A Clockwork Orange: The Story Behind the Movie
Born on February 25th 1917, Jack Wilson (later known as Anthony Burgess) would become one of the most influential English writers of our time. Burgess was born in Manchester and attended the University of Manchester. After spending six years as a war-time soldier, he went on to lecture at Birmingham University. Burgess wrote his first three novels: Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanker (1958), and Beds in the East (1959), while serving as an education officer in the Colonial Service based in Borneo and Malaya. He will be best remembered by his eighth novella, A Clockwork Orange. For this book, he composed a language which combines English, American, and Russian slang. After the release in 1971 of the motion-picture version by American director Stanley Kubrick, the work gained a cult following. This “clockwork cult” fueled movie goers, including myself, to read the original work by Burgess. The novella is set in London, England around the year 2000. It is told from first person limited through the character Alex. He is the type of character one loves to hate; he makes it all too easy to dislike him. He is a brutal, violent, teenage criminal with no place in society. His one and only role is to create chaos, which
Literary elements or devices of style are hard to pinpoint in this novel due to its dialect based on a fabricated language. The imagery used to depict a sense of humanity in Alex, actually makes the reader believe that he is a decent young man. When he cries out, “Oh, help help. I’m sick, I’m dying. Doctor Doctor doctor, quick. Please. Oh, I’ll die, I know I shall. Help” (119) it makes the reader feel empathy for the treatment he is given by the doctors. Elements of figurative language is also scattered throughout the text. One somewhat sinisterly funny quote comes once again from Alex when he describes the death of his friend Georgie. “Dead as a bit of dog-cal on the road” (76) is said in a manner which makes the reader shocked at Alex’s lack of compassion for a so called friend. Burgess also plays with puns throughout A Clockwork Orange in order to add humor to serious situations and dialogues. One example of this is when Alex refers to Dim, he calls him "Dim the dim"(58). power through his freedom of choice. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man. Another very important theme in A Clockwork Orange is that of youth vs. old age. Alex and his gang beat a drunken old man because they believe there is no place for the elderly in their new world. Ironically however, a large group of old men in a library attack Alex with their canes and wheelchairs, the older generation has seized back their nation. he does too w
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Approximate Word count = 976
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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