Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange (UK Version)

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A Clockwork Orange (UK Version): краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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In Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Burgess creates a gloomy future full of violence, rape and destruction. In this dystopian novel, Burgess does a fantastic job of constantly changing the readers’ allegiance toward the books narrator and main character, Alex. Writing in a foreign language, Burgess makes the reader feel like an outsider. As the novel begins, the reader has no emotional connection to Alex. This non-emotional state comes to a sudden halt when Alex and his droogs begin a series of merciless acts of violence. The reader rapidly begins to form what seems to be an irreversible hatred toward the books narrator. However, as time progresses, Burgess cleverly changes the tone of his novel. Once wishing only the harshest punishments be bestowed upon him, it is these same punishments that begin to change how the reader feels. In fact, by the end of the book, one almost begins to have pity for Alex. The same character that was once hated soon emerges as one of many victims taken throughout the course of the book. Throughout Alex’s narration, Burgess manages to change the readers’ allegiance toward a once seemingly evil character.
Alex is the type of character one loves to hate; he makes it all too easy to dislike him. He is a brutal, violent, teenage criminal with no place in society. His one and only role is to create chaos, which he does too well. Alex’s violent nature is first witnessed during the first chapter, and is soon seen again when Alex and his gang chose to brutally beat an innocent drunkard. This beating off the homeless man serves no purpose other then to amuse Alex’s gang. The acts committed were not performed for revenge, the one reason given was that Alex did not enjoy seeing a homeless drunk, “I could never stand to see a moodge all filthy and rolling and burping and drunk, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real starry like this one was”. Alex continues to explain his reason for dislike, “his platties were a disgrace, all creased and untidy and covered in cal”, from this explanation one realizes his reasons for nearly killing a man are simply based on pleasure, desire, and a dislike toward the untidy. By the end of the second chapter Burgess’s inventive usage of a different language to keep the reader alienated from forming opinions about Alex ceases to work. At this point in time Alex’s true nature is revealed, and not even his unfamiliar Nadsat language can save him from being strongly disliked by the reader.
The more the reader learns of Alex, the more and more he is disliked; Alex’s relationship with his parents only builds on ones already negative opinions toward Alex. Coming from a normal family and a sturdy household free of domestic violence, there is no excuse for Alex’s violent nature. In fact, Alex’s loving parents are just as baffled by his immoral personality as the reader, although because of their naivete, they know much less of what he does. This leaves the reader uninformed and wondering: why is Alex the way he is? Fortunately, just as one begins to question Alex’s motives, Alex gives an answer, “badness is of the self, the one…is not our modern history, my brothers the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do”. He could not have explained it more clearly. While from one point of view Alex visions himself as a revolutionary, even simpler then that, he is basically admitting he commits violent acts because he enjoys doing so. Later in the book Alex offers another solution for his violent nature, “Being young is like being one of these malenky machines…and so it would itty on to like the end of the world”. These malenky machines he is referring to are very similar to the clockwork orange Burgess talks to in his introduction. Whatever reasons he gives, none of them are valid enough to prevent the reader from hating Alex.
In spite of all the hatred aimed toward Alex at this point, seemingly it is not enough to prevent the pity one begins to feel when Alex is abandoned by his “droogs”. Knowing he is the leader of his group, Alex constantly gives orders to his gang. Unfortunately it is due to his tendency to need leadership that a quarrel begins with his gang. After settling the original dispute that arises, Alex and his “droogs” are not so successful at ending their second squabble. Framed by his friends, Alex is arrested while they run away. Furthermore, he is beaten by the police, and sentenced to fourteen years of jail. It only takes two of them for the reader to realize the difficulties that Alex is living through. Throughout the first part of the book, there is in fact only one sign that Alex is not utterly evil, that being his music. Along with his abandonment from friends, it is the music that Burgess uses to help change the readers opinion, and eventually to have pity toward his young antagonist.
As the reader continues to pry deeper into Alex’s life it is shocking to learn of the music he listens to, it is because of this music and the actions taken against him that one truly begins to feel sorry for Burgess’s little Alex. The music that Alex chooses to listen is very ironic. While it causes him to do evil things, the fact remains that he listens to normal music, one of the first things he is not disliked for, “lying there on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it". His particular interest in Ludwig Van arises during one of his sessions while undergoing Ludivico’s Technique. Upon hearing what he perceives to be heavenly music Alex cry’s out about the injustice in the procedure, “I don’t mind about the ultra-violence and all that cal. I can put up with that. But it’s not fair on the music”. It is during this same treatment that the reader really begins to feel sympathy toward him. Striped of his ability to choose right from wrong, and now the same clockwork orange that F. Alexander earlier told him about, Alex becomes one of the governments’ machines. Forced to do exactly what they want him to, become their “true Christian”, Alex poses the question to his doctors, “How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog…am I to be just like a clockwork orange?” Alex is all alone in the world, no longer capable of performing cruel deeds, he is denied by all whom he once knew. The same character one used to wish the harshest punishment upon received it, and when he got it, it becomes strikingly evident that it was much more then even the worst person would ever deserve.
Burgess does a magical job at making the reader quickly forget the horrible deeds Alex once committed. Instead by making powerful moral statements, Burgess goes so far that the reader not only turns the other cheek toward Alex’s crimes, but also feels genuinely sorry for him. Alex may not be completely cured, but that is not the issue at hand. Through means of pity and by playing with the readers’ emotions throughout the book, during A Clockwork Orange, Burgess is constantly playing with the reader’s allegiances.

