RQ: To what extent does Anthony Burgess use violence in the narrative to amplify the
political satire in A Clockwork Orange?
Introduction:
The main message of Anthony Burgess’s acclaimed dystopian political satire, A Clockwork
Orange, can be found in its title itself. Taking something organic, in this case, an orange, and
making it something cold, inhumane, and mechanical - clockwork. Burgess, about the title,
said this: “A Clockwork Orange 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. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to
be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order
that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us
all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to
create.”
This directly translates to the book’s whole message, the relationship between society, its
conventions, and, most importantly for the purposes of this essay, its government, with the
individual. The novel, at its very roots, questions exactly what kind of world allows a child to
turn into a violent, bloodthirsty, monster, and critiques and criticises said world (and the
politics it operates under) in how it does it.
When they are first introduced to the Alex, he and his droogs are a group of adolescents
portrayed as the epitome of all evil, they assault, steal, rape and enjoy all of it as they do it.
Alex, at a first glance, embodies everything that is wrong with the world, but at a deeper
level, this reflects more on the world A Clockwork Orange is set in than it does Alex. One of
the key ways the novel does this is by somehow, despite all of the crimes he commits,
making Alex a sympathetic and almost likeable character, and this is all due, at least in part,
to the government’s role in A Clockwork Orange, as it brainwashes and indoctrinates its
citizens to fulfil its own agenda.
This contrast, created by expressing the difference between the brand of violence Alex
embodies - raw, cruel, youthful, and unhinged - and the kind of violence enforced by the state
- equally cruel, but refined, subtle and automated in its delivery - feeds into A Clockwork
Orange’s political commentary and critique. The world of A Clockwork Orange demands
violent retribution for Alex’s crimes and at the same time condemns him to said retribution
because of his violence, all while the government continues to encourage violence in its
citizens through its distribution of hallucinogen beverages that elicit violent reactions from its
users. As a result, we can see how irony and satire root themselves into the narrative of A
Clockwork Orange, how the society depicted in the novel, functions on a series of rules that
seem to constantly contradict themselves, all of it perpetuated by the politics of its world “Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the
constructive.” This has been compared to the way our own modern systems of media
consumption and capitalism functions and Burgess’s take on it, with the system we live in
inherently teaching and conditioning us to be money hungry, then making earning money
incredibly difficult, only to punish you if you are unable to do it - paralleling greed in our
modern society, to the way violence functions in the world of A Clockwork Orange.
This plays into Burgess’s attempts at satirising and critiquing our own socio-political systems
and beliefs. At the same time, Burgess tests the lengths these semi-make believe systems may
go to and the direct consequences of those possible lengths, placing an emphasis on the ultraviolence that may exist in these systems - Alex is taught to be violent by the world around
him, so he grows up to be violent, gets punished for it, then treated for it, then supposedly
cured, and then ultimately, and rather fruitlessly, returns to his violent tendencies, before
finally calming down years in the future and only in the very last chapter of the book. The
presence of violence in this world is cyclical, inevitable and unavoidable, and satire comes
through in how Burgess explores both the condemnation and necessity of violence in the way
the government of A Clockwork Orange functions. In this essay I will be exploring this
further, looking into the way Burgess uses violence to critique and satirise politics in A
Clockwork Orange.
Body:
A Clockwork Orange revolves around its Anti hero and main character, Alex Delarge. The
novel opens with Alex and his Droogs. One night, during one of their deeply violent
“games”, Alex and his friends kill and old women by accident. Subsequently, Alex is
abandon by his so called friends, and then arrested on charges of murder. He spends several
years in prison, before one day, he is given the sudden option of freedom. Of course this
comes with a condition, which in this case is the Ludovico Treatment, which promises
freedom in exchange for participating in what is called a “behaviour-modification treatment”.
Alex agrees, and as a result, is forced to watch a series of violent videos that aim to repulse
Alex at the mere thought of violence, and instead make him good - “Our subject is, you see,
impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to
act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the
subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.” It’s called a treatment, but in effect
the it acts as a brainwashing mechanism for the government - the government claiming to be
doing society a favour by essentially eliminating all violent thoughts and behaviours present
in criminals. In reality, this is simply brainwashing, and acts as a word of warning against the
control of the human mind, allowing political groups and governments to eliminate free will
under the guise of medical treatments and techniques, substituting free will with a form of
control that takes away a person’s ability to functionally use their right to choose.
