfied with his old droog life. He is exhausted with all the violence and sexual perversity and wants change. Therefore he starts searching for a different fulfillment. It may come as a surprise, that Alex actually begins to feel a strong desire to start a family. The shift from a young, violent and almost emotionless and careless boy to an adult with completely different desires is astonishing. There is one scene where Alex finds a photograph in his pocket. It is a photograph of a baby which he scissored out of a magazine: “It was of a baby gurgling goo goo goo with all like moloko dribbling from its rot and looking up and like smecking at everybody, and it was all nagoy and its flesh was like in all folds with being a very fat baby” (A Clockwork Orange 135). But Burgess knows, that this sudden transformation would be too easy and miraculous and when his new droogs start laughing at him for this photo he tears it to pieces. Another sign that he lost interest in his old life is that he does not want to go out to the streets with his droogs and to participate in vandalism: “Look, droogies. Listen. Tonight I am somehow just not in the mood. I know not why or how it is, but there it is. You three go your own ways this nightwise, leaving me out. Tomorrow we shall meet same place same time, me hoping to be like a lot better” (A Clockwork Orange 136). But

20 he is not going to join them. He is already in a different phase of his life longing for a family (32).

In this last chapter, Alex also meets his old friend Pete, who is now married to a beautiful girl and is happy. When Alex sees it, he realizes that he wants to have his own family with a beautiful wife and a son to teach him a lot of things, although he knows that his son will probably be as restless and wild as Alex was when he was younger. Burgess (2012) comments on this last chapter that shows Alex growing up when he realizes that he is not happy with the life he has lead. Now he thinks of love and consideres to be a husband and father. This option has always been here and at last, he chooses to take it. “He wants a different kind of future… He grows bored with violence and recognizes that human energy is better expended on creation than destruction” (Burgess 2009).

Alex’s attitude towards money and music is different as well. He now works in the National Gramodisc Archives and realizes that he does not want to just waste his money without thinking. He is now more responsible because he perhaps grew up. So when he is expected to buy some girls drink he hesitates: “What it is is I don’t like just throwing away my hard-earned pretty polly, that’s what it is” (A Clockwork Orange 135). Unlike his droogs who have a different opinion: “Earned? It doesn’t have to be earned, as well thou knowest, old droogie. Took, that’s all, just took, like” (A Clockwork Orange 135).

The whole time Alex is a big fan of classical music and despises pop music. But in the last chapter, he feels that something is changing. He suddenly listens to romantic piano music called Lieder and does not understand what is happening with him. It may be a hint that he desists from violence and the music he used to so closely connect with violence. Now he is a grown-up, wants to have family and experience love instead of violence:

What I wanted these days I did not know. Even the music I liked to slooshy in my own malenky den was what I would have smecked at before, brothers. I was slooshying more like malenky romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras and me lying on the bed between the violins and the trombones and kettledrums. There was something happening inside me, and I wandered if it was what they had done to me that time upsetting my gulliver and perhaps going to make me real bezoomny. (A Clockwork Orange 137)

Burgess (2009) explains that the book is divided into three sections with seven chapters in each section. Which makes twenty-one in total and this is because the number twenty-one is usually seen as the age of maturity. Although the number of chapters and the ending, where

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Alex reaches maturity and renounces violence, was important for the author, it was not important for his New York Publisher. Neither Stanley Kubrick included the original ending in his film adaptation because the script for the film was based on the American version of the book and Kubrick was not aware of the difference between American and British version. The New York Publisher thought that the last chapter was not very credible (“ACO Resucked”). “The final chapter watered down the overall effect of the book, so the publisher’s reasoning went. The United States public never saw the complete novel until 1986” (Newman 1991). But Morrison (2000) explains that Burgess was afraid of not finding another publisher and also due to lack of money he accepted the publisher’s conditions (xvii).

Thanks to this omnition of the last chapter and a different ending in the film, people often think that A Clockwork Orange is about violence and immoral behavior, which is not what Burgess᾽s intentions were. In fact, the author believes that people are able to change, that they are capable of moral growth, and freedom and free will are important. Burgess (2009) defends himself and says that human beings change but readers have to decide for themselves whether they consider the twenty-first chapter to be important or if it is unnecessary. He states that he could be wrong after all and writers are not their best judges (“ACO Resucked”).

There is also one thing that shows through the book a lot and possibly symbolizes that Alex is still a child and it is milk. Davis (2002) claims that Alex is often at the Korova Milkbar where he drinks glasses of milk which is an important part of a diet of a growing young boy. Also in the film, the milk in the Korova Milk Bar is served straight from breasts of statues of naked women which is another link to innocence and childhood (24). According to Liana Burgess (2013), the milk represents the innocence of Alex-more precisely political innocence. Liana Burgess says that she remembers when she and her husband first saw the film and Burgess was pleased when he saw the scene where Alex is blinded by a bottle of milk with which his friend hits him. This scene illustrates that Alex is politically innocence, but his friends are not. As people are born innocent and only later they become affected by society, Alex has been surely a disaffected member of the polity (“A Glass of Milk”).

