Burgess’s Comment on Society in A Clockwork Orange

The decade in which post-war social agitate is felt up to have been concentrated is the 1960s. This is certainly a simplification, and it does servicing pinpoint some of the to a greater extent prominent changes that may have been longer in the making. For example, one(a) of the key social changes of the 1960s is the process of jejuneness floriculture. The sense of a freshlyly empowered sector of society is conveyed principally by the new outlay power of young people, and the emergence of mainstream young-related cultural forms, especially pop music, that quickly become signifi displacet components of the economy.The close to memorable fictional treatment of juvenility culture in the 1960s, however, puts a very dissimilar edifice on the changing balance of power. In A Clockwork orangeness (1962) Anthony Burgess isolates the tribal, antisocial elements of youth culture in a dystopian fable of violence as leisure. On the surface A Clockwork Orange is a novel about juve nile delinquents in a near-future Britain, but on a deeper direct it is a novel about conditioning and free will.Even the parboiled paternalism of the Empire and the synthetic socialism of the welf ar press out had still apparently left room though not much for a confabulation betwixt the idiosyncratic and society and had kept alive discussions as to what was right and what was wrong with England. Now what had been the fuck was exacted from the sensibilities of those who, overfull physically and socially, lived under what amounted to a deadening hedonism.It must have seemed wholly logical to Burgess, later on exploring the dialectics of the unmarried and collective mind, that the problem of the novelist was to probe its metaphysics- to see how the naked needs of his rebel anti-heroes could be met in a mad, lost, loveless, brutal, sterile founding. Alex, the gross product of welfare state overkill, is not depraved because he is divest but because he is indulged. Myself, he notes rather pathetically at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, I couldnt help a bit of disappointment at things as they were those days. Nothing to fight against satisfyingly.Everything as easy as kiss-my-sharries (Burgess 11). Alexs utopia is more(prenominal) than the result of self-gratification it is the consequence of the original sin inborn with every offspring of unexampled organizational leviathans. Having discovered that existence has always meant freedom, but never having been taught goodness, Alex responds predictably and inevitably to the killing warhead of choice. Alex took on the status of a heavy metal hero, psychologically lobotomized by an insensitive society. Alexs tone is consistently bright, breezy, humorous, cynical, confident, and amoral, as is Alex himself.This is the opening of his story Whats it going to be then, eh? There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs (Burgess 5). It is a book center on the chance to be good and proceeding from a si ngle, significant existential quandary Is an hatred military personnel being with free choice preferable to a good zombie without it? Indeed, at 2 points in the novel Burgess spells out the dilemma for us. On one occasion, Alex, about to submit to conditioning, is admonished by the prison house chaplain It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be slimy to be good. . . . Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness?Is a man who chooses the stinky perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? . . . A unholy terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to shuffling an good choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good (Burgess 96). And on the other, the unintended F. Alexander, with whom Alex finds mental home temporarily, similarly remarks Youve sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. Yo u have no power of choice any longer.You are committed to socially gratifying acts, a little machine capable only of good. . . . But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man (Burgess 153-54). Yet, were this all Burgess had to say on the matter, the pulsation of the dilemma would lose substantially in force. Society at large has never troubled itself with the existential agony (unless to repress some manifestation of it), and judging from the preponderance of sentiment abroad today, it would doubtlessly adore the conditioning process that champions stability over freedom.But Burgess has found inhering in the central dilemma considerations withal more immediate. What distinctions between good and evil are possible in the contemporary world? As absolutes, have such distinctions not been totally perverted or obliterated? And as proportional terms, depending for rendering on what each negates or excludes, have they not become purely subje ctive? In a technically perfect society that has sapped our vitality for constructive choice, we are, whether choosing good or evil, zombies of one var. or another Each of us is a little clockwork orange making up the altogether of one great clockwork orange.Burgess blames the excesses of human nature on a repressive society that corrupts its citizens and primarily its youth by restricting their liberty and force feeding them outmoded values. Thus, their natural rebellion gets out of attain and only leads to more repression. The result is the satirical picture of a society moving towards an ever more repressive future. Burgess foresees a social trend toward increasing state/government control of individual lives, culminating in a political system which hires thugs as police and condones brain-washing techniques to reform criminals.Youth violence has reached an extreme which is clear waste the failure of the adult world to prevent/control/ reform youth-as-psychopathic-conditi on reaches an equally blackly humorous extreme. For example, on April 19, 1989, a young banker, walking in Central Park, was raped and left to die. The police soon caught a aggroup of Harlem teens and charged them with gang rape. Wilding the newest term for terror in a city that lives in fear, wrote the untested York domiciliate on April 22 (Hancock 38). I think term Wilding defined by the Post writers can be referred to the violent raves in A Clockwork Orange.In Burgesss A Clockwork Orange political realness reigns dishonest politicians grasp at sure and easy ways to erase crime the police are as violent as the criminals they battle political reformers are prepared to destroy victims like Alex in their attempts to loan down the government. These mainstream social/ political structures try, but fail, to reduce Alex to a clockwork orange. Works Cited Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. rude(a) York