The novel starts with Alex and his Droogs, Dim, George and Pete, as they rebel against the
state they live under by using violence through assault, rape, and theft - “The thrill of theft, of
violence, the urge to live easy”. The rest of the story follows Alex’s journey, as he is
consequently locked up because of his and his friends actions. While in confinement, he is
turned into a harmless subject without free will, powerless of perpetrating any crime due to
the State’s intervention. However, through the ‘Ludovico Treatment’, the method the state
uses to turn Alex into a harmless subject, violence is represented as two forms: A way for the
state to control Alex as well as a tool for the state to inflict pain on him. By identifying
violence as something used by both Alex and the Government that condemns him, Burgess
shows the universality of the presence of violence in this world. The irony here comes out in
how both parties, even though they oppose each other, use violence as a means of achieving
their goals, and is further developed by the fact that the government condemns violence,
while simultaneously using it for its own gain.
This representation of violence can be paralleled to George Gerbner’s 2002 Paper titled
Global Media Mayhem. Here, George Gerbner, a communications professor from The
University Of Pennsylvania, illustrates the many clear differences that exist between the
various different types of violence. There is “Happy Violence”, that Gerbner describes as
“cool, swift, painless, and often spectacular, even thrilling, but usually sanitized”. This refers
to the kind of violence that can be found in something like a cartoon. In cartoons, a character
may be beaten up, shot, trampled or squashed, but usually pops back into healthy conditions.
This kind of violence ends up baring no significant consequence to the character’s own well
being or the story they exist in, there are no repercussions in happy violence, the character’s
simply move ahead with their lives without comprehending the consequences of the violence
that has been committed. In contrast, Meaningful Violence, in Gerbner’s words, is how
“Individually crafted, historically inspired, sparingly and selectively used expressions of
symbolic violence can indicate the tragic costs of deadly compulsions”. Here, unlike in a
cartoon, the violence that is committed has repercussions. This is the sort of violence
predominantly present in A Clockwork Orange, however, throughout the novel, both types of
violence can be seen.
According to Gerbner’s theory, the classification between Happy and Meaningful Violence is
determined based on the point of view of the character. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex is put
through to the Ludovico Treatment. The Ludovico Treatment acts as an attempt to “teach”
Alex’s body that “violence is a very horrible thing”, however, violence is used in the
treatment itself as a tool to enforce and foster obedience to the state and hold back Alex’s
ultra-violent tendencies. Alex is forced to watch a series of videos that depict intensely
violent scenes, all while under the influence of a pain inducing drug which comes into effect
when the thought of violence enters Alex’s mind - ““Of course it was horrible,' smiled Dr.
Branom. 'Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is
learning it.””
At the start of the treatment, Alex is shown videos that are “individually crafted” to him,
direct replicas of the violence that he himself committed in the beginning of the novel before
he was arrested. As the treatments continues, the videos transform into ones that are
“historically inspired” from World War II, these depict things like Japanese soldiers torturing
their captives in various ways. They are shown to Alex to“ indicate the tragic costs of deadly
compulsions,”, attempting to brainwash him into staying away from violence.
Yet, the Doctors themselves are engaging in an act of psychological violence themselves.
Torturing Alex by forcing him to watch these videos, is just as much of a violent action as the
videos being shown to him. This is further amplified because of Alex’s own reaction to the
videos, they’re “real, very real,” to him, Alex actively experiences the same things as the
victims in the videos he’s shown. This harkens back to the concept of “meaningful violence”,
there are clear, long lasting repercussions of the psychological violence being inflected on
him in this scene. By doing this, Burgess shows the reader how an experience can affect and
change the kind of person one is or will become, and Burgess further builds up this idea in his
exploration of how the environment that we live in defines how we behave. Earlier in this
essay I mentioned how Burgess depicts Alex as a sympathetic character despite his violent
actions, and the state’s intervention, the torture inflected upon him, is part of the reason that
sympathy is built up so effectively in the reader. No matter how bad Alex’s own actions are,
the state, as people in positions of power who are older, wiser, and better off, comes off as
worse. This is partly due to how, from the very beginning of the book, Alex is shown as a
victim just as much as he is shown as a victimiser. This partly because, despite the violence
he is capable of, under the state Alex is small and young and vulnerable, subject to any
traumatic punishment they deem him worthy of, which, regardless of whether or not Alex
deserves said punishment, establishes a clear power structure - and, as a result, exposes how
easily that power structure can be exploited and used, how those at the very top of the food
chain, can manipulate things to go there way and, as a result, have those below them suffer.