Though it seems that Alex eventually chooses to give up the violent life he lead previously, Dim, a member of Alex’s old gang, chooses a different path. In the book, he is described as someone who is not very intelligent: “Dim not ever having much of an idea of things and being, beyond all shadow of a doubting Thomas, the dimmest of we four… Dim was very very ugly and like his name, but he was a horrorshow filthy fighter and very handy with the boot” (A Clockwork Orange 4). But Dim is probably the strongest and the most violent of

22 all the four boys.“…poor old Dim, for all his dimness, was worth three of the others in sheer madness and dirty fighting” (A Clockwork Orange 14). In the end, Dim joins the police. It can be seen as a turn to goodness, but more likely an easier access to violence. As a policeman he is brutal and cruel but there are no consequences for his behavior as he works for the government and is trusted to use his power for justice. When Alex visits a library and some old people recognize him and start beating him up, someone calls the police. Dim and Billyboy as policemen come to save Alex but it is clear that they enjoy their power and torture others free of consequence: “They were lashing into these starry old vecks with great bolshy glee and joy, swishing away with malenky whips, creeching: ‘There, you naughty boys. That should teach you to stop rioting and breaking the State’s Place, you wicked villains, you’” (A Clockwork Orange 109). When he meets Alex again, instead of helping him he and his colleague take Alex into the country and beat Alex up while he is not even able to protect himself. “And they were on to me all the time, O my brothers… Then they gave me one final tolchock on the litso each and I fell over and just laid there on the grass” (A Clockwork Orange 111-112). It seems that Dim enjoys his new job a lot. Therefore, Burgess shows that not everyone changes and grows out of violence, and there are a lot of factors that influence our decisions and behavior, and intelligence and heredity are one of them.

Georgie is more intelligent and also more ambitious than Dim. He wants to be in the lead position of the group and rebels against Alex and is often sarcastic towards him. Alex even have a dream that Georgie is the leader of the group and then his dream becomes reality: “So my dream told truth, then. Georgie, the general saying what we should do and what not do” (A Clockwork Orange 40). Unlike Alex, who is violent for an entertainment, Georgie is interested more in the financial gain. He complains that stealing in shops is not enough and they should steal as real men so they will get more money off it. “We itty round, shop-crasting and the like, coming out with a pitiful rookerful of cutter each. And there’s Will the English in the Muscleman coffee mesto saying he can fence anything that any malchick cares to try to crast. The shiny stuff, the ice… the big big big money is available” (A Clockwork Orange 39). Georgie is so greedy that he continues in robbing houses. One day, when he, Dim and Pete are in a house of a rich man and when they try to escape, Georgie trippes on a carpet and is killed by the owner of the house. When Alex finds out what happened to Georgie, he thinks it is only fair: “Georgie being killed, though it was more that one year after being caught by the millicents, it all seemed right and propper and like Fate” (A Clockwork Orange 58).

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Pete has always been the most reasonable of all the members of the gang. When there is some kind of argument between the droogs, he is the one who tries to resolve the argument.“Oh now, don’t, both of you malchicks. Droogs, aren’t we? It isn’t right droogs should behave thiswise… If the truth is known, Alex, you shouldn’t have given old Dim that uncalled-for tolchock” (A Clockwork Orange 23-24). When Alex calls himself the leader of the group and is offensive to others, Pete says that the group should be more democratic.“No offence, Alex, but we wanted to have things more democratic like. Not like you like saying what to and what not all the time” (A Clockwork Orange 39). In the last chapter, Pete decides to quit this kind of life, he is married, works at State Marine Insurance and lives an ordinary but satisfied life. Therefore Burgess shows that people can find their own way out of violence and bad behavior.

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5. The Ludovico Technique – changing people’s behavior

The Ludovico Technique is a new treatment which should deprive criminals of their need to break the law and rebel against society. But everybody, who undergoes this therapy, also loses the ability to defend themselves and to choose what they really want to do. When Alex meets Alexander F., he states his opinion on this kind of remedy for criminals: “You᾽ve sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good” (A Clockwork Orange 115). The technique consists of watching violent films and having injections which contain some kind of drug that makes the person feel very sick when thinking of, or seeing violence. In A Clockwork Orange, Dr Brodsky calls The Ludovico Technique “association, the oldest educational method in the world” (A Clockwork Orange 86). The technique is similar to the one that Pavlov used except that Dr Brodsky and Dr Branom punish Alex instead of using positive reinforcers.

Alex does not really believe in this new way of curing delinquents, he is excited to try it and is convinced that it will not work on him. The technique includes injections and Alex mistakenly thinks they contain just some vitamins he needs to make him healthier and stronger after being in prison. But in fact, he is given some substance that makes him feel sick. “The onset of nausea is deliberately associated with the enforced viewing of films about violence. Soon he cannot contemplate violence without feeling desperately sick” (“The Clockwork Condition”).

