"A Clockwork Orange" is a novel by British
novelist Anthony Burgess about a violent and unlawful youth.
In a grim
future of Britain, society is divided into the haves, the well-offs, who live in securtiy-screeened mansions in leafy countryside, and the have-nots, who struggle with day to day existence, belonging to gangs through the decaying cities, existing on
violence while terrorizing peaceful souls.
The novella contains 21 chapters, divided into three books, each consisting of seven chapters.
The first book is narrated by one of the leaders, Alex, a 15 year-old youth who spends his nights with his friends, or "droogs," terrorizing the community and engaging in the old "in-out-in-out." They beat the elderly, fight other gangs, carry a razor knife, rape girls, and finally, assault women. He immediately provides a contradiction in his character - he sips milk, a "moloko" laced with drugs, as well as listening to the cultured music of Beethoven while raping a girl. The story is written in private language, a mixture of standard English, cockney, and Russian.
Burgess provides a glossary to assist readers but after a few pages the language is easy enough to follow. Somehow, there's a strange feeling which pervades in the book causing a certain alienation. Eventually, Alex is betrayed by his friends, the "droogs," and is sent to prison.
The second book chronicles his time in prison. He is treated in a strange way that alters his mind, with combination of drugs and horrifying visuals. Alex is changed to a point where the very thought of violence or even sex is enough to make him nauseated. He reaches a stage where his humanity is in question, and Burgess is probing the fundamentals of moral choice and free will, essentially asking, "Is a person necessarily good if he is incapable of choosing evil?"
The final portion of the book overlaps on his treatment from the second part. Several years have passed. This third and last portion shows Alex who is now a victim unable to fight back. The tide is reversed on his life as he finds himself helpless to do anything.
Here is a young man who has committed a horrific crime – he has broken into a house, has beaten up its owner and raped his wife, and the police are rehabilitating him. His true crime, however the author puts it, is not the actions themselves but the thought – he has aspired to a way of life from which his class, and lack of basic necessities have him barred from a peace-loving society. Burgess leaves the reader wondering whether his kind of solution – his way of 'cure' - will work: the authorities claim that he is not a brute beast, rather, the individuality in human beings which society has chosen to repress.
Burgess also opens up hope as the state tries to rehabilitate him, and Alex realizes he has been given a new chance in life. The final chapter is interesting to reflect on. After meeting the only "droog" loyal to him, now married, Alex realizes that he, too, would like a wife, and possibly a child. But in his mind is a nagging question: will his child follow the same path he led, a kind of self-destructive path? An absorbing novel, a lot of serious thinking left behind for readers to reflect on.
"Clockwork Orange" has been considered as a great literary work of English novelist Anthony Burgess and his most famous novel.