Shmoop. - A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Superficially, "a clockwork orange" was just some lingo that author Anthony Burgess overheard among old Londoners. In Anthony Burgess's own words in the introduction entitled "A Clockwork Orange Resucked," the title refers to a person who "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." In other words, and again Burgess's own, it stands for the "application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness." So, basically, it refers to a person who is robotic behaviorally but one that is, in all other respects, human. The title is significant not only because Burgess references it about, say, 1,000 times throughout the book, but also because it sums up what threatened our protagonist-narrator so much. Oops. Did that get your attention?

The ending, or the 21st chapter of the book, provides closure to the book for some readers. In fact, this is the only chapter where our protagonist-narrator experiences growth, or more profoundly, personal transformation. In fact, we dare say that given his newfound discontent with violence and violent music, and interest in forging a family, Alex is all grown up. Structurally, it balances out the other two parts of the book, each with seven chapters. Thematically, it comes full-circle, starting off with the same question and description combination as chapter one in part one of the book, but closing the loop with Alex rejecting the person he was at the commencement of his journey and looking forward to a new kind of life.
That would be the easy interpretation. In the United States, and for 24 years, this 21st chapter was left out of all published versions of A Clockwork Orange. In fact, Americans were so content with the extremely open-ended ending provided by the 20th chapter that no one bothered to look on eBay for a British edition of the work. (OK, so eBay wasn't around in the 80s, but hey, same idea.) What's even more interesting is that Stanley Kubrick's famous (and forever memorialized) film adaptation of the book was modeled after the twenty-chapter version, so why is the 21st chapter even necessary?
Burgess hints at the answer to this, suggesting that politics or different regional aesthetics had something to do with leaving out the 21st chapter. Perhaps it's because the 20th chapter, with evil prancing all over the page, is sexier. Perhaps optimism as embodied by the 21st chapter is at odds with the rest of the work. We have millions of theories, as do Burgess and the publisher responsible for nixing the 21st chapter in the American edition, but at the end of the day, you'll have to decide for yourself whether you prefer it one way or the other. Just be ready to justify your opinion.

As we discussed under "Tone," Burgess' clever and unique style owes much to his use of nadsat, which has its fair share of onomatopoeia to clue us in on what is being said (those of us who aren't experts in Russian or the Cockney accent, at least). For instance, the very second sentence of chapter one shows just how clever the text as a whole can be: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry" (1.1.2). From the context, we may reliably infer that "droog" must mean "friend" or "companion;" Dim "being really dim" is suitably cute; and "flip dark chill winter bastard though dry" sounds like some free-association wordplay on what a "winter evening" ought to feel like. Burgess doesn't explicate, but we know exactly what he means. Simply clever.

A Clockwork Orange is almost a foreign-language work because it is not written in British, American, or standard English; it features nadsat, a made up language incorporating elements of Cockney and Russian spoken by the "modern youth" in the book. Figuring out what Alex means with each term is a feat in itself, and it takes a few chapters for even the most astute reader to get a firm grip on the language. Now, once you think you've crossed the language barrier, the tone will be easy to gauge. Alex is a matter-of-fact kind of narrator, although he does embellish some of the goings-on for dramatic effect (this shouldn't be surprising because nadsat employs a decent amount of onomatopoeia, or the use of words that sound like what they mean). Much of the tone is irreverent and immature-sounding. We also detect considerable angst, not surprising given the subject matters being described. Interestingly enough, however, the tone Alex uses when describing violence might be described as almost detached. He very matter-of-factly recounts exactly what punches he throws and just how much blood oozes out from his victims' orifices.

We only get what Alex hands us, so be mindful of both the perspective and biases inherent to a first-person narrative. The advantage to this is that we get extremely intimate with and engaged in Alex's life. After all, it's an "insider's view" we're seeing, albeit from only one lens. Despite all of the senseless brutality he inflicts upon others, for example, we come to like and forgive Alex, because we see how immature and nave he is. The disadvantage is that we aren't privy to how others view our protagonist-narrator (except when it's obvious - like when P. R. Deltoid spits on Alex's face), and so we can't be exactly fair or just in our assessment of each situation.