Because of agreeing to undergo Ludovico’s Technique, a series of ultra-violent films accompanied by a classical-music soundtrack and designed to purge the young hoodlum of any desire to commit evil acts, Alex’s sentence is shortened and he is released from prison before serving his punishment. Nevertheless, the process – which successfully deprives him of any violent urge and causes Alex to experience severe nausea when confronted by scenes of brutality and aggression – leaves him unable to enjoy the music he loves so much - Beethoven: “Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It’s a sin, that’s what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!” (A Clockwork Orange 85). He cries in pain. Davis (2002) claims that Alex blindly believes in goodness and charity of government and its institutions recompense him with disillusionment and hopelessness (31). Mamber (1976) points out that “while the Ludovico Technique itself is surely a form of violence, it is the process of establishing negative mental

25 associations through forced witnessing of violence which is of primary importance. In the third part, it is not the physical beatings he receives at the hand of others which lead him to suicide, but the mental torture of hearing the now Ludovico-associated Beethoven music. Alex’s relation to violence is defined by attitude rather than by action” (“A Clockwork Orange”).

Not only that Alex feels sick when seeing violence and is unable to defend himself, but also once when he crushes his head against the wall because he is desperate, he feels sick because he realizes that it is the same as the violence in the films he is forced to watch. But the reason why he feels sick is not because of aversion to blood or violence, but because of the injections he gets. His attitude toward violence does not change, he is just influenced and limited in his actions. By his own choice to undergo Ludovico Technique, Alex loses his free will and is stripped out of his humanity. When he is introduced to society as a changed man deprived of violence but also self-defense, Alex points out that he is just a clockwork orange. “How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?” (A Clockwork Orange 94). But one of the people in the audience says: “You have no cause to grumble, boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen” (A Clockwork Orange 94-95). Alex became just a puppet which behavior is influenced by the newly learned principles of manner. He is just an empty human body. He has been brainwashed and is not able to make his own decisions, therefore he is just a mechanism operated by the State. Burgess (2012) comments on this that Alex is forced to be good and society is happy and looks forward to better crime-free days (“The Clockwork Condition”). Díez Cobo (2003) remarks that Alex becomes “a sacrificed victim for the good of humanity” (67). Burgess (2012) states that people are not machines and the separation of one impulse form another is not that easy. The state has crossed the line with this technique where “it has entered a region beyond its covenant with the citizen; it has closed to its victim a whole of non-moral goodness, the vision of paradisal order which great music conveys” (“The Clockwork Condition”). Sinfield (1983) states, that in A Clockwork Orange, Burgess presents an “American Britain” where technology takes a complete control. The novel expresses a fear of future where there is no liberalism. “While fifties novels tend to have heroes who are about to begin intellectual creation, Burgess᾽s hero is engaged in destroying it” (252).

Dr Branom says that violence is horrible, but it is him as well who participates in torturing Alex. He says that Alex is learning that violence is bad but it is clear that although Alex has been violent towards others he knows it is wrong he just choose to behave that way:

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“Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it…You are being made sane, you are being made healthy…When we are healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all” (A Clockwork Orange 80-81). When Alex tries to persuade Dr Brodsky that he has learnt a lot and he knows that violence is wrong and they should let him go, Dr Brodsky says: “I see what is right and I approve, but I do what is wrong” (A Clockwork Orange 87). Brodsky says that knowing that violence is wrong is not enough. Alex should be somehow forced to do good because he will still choose to do bad things no matter what society says is right.

Mamber (1972) points out that the title A Clockwork Orange appears in the book as a work written by Alexander, the same person whose wife was beaten up and raped by Alex and his friends. Alex reads from the book: “The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword- pen-” (A Clockwork Orange 18). While the Ludovico Technique turns Alex into a clockwork orange, it is unclear whether Alex’s return to free will at the end of the book frees him from a clockwork orange or puts him to another form of it (“A Clockwork Orange”).

In the end, Alex is forced to listen to Ninth Symphony which makes him feel sick and the pain is so unbearable that he attempts suicide. He loses a lot of blood which means he has to be given transfusion and the effect of the Ludovicovo Technique is gone. Once more he is able to make decisions and not feel the sickness he felt when seeing violence or being violent. He has the freedom of choice again and that is what Burgess endeavors to say in the whole book that this is the way it should be. “When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole listo of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva... I was cured all right” (A Clockwork Orange 132).