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"Give me a drink," I said, "for Bog's sake."

"Loosen him," ordered Dr. Brodsky. "Fetch him a carafe of ice-cold water." So then these under-vecks got to work and soon I was peeting gallons and gallons of water and it was like heaven, O my brothers. Dr. Brodsky said: "You seem a sufficiently intelligent young man. You seem, too, to be not without taste. You've just got this violence thing, haven't you? Violence and theft, theft being an aspect of violence." I didn't govoreet a single slovo, brothers, I was still feeling sick, though getting a malenky bit better now. But it had been a terrible day. "Now then," said Dr. Brodsky, "how do you think this is done? Tell me, what do you think we're doing to you?"

"You're making me feel ill. I'm ill when I look at those filthy pervert films of yours. But it's not really the films that's doing it. But I feel that if you'll stop these films I'll stop feeling ill."

"Right," said Dr. Brodsky. "It's association, the oldest educational method in the world. And what really causes you to feel ill?"

"These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulliver and my plott," I said, "that's what it is."

"Quaint," said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, "the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?"

"Odd bits of old rhyming slang," said Dr. Branom, who did not look quite so much like a friend any more. "A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration."

"All right, all right, all right," said Dr. Brodsky, like impatient and not interested any more. "Well," he said to me, "it isn't the wires. It's nothing to do with what's fastened to you. Those are just for measuring your reactions. What is it, then?" I viddied then, of course, what a bezoomny shoot I was not to notice that it was the hypodermic shots in the rooker. "Oh," I creeched, "oh, I viddy all now. A filthy cally vonny trick. An act of treachery, sod you, and you won't do it again."

"I'm glad you've raised your objections now," said Dr. Brodsky. "Now we can be perfectly clear about it. We can get this stuff of Ludovico's into your system in many different ways. Orally, for instance. But the subcutaneous method is the best. Don't fight against it, please. There's no point in your fighting. You can't get the better of us."

"Grahzny bratchnies," I said, like snivelling. Then I said: "I don't mind about the ultra-violence and all that cal. I put up with that. But it's not fair on the music. It's not fair I should feel ill when I'm slooshying lovely Ludwig van and G. F. Handel and others. All that shows you're an evil lot of bastards and I shall never forgive you, sods."

They both looked a bit like thoughtful. Then Dr. Brodsky said: "Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence – the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours." I didn't understand all these slovos, but now I said:

"You needn't take it any further, sir." I'd changed my tune a malenky bit in my cunning way. "You've proved to me that all this dratsing and ultra-violence and killing is wrong wrong and terribly wrong. I've learned my lesson, sirs. I see now what I've never seen before. I'm cured, praise God." And I raised my glazzies in a like holy way to the ceiling. But both these doctors shook their gullivers like sadly and Dr. Brodsky said:

"You're not cured yet. There's still a lot to be done. Only when your body reacts promptly and violently to violence, as to a snake, without further help from us, without medication, only then – " I said:

