Sunday Read: A Clockwork Orange

A couple of Saints back somebody described A Clockwork Orange’s Alex as a ‘bad boy.’ That’s a bit like saying Voldemort is ‘quite nasty sometimes.’ Alex isn’t a bad boy, […]


A couple of Saints back somebody described A Clockwork Orange’s Alex as a ‘bad boy.’ That’s a bit like saying Voldemort is ‘quite nasty sometimes.’ Alex isn’t a bad boy, he’s a raping, murdering psycho with no conscience but Bog help me, I love him. And so will you.

Burgess’ iconic story of little Alex who acts appallingly and pays for it has been causing a stir ever since it was published in 1962. The American version was actually censored before publication. They left the sex and violence in, but the morally contentious ending had to go. Stanley Kubrick turned it into a very silly film, the RSC turned it into a very very silly musical and more recently there have been some much less silly stage versions (Action to the Word’s all male production is shockingly good).

But the book is better.

At just 150 pages, Burgess’ story is twice as tight as a spring. It’s fast, uncluttered (unlike the film) and perfectly structured. It proves that your story actually having a beginning, a middle and end is a good thing, even though it’s not very cool these days. Then there’s the language. A Clockwork Orange isn’t in English, it’s in glorious, glorious Nadsat, Burgess’ homemade blend of Cockney slang, Russian and onomatopoeia. It can be confusing at first, but you pick it up fast.

Then there’s the aforementioned Alex. He leads his gang of droogs round an unnamed town at an unnamed time, on a rampant crime spree. One night things go wrong and Alex is sent to prison. He’s 15. Two years later he’s offered a way out but it comes with devastating moral implications. Will he take it? Should it have even been offered?

Alex is Burgess’ secret weapon. It’s his voice and his language telling his story and sooner or later (and it’ll probably be sooner) you’ll end up on his side, whether you like it or not. He instantly takes us into his confidence, we’re his ‘brothers’ and ‘only friends.’ He’s charming, clever, funny and he loves music. He describes Beethoven as ‘gorgeosity and yumyumyum,’ which is exactly how I feel about my favourite band. You probably do too. We share Alex’s thoughts. It’s this that makes Burgess’ novel better than all the adaptations. None of them let us inside Alex’s head in quite the same way.

Alex is our guide through the Clockwork world, one that isn’t instantly recognisable. Critics have suggested that Alex lives in Russia or somewhere else Soviet, given Nadsat’s Russian roots. Characters are always drinking ‘bolshy great mugs of milky chai’ though, which seems distinctly British. Wherever it is, it’s a scary country and scarily like our own.

To sum up, you should read A Clockwork Orange with your own two glazzies. It’s a real horrorshow book that Burgess has written and ‘as clear as an unmuddied lake.’ Plus, it asks us all a very important question: What’s the price of free will?