Burgess (2012) explains that when he was writing the book, he read somewhere that it would be a good idea to use aversion therapy as a remedy for delinquents. He was appalled. The title “A Clockwork Orange” was a perfect and the only possible name for the book. The unwilling marriage of an organism to a mechanism, of thing living, growing, sweet, juicy, to a cold artifact sounds like a nightmare (“The Clockwork Condition”). The title of the novel comes from a cockney expression. A Clockwork Orange – a piece of fruit that looks natural and organic but in fact is mechanical. “Burgess chose this title because he intended it, in the context of his story, to be a metaphor for a man who is incapable of making free choices” (Scorzo 2016). Burgess (2009) claims that:

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If man can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange — meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is a moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. (ACO Resucked)

Burgess (2012) also talks about a radical behaviorist B. F. Skinner and his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Skinner’s book is about dealing with human behavior. It deals with man’s behavior which can be conditioned through reinforcement and punishment. This method uses aversive and non-aversive inducements. Skinner (2002) believed that people can learn to associate good behavior with reward and bad behavior with punishment: “Almost all major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of human behavior” (24). Although Skinner is against negative reinforcements, it is the conditioning that Burgess does not agree with. He thinks that to become better and submissive citizens to a state through conditioning to save the environment and the race is not right because we should decide to be better out of our free will. He believes that man cannot force his salvation but his future has already been chosen by god (“The Clockwork Condition”).

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6. Government control - misuse of power

Books are often a response to the current social and political issues. A Clockwork Orange is not an exception. Waugh (1995) states that:

Intellectual debates about the desirability or otherwise of social planning and the role of reason in human life were fuelled by the various political and economic crises of the sixties and seventies. Throughout the sixties, and particularly after the Cuban Missile crisis, there were widespread fears concerning the potential for world destruction in the unholy alliance of advanced technological knowledge and the maneuverings of the Cold War. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, visually materialized in Stanley Kubrick’s film, has become one of those images of the sixties integral to its mythic constructions. (145)

According to Díez Cobo (2003), the main message of A Clockwork Orange is to alert people to the danger of a behaviorist and mechanistic philosophies which can end up in a totalitarian world. Aware of oppressive political administrations, he depicted a possible future where people are manipulated by mass media revolution and advances in cybernetics. Alex and his friends are victimizers and victims at the same time. The society allows consuming hallucinogen beverages that support violent reactions in them (59):

They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quite horrorshow... Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one… (A Clockwork Orange 3)

Diéz Cobo (2003) notes that the government does not really do anything about the violence of society. It is shown through the mass media which “was the usual about ultra- violence and bank robberies and strikes and footballers making everybody paralythic with fright by threatening to not play next Saturday if they did not get higher wages…” (A Clockwork Orange 31). This also explains Alex’s rebellion against the adult world and slipping to the same behavior as the rest of the society (59). Morrison (2000) notes that Alex in latin a-lex means “without law” (ix).

Burgess (2012) admits that he had been rebuked and laughed at for expressing his fears of the power of the modern state to diminish the freedom of the individual. There were many books that have warned of this power e.g. 1984 by George Orwell. Burgess says that he does

29 not trust politicians and statesmen. He believes that people who decide to be in politics have either negative intentions or they do not have a talent for anything else. He admits that government makes laws to protect the community etc., but it also has been responsible for a lot of our nightmares and has so much power that we are right to fear it (“The Clockwork Condition”).

Misuse of power is the evil side of the government which should protect the citizens. The State tries to reform criminals and make the country a more safe place to live in, but at the same time, it uses this reform to torture the criminals in the same way as they tortured their victims. The result, which makes these criminals unable to do anything but good, is disturbing. Another thing is, that Dim becomes a policeman. The fact that someone, who used to be a criminal, can become a policeman, indicates that something is wrong with the society.

Everything that Dr Brodsky and Dr Branom do to Alex to make him a better person actually shows the hypocrisy of the State. They practice violence on him by making him watch brutal films and make him take some drugs to change his attitude to violence. “The like minds of this Dr Brodsky and Dr Branom and the others in white coats... they must have been more cally and filthy than any prestoopnick in the Staja itself. Because I did not think it was possible for any veck to even think of making films of what I was forced to viddy, all tied to this chair and my glazzies mad to be wide open” (A Clockwork Orange 79). The way he is forced into watching films about violence and at the same time listen to the music he likes is also a kind of violence from the State. “…they flashed nasty bits of ultra-violence on the screen, my glazzies clipped open to viddy all, my plott and rookers and nogas fiwed to the chair so I could not get away” (A Clockwork Orange 83). They make him to suffer in a similar way like he made suffer his victims. Although it is not a physical but mental torment. In the end, he is a brainwashed individual who is not able to commit any kind of violence or crime and even the thought of violence makes him feel sick. “…this Ludovicovo stuff was like vaccination and there it was cruising about in my krovvy, so that I would be sick always for ever and ever amen whenever I viddied any of this ultra-violence” (A Clockwork Orange 89).

