A Clockwork
Orange. The picture of an antihero.
By Bruno
Betancourt.
Radka Mikulaková, a student at the Masaryk
University wrote this thesis where he explained rhe reasons and the context of
the ultra-violence inside “A Clockwork Orange”. I really liked the points he
gave, although I have to disagree with some. He states at the introduction of
his work that his main goal is to prove that the point of the book is not and
adoration of violence, but instead, a defense of individuality and free will.
He also says that through the main character, Alex, we can fully comprehend
Burgess´ mind and thoughts about the world, and we are able to fully understand
the idea with knowing the political and social background of the book.
Mikulaková firstly talks about the context of
the book, and how it is important to us in order to understand the book´s
purpose and theme. First of all, the book was inspired by the fact that his
wife got raped by American soldiers way back in 1944. This moment is obvious
that changed the way Burgess saw the world, and how he thought things in
general. He even wrote this scene in A Clockwork Orange. Them we see the
Nadsat, which he invented while he lived in Leningrad. Anthony Burgess´ life is
a direct cause of the violence reflected by the book, and this work shows us
how he felt in those moments of desperation and hate.
Now, after talking about Burgess´ life, Radka writes
specifically about the composition of the book, specifying us the time, the
characters, language and motives. Well, I´ll try to be brief. The time is somewhere
in a Londonish city around the 60´s, but those aren´t the real 60´s since they
are kind of a futuristic 60´s. Then, he
states that characters could be divides into the “good” and the “bad”, but as
he says, no one can be good nor bad since goodness and badness are an
inseparable pair. The point when analyzing the characters is to realize their
humanity, if it even exists. We see that Alex is the protagonist and the
narrator, and he is presented as a brutal and barbaric person with no feelings
whatsoever. He has his friends, who are also incredibly violent, and his
parents, who don´t really care about him that much. Radka also writes about the
importance of the Nadsat, and how it affects the story and the experience.
Finally, he talks about motives. There are a bunch of them, and all of this are
incredibly important to understand the storyline, and more importantly, the
main character. We can say that Alex´s way to explain badness is the most
important, since he chooses to be “bad” just because he wanted to. This
explains free will and the development of humanism in himself, as well as the
true worth of morality and values. We can see that the work is way more complex
to understand than what everyone thinks it is, and that the ultra-violence
reflected on it has actually something really reasonable behind it.
I really like how this writer analyzes the
book, and I think that he is really right on his points. I have to say that I
find the theme of the book way deeper than before, since through analyzing Alex
and the whole context of the story, I get to understand Burgess´ point on
society. The ultra-violence shown in the book isn´t necessarily ultra-violent
when you compare it to the day-to-day society. I like the fact that we are able
to show the importance of some moral things through written works, but I still
think that humanity has future, and “A Clockwork Orange” isn´t a representation
of the society´s future.