Beyond that, sympathy is also built up in the reader because of the horrifying conditions of
Alex’s upbringing.
Alex is brought up in a world built on violence and misfortune, his parents express little to no
interest in his well being and are ready to replace him at a drop of a hat, he has an evident
history of sexual abuse from his probation officer Mister Deltoide who should be helping
him, and the larger world around him is no better. The police are corrupt, crime runs rampant,
politicians spend their nights at bars, the state allows the distribution of hallucinogen
beverages that prompt violent reactions from its consumers - “that sort of thing could sap all
the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck” - and it also promotes the exhibition of
films on that elicit these reaction further - "with the archangel of hellís fighting legions, the
kind of hound-and-horny veshch put out by Statefilm in those days”. Alex is who he is
because of the world that created him, and the world that created him is the way it is because
of the state and government that run it, the same state and government that now punish Alex
for being the way he is - “It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like
you done, and there’s no law nor order no more.”
This encapsulates Burgess’s use of Satire in A Clockwork Orange, there’s a lingering
hopelessness, the violence of both the state and Alex are inevitable because they are
reactionary, and the irony of it all is that one happens because of the other, and it seems as
though neither can really be stopped. Alex and his droogs have been conditioned to be the
way they are because of the world around them - “the usual about ultra-violence and bank
robberies and strikes and footballers making everybody paralytic with fright by threatening to
not play next Saturday if they did not get higher wages.” - and the world around them is the
way it is because it has been exploited, corrupted and ruined to be that way.
Another key aspect of A Clockwork Orange is Burgess’s use of Alex’s love for classical
music - “It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect
ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.” and “Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always
sort of sharpened me up”. There’s a juxtaposition here, the irony that Alex really loves two
things, Violence and Beethoven. The contrast between something like Beethoven’s
symphonies with the feeling of beating someone up are deeply impactful because of how
jarring they are, and it’s almost hard for the reader to absorb how both of those thing could
possibly elicit the same emotion from Alex - “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.”
Much like Alex’s dependance on Beethoven, the interdependence of art and music is all over
A Clockwork Orange. Alex uses music and art to understand life, and in the week period
wherein the doctors show Alex his series of horrifying videos, he is fascinated about how the
real world looks even more real on a television screen - “It's funny how the colors of the real
world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.” Art is also used to create a
contrast between Alex’s violent ways and his love for music - for examples, when Alex beats
up Mr. Alexander and then gets ready to rape his wife, he does so while singing ‘Singin’ in
the Rain’ in the background and dancing along. Art, in a clockwork orange, also occupies an
interesting space in the novels depiction of good and evil, in that the novel heavily suggest
that it has potential for both, and the way music in particular is used to illustrate violence in
the book makes the experience jarring.
The juxtaposition between the two things is made even more apparent in the way they
connect to each other because of the Ludovico Treatment. Alex’s has two loves, his love for
music and his love for violence, and the doctors that inflict the Ludovico Treatment on him
know this. They further induce the effect of the Ludovico Treatment’s process by using
classical music to enhance the feelings that Alex experiences, effectively taking away both of
the things that Alex loves from his life, the only two things he loves. Music, or the lack of it,
is what causes Alex to ultimately accept defeat and admit that violence is wrong - “Then I
noticed, in all my pain and sickness, what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the
sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, and I
creeched like bezoomny at that. “Stop!" I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It's a
sin, that’s what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!”.
From this statement it is understood that Alex has totally changed from when he entered
treatment. However, the doctors view this as a necessary punishment that Alex deserved and
needed because of his crimes. They don’t, however, understand the repercussions of their
actions against Alex, the connection he has to music. This divide between Alex and the
Doctors is interesting to explore, as it parallels understanding of “happy violence” and
“meaningful violence”. The doctors move on with their work happily after Alex’s treatment
is complete and he is supposedly cured, but Alex has lost the only two things that bring him
joy. This can be interpreted as Burgess critiquing the divides that form between states and
their people, as well as the extents of punishment one should go through - does anyone
deserve to loose everything they hold dear, regardless of what they’ve done? Especially when
the greater implication in the novel is that the actions of the state are directly responsible for
Alex’s crimes.