Burgess (2012) explains that punishing Alex for his bad behavior by arresting him is not enough for the state. Imprisonment is not disincentive enough for him to not commit a crime again, therefore they want to come up with something more efficient and quicker which would eliminate criminals forever (“The Clockwork Condition”). Díez Cobo (2003) comments that instead of trying to find a way to make Alex realize his mistakes and reduce his violent behavior, the government forces him to goodness and a socially acceptable behavior in an unnatural

30 manner – through chemically induced sickness (59). Dr Brodsky comments on this: “We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime” (A Clockwork Orange 94). Scorzo (2016) notes that when the state tries to cure Alex, they make him unable to defend himself against their violence and psychological torture, but they do not care about it (“Alex’s Violence”). The society in A Clockwork Orange cares only about the fact that they found a way to make criminals harmless and that it works, but they are unconcerned by Alex losing his ability to choose or to express any real feelings. “‘The point is,’ this Minister of the Inferior was saying real gromky, ‘that it works.’ – ‘Oh,’ the prison charlie said, like sighing, ‘it works all right, God help the lot of us’” (A Clockwork Orange 96). Through the Prison Chaplain, Burgess expresses his fear of possible future where the government takes control over people.

Although F. Alexander᾽s wife died after being beaten and raped by Alex and his friends, he doesn᾽t agree with government making machines from people. He thinks the government is bad at governing the state and he wants it to be changed. He tries to use Alex as a tool for subversion of the government. “I think that you can help dislodge this overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness. You can be a very potent weapon, you see, in ensuring that this present evil and wicked Government is not returned in the forthcoming election” (A Clockwork Orange 116-118). So in the end, he becomes violent too which shows how easily one can slip into being violent and make a bad choice. In spite of the fact that he does not agree with the government using people for their experiments and therefore depriving them of their free will which also shows his hypocrisy. Díez Cobo (2003) indicates that the novel is focused on criticising the duplicity and hypocrisy of society and state- individual relationship. The first part is about young hoodlums practicing violence and thievery just for pleasure. The third part of the book offers an explanation for this behavior. “Evilness, corruption, amorality lie deep-rooted at the basis of the political and social apparatus, and individuals seem to be no more personified embodiments of this situation” (62). The novel also judges the political and social situation with ontological deliberation, as shown in this statement by Alex (62): “This biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into the cause of goodness, so why the other shop?” (A Clockwork Orange 31).

Even though at the beginning it seems that F. Alexander wants to help Alex, after realizing that Alex killed his wife, he and his friends try to use Alex for their political purpose

31 and drive him to suicide. They lock him in a room and in the next room they play some symphony to make him jump out of the window and kill himself just to prove that the Government is responsible for this all and should not govern any more. “I slooshied for two seconds in like interest and joy, but then it all came over me, the start of the pain and the sickness, and I began to groan deep down in my keeshkas… The window in the room where I had laid down was open... I creeched out to the world: ‘Goodbye, goodbye, may Bog forgive you for a ruined life.’ Then I got on the sill, the music blasting away to my left, and I shut my glazzies and felt the cold wind on my listo, then I jumped” (A Clockwork Orange 124). Newman (1991) states that Burgess was trying to write a book on consequences of behavioral and government interventions, not scientifically accurate study (66).

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7. Music in ACO

Alongside writing, music and also composing music was Burgess’s another big passion. So naturally, it shows in his books. According to The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017), Alex listens to classical music because Burgess wanted his hero to be presented as cultured and intelligent. Another reason is that if Alex did not listen to classical music but rock and roll or even pop music, it would be more predictable and obvious for the teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s (“The Music of ACO”).

Music is the only thing that makes Alex human. Music is a real joy for him and along with removing his drive to be violent, the ability to enjoy music is removed as well. The method which the government uses is called the Ludovico Technique. We can notice that the name is ironically similar to the name of Alex᾽ favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. Morrison (2000) claims that no one else in the book seems to love music as much as Alex. Even the psychologist Dr Brodsky appears not to care for the music that is playing along with the films he projects to Alex (xiii). When Alex hears Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony playing along with the film about World War II he starts to scream that it is a sin “using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music” (A Clockwork Orange 85). Dr Brodsky’s response to Alex is: “So you’re keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It’s a useful emotional heightener, that’s all I know” (A Clockwork Orange 85). There is another evidence that Alex is very sensitive when it comes to classical music. When he and his friends are in Korova Milkbar and some opera music is playing, Alex shivers and enjoys listening to it. But Dim, Alex’s friend, makes fun of it and starts howling like a dog. This makes Alex mad and he hits Dim and says that Dim is “a bastard with no manners and not the dook of an idea how to comport yourself publicwise” (A Clockwork Orange 23).

According to Self (2013), classical music is connected with Nazis and dictators such as Hitler or Stalin. Adolf Hitler very much enjoyed going to opera and listening to Richard Wagner. Joseph Stalin often visited the Bolshoi theatre and liked listening to Dimitri Shostakovich. Paul Joseph Goebbels, a German Nazi politician, listened to Beethoven (“The rest is power”). Burgess᾽ protagonist who loves classical music, as well as violence, cannot be just a coincidence. For Alex, music is closely connected with violence: “Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me like feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blitzen and have vecks and ptitsas creeding away in my ha ha power” (A Clockwork Orange 32). When he listens to music he imagines violent scenarios happening:

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“Listening to the J. S. Bach…I would like to have a tolchecked them both harder and ripped them to ribbons on their own floor” (A Clockwork Orange 27).

