A Clockwork Orange Research Paper

If man’s closest relative shares nearly 99% of our DNA, what causes us to be so different? This question has different answers to different people; Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange is his answer. Burgess’s life experiences shaped the plot of the novel, but his Catholic heritage shaped the theme. Burgess believed that that free will is what makes man separate from animal, a core principle in the Catholic Church. When someone’s free will is taken away, that person loses their ability to be either good or evil and therefore loses what makes them human.

It is impossible to understand A Clockwork Orange without understanding the man who wrote it. John Burgess Wilson, known as Anthony Burgess to the literary world, is known for his intense

The good against evil inside of Burgess reflected onto his work, where he tried to debunk and mock while at the same time tried to revere and sympathize (“Anthony”). Burgess believed that history is made by the victor, and all of history can be open to interpretation. His works show “mindless violence, sexual ambiguity, double think, and evil with a capital ‘E’” (“Anthony”). He tried to denounce materialism and turn to the mind, and did this by showing the hatred, ranks, evil of mankind, particularly governments (“Anthony”). He believed that humans try to be intellectual, but are swayed by powerful physical forces (“Anthony”). Burgess’s works are based on personal experiences and often show the main character searching for something good only to find something even worse. The same is true with A Clockwork Orange, the most violent of his novels, and for good reason. One factor was his recent fascination with American prisons. They used behavior methods to reform criminals, a major theme found in the novel, in which the choice to be ‘good’ is limited (“Anthony Burgess”). The next influence was a trip to the Soviet Union he and his wife had made where they ran into a gang who lived by an honor code (“Anthony Burgess”). The last, and most important, factor was the 1943 attack on Burgess’ then-pregnant wife. Lynne was sent to the hospital and had to abort their

Burgess novels almost always show two languages being blended into one, reflecting Burgess’s lifelong love of language (“Anthony”). Burgess used a made-up futuristic language called nadsat, a mixture of English and Russian, to cushion the reader from the violence (“Anthony Burgess”). While the reader is aware of what is happening, looking through a filmy glass that is the language tarnishes the intensity of the violence that would normally exist from a first-person point of view. The reader has to fight their way to understand the violence being described (“Anthony Burgess”). The other reasons for the language include leaving the reader with a minimal understanding of Russian to keep the novel from going stale by using modern slang that will become outdated (“Anthony