"But, sir, sirs, I see that it's wrong. It's wrong because it's against like society, it's wrong because every veck on earth has the right to live and be happy without being beaten and tolchocked and knifed. I've learned a lot, oh really I have." But Dr. Brodsky had a loud long smeck at that, showing all his white zoobies, and said:

"The heresy of an age of reason," or some such slovos. "I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong. No, no, my boy, you must leave it all to us. But be cheerful about it. It will soon be all over. In less than a fortnight now you'll be a free man." Then he patted me on the pletcho. Less than a fortnight, O my brothers and friends, it was like an age. It was like from the beginning of the world to the end of it. To finish the fourteen years without remission in the Staja would have been nothing to it. Every day it was the same. When the devotchka with the hypodermic came round, though, four days after this govoreeting with Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom, I said: "Oh, no you won't," and tolchocked her on the rooker, and the syringe went tinkle clatter on to the floor. That was like to viddy what they would do. What they did was to get four or five real bolshy white-coated bastards of under-vecks to hold me down on the bed, tolchocking me with grinny litsos close to mine, and then this nurse ptitsa said: "You wicked naughty little devil, you," while she jabbed my rooker with another syringe and squirted this stuff in real brutal and nasty. And then I was wheeled off exhausted to this like hell sinny as before.

Every day, my brothers, these films were like the same, all kicking and tolchocking and red red krovvy dripping off of litsos and plotts and spattering all over the camera lenses. It was usually grinning and smecking malchicks in the heighth of nadsat fashion, or else teeheeheeing Jap torturers or brutal Nazi kickers and shooters. And each day the feeling of wanting to die with the sickness and gulliver pains and aches in the zoobies and horrible horrible thirst grew really worse. Until one morning I tried to defeat the bastards by crash crash crashing my gulliver against the wall so that I should tolchock myself unconscious, but all that happened was I felt sick with viddying that this kind of violence was like the violence in the films, so I was just exhausted and was given the injection and was wheeled off like before.

And then there came a morning when I woke up and had my breakfast of eggs and toast and jam and very hot milky chai, and then I thought: "It can't be much longer now. Now must be very near the end of the time. I have suffered to the heighths and cannot suffer any more." And I waited and waited, brothers, for this nurse ptitsa to bring in the syringe, but she did not come. And then the white-coated under-veck came and said:

"Today, old friend, we are letting you walk."

"Walk?" I said. "Where?"

"To the usual place," he said. "Yes, yes, look not so astonished. You are to walk to the films, me with you of course. You are no longer to be carried in a wheelchair."

"But," I said, "how about my horrible morning injection?" For I was really surprised at this, brothers, they being so keen on pushing this Ludovico veshch into me, as they said. "Don't I get that horrible sicky stuff rammed into my poor suffering rooker any more?"

"All over," like smecked this veck. "For ever and ever amen. You're on your own now, boy. Walking and all to the chamber of horrors. But you're still to be strapped down and made to see. Come on then, my little tiger." And I had to put my over-gown and toofles on and walk down the corridor to the like sinny mesto.

Now this time, O my brothers, I was not only very sick but very puzzled. There it was again, all the old ultra-violence and vecks with their gullivers smashed and torn krovvy-dripping ptitsas creeching for mercy, the like private and individual fillying and nastiness. Then there were the prison-camps and the Jews and the grey like foreign streets full of tanks and uniforms and vecks going down in withering rifle-fire, this being the public side of it. And this time I could blame nothing for me feeling sick and thirsty and full of aches except what I was forced to viddy, my glazzies still being clipped open and my nogas and plott fixed to the chair but this set of wires and other veshches no longer coming out of my plott and gulliver. So what could it be but the films I was viddying that were doing this to me? Except, of course, brothers, that this Lu-dovico stuff was like a 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. So now I squared my rot and went boo hoo hoo, and the tears like blotted out what I was forced to viddy in like all blessed runny silvery dewdrops. But these white-coat bratchnies were skorry with their tashtooks to wipe the tears away, saying: "There there, wazzums all weepy-weepy den." And there it was again all clear before my glazzies, these Germans prodding like beseeching and weeping Jews – vecks and cheenas and malchicks and devotchkas – into mestos where they would all snuff it of poison gas. Boo hoo hoo I had to go again, and along they came to wipe the tears off, very skorry, so I should not miss one solitary veshch of what they were showing. It was a terrible and horrible day, O my brothers and only friends.

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