Žižek (2013) points out that The Ninth Symphony has been used at many historical events. In Nazi Germany, it was often used to celebrate great public events. In Soviet Union, the Ninth Symphony, with The Ode to Joy added to it, was used as a sort of communist song. Now, The Ode to Joy is an official anthem of the European Union. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, when most of the Western music was prohibited the Ninth Symphony was accepted (“Beethoven’s Ode to Joy”). “The Ode to Joy tune - which Beethoven composed as a motto for the whole world to take to its heart, to become a national anthem of humanity itself, something much bigger in its impact even than the anthems of nation states that had emerged by the early 19th century - has been adopted as a the motto of dictatorships as well as democracies” (Service 2014).

When Alex is arrested and is put into a prison cell where he falls asleep. He dreams about The Ode to Joy which lyrics are now changed. The lyrics are about violence, which again supports that Alex connects music and violent, but they talk about Alex being beaten up by others, which can be the foreshadow of the future happenings where Alex is no longer the criminal but the victim: “…then I herd the Ninth, last movement, with the slovos all a bit mixed- up, this being a dream: Boy, thou uproarious shark of heaven, Slaughter of Elysium, Hearts on fire, aroused, enraptured, We will tolchock you on the rot and kick your grahzny vonny bum” (A Clockwork Orange 55).

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) notes that when Alex undergoes the Ludovico Technique and his desire to be violent is removed he also loses his love for music which can be perceived as losing his soul and an example of the moral degeneration of the state. Burgess and his hero have a similar opinion about popular music. Alex shows his contempt for pop music when in a record shop and saying things like “I could viddy the discs they were buying were these teeny pop vesches“ (A Clockwork Orange 34). In another case, when Alex talks about modern music, he says: “The stereo was on again and was playing a very sick electronic guitar veshch” (A Clockwork Orange 23). Similarly, Burgess called popular music ”twanging nonsense” and stated that ”youth knows nothing about anything except a mass of cliches that for the most part, through the media of pop songs, are foisted on them by middle- aged entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better” (“The Music of ACO”).

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As we can see, even music can be both good and evil. In this case, for Alex, music gives him pleasure as well as torture. His description of how he feels when he listens to music really shows that he enjoys music more than anything else:

Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my Gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rilling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. The flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers. (A Clockwork Orange 26)

On the other hand, music also makes Alex feel sick. Due to the Ludovico Technique, he is forced to think in a different way and listening to music becomes torture to him. When he is forced to listen to some classical music he cannot enjoy it like he used to but it causes him pain: “‘I slooshied for two seconds in like interest and joy, but then it all came over me, the start of the pain and the sickness, and I began to groan deep down in my keeshkas…‘Oh, Bog in Heaven help me.’ I was like wandering all over the flat in pain and sickness, trying to shut out the music and like groaning deep out of my guts…’” (A Clockwork Orange 123-124).

At the end of the book, Alex loses his passion for classical music but he also loses his interest in violence. This supports the idea that he connects classical music and violence and imagines violent scenarios whenever he hears Beethoven or other classical music composers. In the last chapter, he notices that he does not enjoy the music he used to listen to before. Instead of classical music, he listens to Lieder – romantic piano music: “I was slooshying more like malenky romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras…” (A Clockwork Orange 137).

Therefore although music is usually perceived as something good what gives us pleasure, we can see that in A Clockwork Orange it has also its dark side. The music here is used as violent and evil tool as well. We can experience it mainly through Alex for whom music is joy at the beginning but at one point the pleasure of listening to music becomes torture to him. We can also see that music is connected with violence, aggression, rage and can stir emotions-both good and bad emotions. In the beginning, Alex fantasizes about violence when hearing classical music, or he hears classical music in his head when he beats somebody up or

35 rapes somebody, and later when his taste in music changes and he starts listening to romantic piano music he dreams about being in love and having his own family.

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8. Nadsat

Nadsat is a fictional language, consisting of about 200 nouns and verbs, used in A Clockwork Orange by Alex and his peers. According to Dix (1971) novels are based not only on intellectual and social observations but also on language and Burgess is one of the writers who use words to their fullest. His linguistic explorations and experiments earned him the label of one of the most adventurous but also difficult writers as this playing with language can be discouraging for an ordinary reader. Also, he does not use a glossary in his books which makes it even more difficult for the reader. As a writer his words are his trade and because he was as well a musician he perceives language not only as a visual experience but also an auditory one. He was fascinated with the sound of words and the musical qualities of language (21-28).

A lot of words in Nadsat come from Russian and the term “Nadsat” itself comes from Russian equivalent of the English suffix “-teen”. Lennon (2010) describes it as “a literary standard English into which are mixed many words transliterated from Russian as well as a few from German, some English slang, and some outright neologism” (101). In the book, Dr Branom describes Nadsat as “Odd bits of old rhyming slang… A bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal Penetration” (A Clockwork Orange 86).