There are a lot of moral dilemmas here, and the most significant is how Burgess explores
government control over their citizens. The Ludovico Treatment essentially reduces Alex of
his humanity. It acts a sort of chemically induced sickness that works to stop him from acting
on any of his violent, evil, desires. Instead, it turns him into a mechanised model of
societally-approved goodness moulded into the body of a human being - clockwork. Instead
of attempting to find and handle the very causes of his violent behaviour or trying to actually
strengthen his moral understanding of the things he does, the state resorts of what is
functionally mind control. Alex is forced to watch films produced under the authorities, as
such, he essentially submits to agreeing to the State’s political interests. After all, Alex
himself opts to be cure by the Ludovico Treatment, and is made aware of it - “You have no
cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice.
Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.” This presents the reader with a
deeply paradoxical concept of social repression, and a very common concept in dystopian
literature. It shows the reader the worst possible effect of state control. This concept is central
to a clockwork orange and is brought up time and time again - “Does God want goodness or
the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a
man who has the good imposed upon him?” and “Goodness is something chosen. When a
man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” - all of this is combatted against the state’s stance
- “And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you
have in a sense really chosen the good.”
In A Clockwork Orange, we see the prison chaplain witnessing Alex after his transformation,
and he expresses clear objections of the methods used by the government, mirroring in many
ways the way the reader may feel - “he ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice”,
the chaplain says, but the State replies saying that, “These are subtitles...We are not
concerned with motive, with the higher ethics.” Here, irony is once again brought back into
the narrative of A Clockwork Orange, the state claims to want to help Alex get rid of his
violent tendencies, to make the world safer, better, but the overwhelming implications of
their actual actions, instead suggest that the Ludovico Treatment is less of a method to heal
and help, and instead a way to enforce government ideals on citizens.
The books final parts, allow the reader to fully comprehend how and why A Clockwork
Orange’s futuristic British State could have arrived at where it is now, in social disorder with
corruption rampant on the streets. In this universe, which mirrors Burgess’s criticisms of our
own, the basis of political and social tools and techniques are roots in corruption and
immorality. Individuals are seemingly no more than personifications of this predicament “You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and
your self and you just didn't care.”
This brings us, once again, to satire, and what exactly comprises and defines a piece of art as
satirical, and what separates it from parody? Linda Hutcheon, a canadian professor or literary
theory and criticism, in her paper A Theory Of Parody from 1985, says that the distinction
between parody and satire is in the “distinct nature of their respective targets”. For example, a
parody’s target “is always another work of art or more generally, another form of coded
discourse.” Satire, instead, is simpler. It is, in essence, the use of irony, humour, ridicule or
exaggeration, to expose and criticize something - this “something” can be anything, but very
often it pertains to politics, whether it be entire systems or certain specific political
ideologies. A Clockwork Orange, as is rather evident by these definitions, falls under the
category of a political satire. In this essay I’ve fixated particularly on violence and the way
Burgess critiques political systems by exaggerating violence and using irony to bring out the
hypocrisy behind it. However, A Clockwork Orange does also have elements of parody, it
does this by using several literally texts, historical symbols and musical pieces as tools for its
social and political satire - for example, and most predominantly, it’s use of Beethoven’s
music.
Most of A Clockwork Orange’s satirical component, however, is focused on Burgess’s
critique of the relationship between the state and the individual. The reader is shown a gang
of young delinquents uncontrollably using violence as a means of getting pleasure - “ And
there were devotchkas ripped and creeching against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into
them, and indeed when the music, which was one movement only, rose to the top of its big
highest tower, then, lying there on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my
gulliver”.
Conclusion:
To conclude, A Clockwork Orange uses the universality of violence, present in the future
depicted in A Clockwork Orange, to critique and satirise political systems and the way they
function or could potentially in the future. By introducing the audience to the irony and
hypocrisy present in political systems, particularly against the most vulnerable parts of
society, Burgess exposes the way political powers exploit the people that live under them for
their own gain and the furthering of their own agenda. He uses satire to demonstrate just how
dangerous and horrific government control can be, while simultaneously illustrating the many
dangers of a political system taken to its very extremes, and he uses irony to poke fun at the
ridiculousness of it all. Ultimately, A Clockwork Orange acts as a cautionary tale for what
unchecked government power can do, as well as highlighting the importance and necessity of
free will and individual thought in our lives.