Today is the anniversary of the death of Anthony Burgess, the English novelist (22 November 1993). His most famous work is A Clockwork Orange published in 1962 and made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film. The novel uses Burgess’ made-up slang, called Nadsat, as the characters’ language.
Burgess explained to the New Yorker how he named the book: ‘I first heard the expression “as queer as a clockwork orange” in a London pub before the Second World War. It is an old Cockney slang phrase, implying a queerness or madness so extreme as to subvert nature, since could any notion be more bizarre than that of a clockwork orange?’
A Clockwork Orange plot
A Clockwork Orange was set in a dismal futuristic England. Unlike traditional dystopian novels, it is narrated by a charismatic antihero, challenging readers to empathise with someone who is morally repugnant. The story is told from the viewpoint of the juvenile delinquent, Alex, who has a passion for classical music, drug-fuelled orgies and, as the leader of a vicious teen gang, random acts of “ultraviolence”.
Alex commits several brutal crimes including assault, rape and murder and is sent to prison. He is chosen to undergo an experimental form of aversion therapy called Ludovico’s Technique. The technique makes him sick when he thinks about violence and as a side-effect when he listens to classical music. He is eventually released. Now free one of his victims seeks retribution by persuading him to jump out of a window. He survives and his doctors reverse the aversion treatment.
In the final chapter, Alex has grown tired of violence, and renounces his amoral past. This chapter was removed from the US edition.
The novel received mixed reviews. While some criticised its violence and strong language, others appreciated the ethical questions it raised—whether the state is justified in forcibly engineering someone’s free will.
Nadsat vocabulary
Nadsat is the teenage argot used in Burgess’s futuristic England. Burgess, who had studied English literature and phonetics combined British and American slang and modified many Russian words to create a harsh unpleasant dialogue to emphasise the rebellious and alien identity of the gang.
Alex’s gang of thugs he calls his “droogs”, the word means friend and derives from the Russian word drug (the role of XXX, one of the droogs in the film was a breakthrough role for Warren Clarke, who went on to play Dalziel in the Dalziel and Pascoe series). The droogs’ drug intake came from drinking “moloko plus”, (moloko meaning milk in Russian) milk laced with drugs. Other terms include “horrorshow” (good) from the Russian khorosho, and “viddy” (to see) from the Russian videt. Burgess also used childlike constructions like “eggiweg” for eggs and “creech” for scream.
Nadsat itself comes from the Russian suffix “-надцать” (-nadtsat), meaning “teen” (i.e. the numbers 11 to 19).
The verdict on the book
Accusations of copycat crimes based on the film made both the success of the book to Burgess and the film to Kubrick become poisoned chalices. Many critics pointed the finger at Burgess but his intention had never been to glorify the violence but to shine a light on state control. Burgess’s wife, Lynne, had been assaulted by American soldiers during World War II while she was pregnant. She miscarried as a result. Burgess’s depiction of violence and its consequences in the book are thought to refer directly to this.
In Burgess’s words, A Clockwork Orange was ultimately about “the clash between individual freedom and the social order”. Sadly, he wrote, “the film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die”.
Despite Burgess’s misgivings, the novel’s marvellous linguistic invention and deep social questioning make it an important piece of literature.