What is interesting, that the British version of the book does not have a glossary of Nadsat words, unlike the American one. Dix (1971) explains that Burgess was very interested in linguistics. The Nadsat dialect which is based on rhyming slang, little gypsy talk and mainly Russian language is probably a result of American and Russian intervention or even invasion. It is not impossible to imagine this scenario as a lot of languages have adopted vocabulary from different nations (14). According to Morrison (2000), Burgess did not include the glossary because he wanted readers to use a Russian dictionary and therefore he also used some sort of brainwashing like the people in his book. Although we can often understand the words as it is clear from the context (x). Newman (1991) suggests that at the beginning it can be difficult to follow, but once we have learnt the vocabulary it in many cases describes the violence better than ordinary English (62).

According to The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017), Burgess came up with the idea of Nadsat in Leningrad in 1961 which reminded him of Manchester when he was a child. The intention of the trip was to write a book from his experience and but he was also curious about the different culture. Before his trip, he learnt some of the Russian language. His

37 love of language, if it was just English or the language spoken in any other country where he lived, showed in every work he wrote (“ACO and Nadsat”).

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (2017) indicates that Burgess wanted to produce a timeless language to depict the dystopian future in his novel. Due to this the location of the story could be anywhere from Manchester to Leningrad or in even more distant locations. In the book You’ve Had Your Time (1990) he talks about using Nadsat as a “brainwashing device”: “The novel was to be an exercise in linguistic programming, with the exoticisms gradually clarified by context: I would resist to the limit any publisher’s demand that a glossary be provided. A glossary would disrupt the programme and nullify the brainwashing” (“ACO and Nadsat”). Nonetheless, the editor of A Clockwork Orange, James Michie, was not sure about the density of Nadsat in the book and suggested to edit at least the first part of the novel and help the reader to more understand. For example: “rooker (a hand, that is)”, “litso (face, that is)” and “my three droogs, that is Pete, George, and Dim”. Although Burgess did not want his book to contain a glossary, there are many editions which are extended by a glossary (“ACO and Nadsat”).

Nadsat can indicate a gap between the teenagers and adults in the novel, or some kind of protest against society. We can notice that some of the words sound rather childish e.g. appy polly logy (apology), eggiweg (egg) and steakiwake (steak) and Alex uses these words mainly at home. For example, when he is at home having breakfast he describes it as “crunching my lomticks of black toast dipped in jammiwam and eggiweg” (A Clockwork Orange 32). Therefore Nadsat also shows the users immaturity, which is obvious mainly in the last chapter when Alex meets Pete, who used to be in the gang with Alex, who no longer uses Nadsat. Pete is now grown-up and married to Georgina, who finds Alex talking in Nadsat funny:“‘He talks funny, doesn’t he?’ Said this devotchka, like giggling… ‘Did you used to talk like that too?’” (A Clockwork Orange 138). Later, when Alex talks about his future he thinks of himself as a working man with a wife and a son, it seems that he is slowly giving up this language of youth: “But I had this sudden very strong idea that if I walked into the room next to this room where the fire was burning away and my hot dinner laid on the table, there I should find what I really wanted” (A Clockwork Orange 140).

Davis (2002) states that the Nadsat language serves Alex mainly as a way of interaction with his droogs and is used when he is violent with his victims. Therefore it is the language of the night, rape, murder and thievery wrapped up in unfamiliarity. Although Nadsat contains many words for describing violence and unflattering expressions for women, it lacks words

38 expressing love, sympathy or a good relationship between friends or family members. Nadsat also shows that Alex is still naive and insecure. His constant usage of the word ‘like’ expresses that he is disconnected with the outside world and his emotional separation from others. For example, when Alex and his droogs attack one of their victims, he comments on it that “there was like quite and we were full of like hate” (A Clockwork Orange 20). Another example is when Alex meets his friend Pete at the end of the book and sees him and his wife expressing love to each other: “And he like gave this Georgina of his a like loving look” (A Clockwork Orange 139). Alex cannot relate to these emotions, his vocabulary range does not contain any of these emotions and he is confused and unable to identify with it. Another thing that Nadsat does not include in its vocabulary is future. They all live only in the present and do not think about the future. Alex is not able to talk about the future in specific terms: “I viddied that there would be no escape from any of all this” (A Clockwork Orange 83). (25-26).

According to Davis (2002), in the last chapter Alex suddenly thinks about the future and his own family he wants to have and is no longer trapped in the present and a cycle of violence with his droogs: “Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate” (A Clockwork Orange 141). It is a sign that Alex begins to change. But like was previously said his use of the word “like” suggests that he does not fully understand positive emotions like love or nice relationships in family. It is because he has never experienced these kinds of relationships. He is insecure about being an adult and about what this romantic relationship he has never been in can cause (32-33).