Norton, 1963. Hancock, Lynnell. Wolf Pack The Press and the Central Park Jog ger. Columbia Journalism Review. Vol. 41, 5 January-February 2003, 38.Burgesss Comment on Society in A Clockwork OrangeThe decade in which post-war social change is felt to have been concentrated is the 1960s. This is certainly a simplification, but it does help pinpoint some of the more dramatic changes that may have been longer in the making. For example, one of the key social changes of the 1960s is the emergence of youth culture. The sense of a newly empowered sector of society is conveyed principally by the new spending power of young people, and the emergence of mainstream youth-related cultural forms, especially pop music, that quickly become significant components of the economy.The most memorable fictional treatment of youth culture in the 1960s, however, puts a very different construction on the changing balance of power. In A Clockwork Orange (1962) Anthony Burgess isolates the tribal, antisocial elements of youth culture in a dystopian fable of violence as leisure. On the surface A Clockwork Orange is a novel about juvenile delinquents in a near-future Britain, but on a deeper level it is a novel about conditioning and free will.Even the parboiled paternalism of the Empire and the synthetic socialism of the welfare state had still apparently left room though not much for a dialogue between the individual and society and had kept alive discussions as to what was right and what was wrong with England. Now what had been the issue was exacted from the sensibilities of those who, glutted physically and socially, lived under what amounted to a deadening hedonism.It must have seemed only logical to Burgess, after exploring the dialectics of the single and collective mind, that the problem of the novelist was to probe its metaphysics- to see how the naked needs of his rebel anti-heroes could be met in a mad, lost, loveless, brutal, sterile world. Alex, the gross product of welfare state overkill, is not depraved because he is deprived but because he is indulged. Myself, he notes rather pathetically at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, I couldnt help a bit of disappointment at things as they were those days. Nothing to fight against really.Everything as easy as kiss-my-sharries (Burgess 11). Alexs utopia is more than the result of self-gratification it is the consequence of the original sin inborn with every offspring of modern organizational leviathans. Having discovered that existence has always meant freedom, but never having been taught goodness, Alex responds predictably and inevitably to the killing burden of choice. Alex took on the status of a heavy metal hero, psychologically lobotomized by an insensitive society. Alexs tone is consistently bright, breezy, humorous, cynical, confident, and amoral, as is Alex himself.This is the opening of his story Whats it going to be then, eh? There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs (Burgess 5). It is a book focusing on the chance to be good and proceeding from a single, sign ificant existential dilemma Is an evil human being with free choice preferable to a good zombie without it? Indeed, at two points in the novel Burgess spells out the dilemma for us. On one occasion, Alex, about to submit to conditioning, is admonished by the prison chaplain It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. . . . Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness?Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? . . . A terrible terrible thing to consider. 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 (Burgess 96). And on the other, the unwitting F. Alexander, with whom Alex finds sanctuary temporarily, similarly remarks Youve sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer.You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. . . . But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man (Burgess 153-54). Yet, were this all Burgess had to say on the matter, the impetus of the dilemma would lose substantially in force. Society at large has never troubled itself with the existential agony (unless to repress some manifestation of it), and judging from the preponderance of sentiment abroad today, it would undoubtedly applaud the conditioning process that champions stability over freedom.But Burgess has found inhering in the central dilemma considerations even more immediate. What distinctions between good and evil are possible in the contemporary world? As absolutes, have such distinctions not been totally perverted or obliterated? And as relative terms, depending for definition on what each negates or excludes, have they not become purely subjective? In a technically perfect society that has sapped o ur vitality for constructive choice, we are, whether choosing good or evil, zombies of one sort or another Each of us is a little clockwork orange making up the whole of one great clockwork orange.Burgess blames the excesses of human nature on a repressive society that corrupts its citizens and primarily its youth by restricting their liberty and force feeding them outmoded values. Thus, their natural rebellion gets out of hand and only leads to more repression. The result is the satirical picture of a society moving towards an ever more repressive future. Burgess foresees a social trend toward increasing state/government control of individual lives, culminating in a political system which hires thugs as police and condones brain-washing techniques to reform criminals.Youth violence has reached an extreme which is clearly fantastic the failure of the adult world to prevent/control/ reform youth-as-psychopathic-condition reaches an equally blackly humorous extreme. For example, on April 19, 1989, a young banker, walking in Central Park, was raped and left to die. The police soon caught a group of Harlem teens and charged them with gang rape. Wilding the newest term for terror in a city that lives in fear, wrote the New York Post on April 22 (Hancock 38). I think term Wilding defined by the Post writers can be referred to the violent raves in A Clockwork Orange.In Burgesss A Clockwork Orange political pragmatism reigns venal politicians grasp at sure and easy ways to erase crime the police are as violent as the criminals they battle political reformers are prepared to destroy victims like Alex in their attempts to bring down the government. These mainstream social/ political structures try, but fail, to reduce Alex to a clockwork orange. Works Cited Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York Norton, 1963. Hancock, Lynnell. Wolf Pack The Press and the Central Park Jogger. Columbia Journalism Review. Vol. 41, 5 January-February 2003, 38.