Nadsat

Nadsat

The use and effects of fictional argot in Anthony Burgess "A Clockwork Orange"

The essay reflects on the many effects of the use of the argot “Nadsat” in the story of “Clockwork Orange”.  Nadsat itself is the argot created by Anthony Burgues for his book Clockwork Orange. It is mainly a combination of the languages English and Russian but it also includes some words from baby language and even some invented words.

 This argot makes the book be a little harder to read because it is not easy to understand what words mean at first sight. It requires the reader´s ability of reading in context and memorizing new words that are only going to be used in this book and never again. Fortunately there are now glossaries of Nadsat which make reading the book much easier.  It may sound very complicated and confusing to read this great book, and it is in the beginning but by the middle of the book the reader is already used to it and reads Nadsat as if it was part of English.

As the essay mentions the author had many purposes for writing with Nadsat, but one of the main ones is that it makes possible talking about very delicate situations and reduce the effect so that the reader´s reaction is much different than if he was reading it directly in English. It is also useful to describe the personality of the main character named Alex in a very particular way.

Using the Nadsat argot in the book is great because it enables the reader to have a different experience while reading and practice some abilities that sometimes we forget we have. Nadsat also makes the book unforgettable because it is a very unique characteristic that is not seen in any other book in the same way. For this reason it is a very memorable book and the Nadsat allows the reader to enjoy it singularly. 

Cynthia Castro Velázquez