The way in which the story is told manipulates the reader. Not only the first-person narrative style, but also addressing readers with “O my brothers” and treating them as if they were his friends and therefore a part of his gang, and Alex speaking of himself as “Your humble narrator”, or “Your story-teller” add to the atmosphere and the empathy we feel towards Alex, who serves as a Guinea pig for government experiments. Estournel (2013) states that in spite the immoral behavior, Alex is trusted by the reader because he is the one who tells the story and influences us by calling us “O my brothers”. The pleasure in violence is kind of a justification for Alex’s behavior: “his guiltless joy in violence... is such that the incongruous term innocent is liable to come to a reader’s mind” (Aggler 1979: 173, cited in Estournel, 2013). Therefore there is a kind of a complicity between the narrator and the reader (2).

Estournel (2013) notes that the empathy is to a certain extent created through the manipulation of language. The way the narrator tells the story can change the vision of the plot.

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In A Clockwork Orange, it is the Nadsat language that manipulates the reader᾽s perception of the story and text itself. One of the examples is the word “horrorshow” which means “violent” but also “pleasant”, “good” and “terrific” (2).

This fictional language is a feature of a social group which differentiates from the rest of the people who cannot understand this dialect. There is this need to be different and let others know that everybody who speaks Nadsat belongs to their group and is their friend whereas the rest are their enemies. They are friends and due to some things the members of the group have in common like the same clothes, similar haircut and the dialect they use, they show that they belong to one group. But this exact same thing shows that they do not except anybody but them in their group. With their looks and opinions, they strongly express that anybody out of their group is sort of their foe for not having similar features, points of view, aims and appearance as them.

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Conclusion

The thesis dealt with the novel A Clockwork Orange and its analysis. It tried to prove that the book is not only about violence but also about other important and interesting features such as free will, good and evil or misuse of power by government.

One of the obvious topics is good and evil. Burgess tries to show that there is good and evil in everything and we cannot label anything as pure evil or pure good. Although Alex behaves violently and enjoys being cruel to others he is not evil the entire book. In the beginning, he lacks empathy but towards the end, he goes through a transformation. His priorities and personality change and he loses his desire for violence and longs for love and family. There are also other people or organizations we expect to be good but Burgess warns the reader and makes them think whether it is really always like that. The police and government use their power to punish others. If it is freely beating up the criminals or using the Ludovico Technique to torture them. Also, the people who were once victims can easily change into criminals. The best example is F. Alexander, who wants revenge on Alex so much he forces him to attempt suicide. Another case is family, which is not always loving and supporting. Through the whole book, we can feel that Alex’s family does not support him or even shows love towards him. The parents either do not care about him or are afraid of Alex.

Another feature is violence. Here Burgess wanted to point out that violence only creates more violence. Everybody towards whom are Alex and his friends violent are violent back. If it is the government trying to please and protect society and punish the criminals, or victims taking revenge on criminals. Here is also important the role of the family as Alex’s parents do not function as a proper support for him, which can be the reason Alex is violent because he does not know what it means to be loved and the communication between them is poor. All this can be the cause of Alex being so violent.

Another obvious feature is free will. Burgess tries to prove that free will is so important that it is better to be bad than to be forced to be good. Everybody should have the freedom to choose and without this freedom, we are only a clockwork orange – individuals without opinions and unable to make decisions. Although Alex chooses violence it is his choice. When he is deprived of this choice he is also unable to defend himself and to listen to his favourite music. He is no longer able to make any choices. He is dependent on society and the way others treat him, which means that he is just a puppet with no freedom of choice.

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The 21st chapter deals with becoming an adult. Even though the American publisher did not want to include the last chapter in the book, for Burgess the 21st chapter was important. Burgess expresses his opinion that everybody changes and their priorities change as well. Especially when a teenager becomes an adult. Even a criminal can lose his interest in violence. When Alex becomes adult he loses his passion for violence and also his taste in music is different. He slowly loses his interest in classical music and turns to more romantic and gentle songs. He is now focused on more important matters such as job and family. Violence is no longer a source of satisfaction for him as well as for his friend Pete who is now married and has a proper job.

Through the Ludovico technique, Burgess voices his disagreement with forcing people to change. People should choose to be good out of their free will. Moral choice is important and people should not be forced to behave in a certain way. Burgess feared the totalitarian regime. He feared that the power government has can easily be used to interfere with the freedom of the individual and this way to take control over people. The State in the novel is using its power not to only make criminals better people but it makes them unable to defend themselves and to choose out of free will.

Music guides us through the whole book. For Alex, it is connected to violence and Alex’s emotions. He is very keen on music and it is also the only aspect that makes him human because besides violence, music is the only thing that makes him feel emotional. Music is a pleasure for him but also torture at one point. Once Alex loses the ability to enjoy music he also loses a part of him. He becomes a machine unable to freely choose as well as enjoy music.

What also makes the novel unique is the Nadsat language. Burgess shows that his language skills are impressive. Nadsat often describes different situations, feelings, and mainly violence better than ordinary English. The fictional language functions mostly as a way of interaction between Alex and his friends. It also makes a visible distinction between the teenagers and the adults or just anyone who does not belong to the group of the violent youngsters. Once Alex grows up his usage of Nadsat starts to fade. He is no longer keen on violence, is more empathic and responsible.

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