The teacher of a class I’m taking suggested we compare the different choices by a novelist and film director to the same story. Looking over my bookshelves I spied my old copy of A Clockwork Orange — what could be better than to compare this classic novel with a Kubrick screenplay.
A Clockwork Orange – the novel and the movie
What’s it going to be then, eh? So begins each section of A Clockwork Orange – a thematic and rhetorical offer of choice for Your Humble Narrator, Alex.
How do they differ — the 1962 book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and the 1971 movie with Stanley Kubrick as director and screenplay writer?
They differ plenty, even without considering that the book’s final chapter 21 was not included in the 1979 American edition of the book I read – and was not reflected in Kubrick’s movie.
The story is of a dystopian society in the apparently near future that is scoured with teenage ultra-violence, as it is called by 15-year old Alex. Competing small gangs of teenage males seek out violence and rape. Streets and public places are deserted at night, except for the few unfortunate victims who must venture out.
Alex narrates in the teenage slang of nadsat. This, from page one: “[t]here was no law yet against producing some of these new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrowshow.” As generously explained by Alex, this means, as they used to say, that you could drink milk with knives in it to sharpen you up and make you ready.
This is slang brilliantly created by Burgess for the book, combining Russian words (nadsat is the Russian suffix for “teen”) and out-of-its-place English. Even though many of the sentences contain three or four slang words, readers can pick it up by context and repeated usage. This was a re-read for me of a book I hadn’t picked up in 30 years, and my reaction to the first few pages was probably the same as the first time – reluctance to make the effort to understand the slang. I looked for a glossary on google, but I learned that Burgess was dead-set against providing a glossary for readers. In deference to Burgess, I went with the flow by getting the gist of meaning in the early parts of the book, and then later feeling fluent.
The book is unyielding in violence. Burgess doesn’t attempt to explain the genesis of the violence, or to judge the violence; rather, it just happens continuously and unmercifully. Alex and his droogs (chums) seek violence as entertainment – they jump lone stumbling drunkards, they gang rape any female who falls in their hands, and they steal cars to drive the countryside looking for random homes to invade. When they need money, they take it from a flogged victim, but their objective is to dominate, injure, and rape for kicks. Blood is a high.
Alex is convicted of murder, and while in prison volunteers for a new technique by the recently installed law-and-order government to re-condition convicts from violence. The technique forces him to watch films of ultra-violence while on a drug that causes intense nausea. Once he is conditioned to invariably associate nausea with violence and the old in-out-in-out, he is released from prison as cured.
A unique twist is that Alex is, incongruously, a classical music lover – especially of good ole Ludwig Van. Some of the conditioning movies are old Nazi propaganda films accompanied by classical German music, including Beethoven. Of course, this means Alex associates the debilitating feelings of nausea with classical music. The technique works — no more violence or Beethoven for Alex.
The book and movie primarily differ in tone and style. The book creates a society that is going to seed – elevators don’t work, the streets are dark and dirty, the machinery of modernity is broken and not being fixed, while the working class lives in miserable mass-produced flats. There is no humor, no irony. Society is broken.
The movie has Kubrick style. The visual emphasis is on linear modern architectural lines, futuristic furniture, and personal style and flair. The story emphasis is on Alex’s re-conditioning and the role of music, particularly Ludwig Van. There is violence to be sure, lots of it, but ultimately the movie is more about the social dynamics than about Alex and his droogs.
Kubrick cut many major scenes of the book, nicely allowing extended time for Kubrickian inane absurdities such as the Chief Prison Warden (beautifully played by Michael Bates) taking inventory of Alex’s possessions and looking up Alex’s arse for contraband (this scene is not in the book).
The film is a stylized and wickedly humorous satire of British society. Kubrick’s take on the police and prison wardens is almost straight out of Monty Python. The earnest Chief Prison Guard uses a goose-stepping boot stomp whenever he turns a corner.
Later, there is lusty moaning behind a curtain in Alex’s hospital room, and out runs a naked nurse, followed by a doctor hoisting his trousers.
Alex’s father is brilliantly played by Philip Stone, with an effortless combination of insecurity and ineptness.
However, the final twist of the book (even without the added chapter) and movie is dissatisfying. To avoid the sickness, Alex attempts suicide by jumping from a window. Public opinion of the re-conditioning program turns against the government, and somehow the government manages to reverse the conditioning while Alex is in a coma. The story ends as Alex awakes with his lust for violence restored.
Alex’s transformation back to his old self is unexplained and just too convenient. It would have been more interesting for the consequences of re-conditioning play out. This would be in keeping with Burgess’ dark vision of a cynical government co-opting the free will of its citizens.
Burgess explained his views in an article from 1973 and printed by The New Yorker in the June 4 & 11, 2012 issue. Alex represents human choice, however poor those decisions may be. The prison chaplain laments that Alex ceases to be a wrongdoer, but “ceases also to be a creature of moral choice.” Burgess notes that at the beginning of the story Alex, unlike his chums and many others, is endowed with the three characteristics regarded as essential attributes of man – he rejoices in articulate language, he loves beauty as exemplified by Beethoven, and he is aggressive. To Burgess, the reversal of the aversive training and restoration of Alex’s free condition is meant to be a happy ending.
In contrast, Kubrick’s movie used the restoration of Alex’s lust for violence as something more sinister, to satirize the ludicrous, almost comical, lengths to which a pandering poll-driven government will go to maintain power.
And, that brings us to that dratted final chapter 21. O my brothers, say it ain’t so. In that chapter, Alex at age 19 realizes that violence has lost his appeal, and decides that he would like to start a family.
According to the Introduction by Andrew Biswell of the “restored” American edition published in 1986, Burgess originally appended a handwritten note to his editor at the end of chapter 20: “Should we end here? An optional ‘epilogue’ follows.” The American editor, Eric Swenson, argued against including it, and according to Swenson, Burgess acknowledged that Swenson was right and that chapter 21 was included because the British publisher wanted a happy ending.
From at least a story-telling vantage, Chapter 21 is as unlikely as sticking a happy ending onto the Trump presidency – it’s just not going to happen. However, it makes the point for Burgess that the human condition represents possibility – and Alex’s choice of family over violence shows that possibility.
Regardless, over the years since original publication Burgess made it clear to all that chapter 21 belonged, and the American editions since 1986 have included this restored chapter.
Burgess was unhappy that Kubrick did not include this final redemptive ending in the movie. Kubrick, like me, claims that he didn’t even know of the final chapter, having read the American edition of the book for making the movie; however, others argue that his correspondence at the time indicated he knew of the final chapter. In any event, he said that he would not have included it even had he known, since the redemptive ending was unconvincing.
The film is biting satire, but with some silliness. The book is unremittingly grim. The film has style. The book has dirt and blood. Both capture a society in which the cynics are in charge and have relinquished responsibility.
Bob Fall 