Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange summary. Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange

15.04.2019

- Well, what now, huh?

The company is like this: me, that is, Alex, and my three drugs, that is, Pete, Georgik and Tyom, and Tyom was really a dark guy, in the sense of stupid, and we were sitting in the Korova milk bar, making mozgoi about that , where to kill the evening - so vile, cold and gloomy winter evening, although dry. The milk bar “Korova” was a zavedenije, where they served “milk-plus”, although you, damn it, probably already forgot what kind of zavedenije it was: of course, nowadays everything changes so quickly, it is forgotten right before our eyes, No one cares, no one even really reads newspapers these days. In general, they served “milk-plus” - that is, milk plus some additives. They didn’t have a permit to sell alcohol, but there was no law yet against mixing some of the new shtutshek into good old milk, and you could drink it with Velocet, Drenkrom, or even some other shtutshek , from which a quiet baldiozh comes and for about fifteen minutes you feel that the Lord God himself with all his holy army is sitting in your left shoe, and sparks and fireworks are jumping through your brain. You could also pitt “milk with knives,” as we called it, it gave off tortsh and I wanted dratsing, I wanted to gasitt someone in full, one of the whole kodloi, and on that evening from which I began my story, we This is exactly what they drank.

Our pockets were full of babok, and therefore, to make a toltshok to some old hanyge in an alley, obtriasti him and watch him swim in a pool of blood while we count the loot and divide it into four, nothing to us in general, there was no particular compulsion, just as nothing forced me to do krasting in the shop of some shaking old ptitsy, and then rvatt kogti with the contents of the cash register. However, it is not without reason that they say that money is not everything.

Each of us four was prikinut in the latest fashion, which in those days meant a pair of black tight-fitting pants with an iron cup sewn into the step, like those in which children bake Easter cakes from sand, we called it the sandbox, and it fit under the pants both for protection and as decoration, which in certain lighting stood out quite clearly, and so, I had this thing in the shape of a spider, Pete had a ruker (hand, that means), Georgie got a sort of intricate one, in the shape tsvetujotshka, and Tyom thought of adding something completely disgusting, like a clown morder (face, that is), - so after all, what kind of demand is there with Tyom, he was generally weak in thinking, both in zhizni and in general, well, dark, in general , the darkest of us all. Then we were given short jackets without lapels, but with huge false shoulders (s myshtsoi, as we called them), in which we looked like caricatured strongmen from a comic book. In addition to this, damn it, there were also ties, whitish ones, made as if from mashed potatoes with a pattern drawn with a fork. We didn’t grow our hair too long and wore a powerful shoe, like a govnodav, to kick.

- Well, what now, huh?

There were three kisy (girls, that is) sitting side by side at the counter, but there were four of us, patsanov, and it’s like we either have one for everyone, or one for each. Kisy was dressed up, God willing, in purple, orange and green wigs, each costing no less than three or four weeks of her salary, and the makeup matched (rainbows around the glazzjev and a widely painted rot). At that time they wore black dresses, long and very strict, and on the grudiah there were small silver badges with different male names– Joe, Mike and so on. It was believed that these were the malltshiki with whom they lay spatt when they were under fourteen. They all looked in our direction, and I almost said (quietly, of course, from the corner of my mouth) that wouldn’t it be better for the three of us to have a little porezvittsia, and let poor Tem, they say, rest, since we have only problems, that he should give him half a liter of white wine with a dose of synthemesc mixed in there, although still it would not be comradely. In appearance, Tyom was very, very disgusting, the name suited him quite well, but in mahatshe he had no value, especially liho he used govnodavy.

- Well, what now, huh?

Hanurik, sitting next to me on a long velvet seat that ran along three walls of the room, was already in complete otjezde: glazzja glazed, sitting and some kind of murniu muttering like “The works of Aristotle’s grunt-grunt are becoming thoroughly awesome.” Hanurik was already fine, went into orbit, as they say, and I knew what it was, I tried it myself more than once, like everyone else, but that evening I suddenly thought that this was still a vile shtuka, a way out for panties, damn it. If you drink this tricky milk, you’ll fall over, but there’s only one thing in the bashke: everything around is bred and hrenovina, and in general all this has already happened before. You see everything normally, you even see it very clearly - tables, a jukebox, lamps, kisok and malltshikov - but it all seems to be somewhere far away, in the past, but in fact there is nothing at all. At the same time, you stare at your shoe or, say, a nail and look, look, as if in a trance, and at the same time you feel as if they took you by the scruff of the neck and shook you like a kitten. They shake until all of you are shaken. Your name, the body, your very “I”, but you don’t care, you just look and wait until your shoe or your nail begins to turn yellow, yellow, yellow... Then before your eyes everything is going to explode - just a nuclear war - and your shoe, or a nail, or the dirt on your trouser leg is growing, growing, damn it, swelling, now the whole world, zaraza, has been obscured, and then you are ready to go straight to God in heaven. And you will return from there soggy, whimpering, the morder is distorted - hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Normal in general, but somehow cowardly. We did not come into this world to communicate with God. This can suck all the strength out of a guy, every last drop.

- Well, what now, huh?

The radio was playing with all its might, and in stereo, so that the singer’s golosnia seemed to move from one corner of the bar to another, fly up to the ceiling, then fall again and bounce from wall to wall. It was Bertie Lasky who did that old shtuku called “Peel the Paint Off Me.” One of the three kisoks at the counter, the one in a green wig, either stuck out her belly, then pulled it in again to the beat of what they called music. I felt like I was getting a torso from the knives in the cunning milk, and I was ready to portray something like “the heap is small.” I yelled “Legs, legs, legs!” as if stabbed to death, it was cracked by the driving hanygu across the vat, or, as we say, v tykvu, but he didn’t even feel it, continuing to mutter about “telephone jabberland and granullandia, which are always a big hole.” When he returns from heaven, he will feel everything, and how!

-Where to? – Georgie asked.

“What difference does it make,” I say, “there’s glianem there—maybe something will turn up, damn it.”

In general, we rolled out into the vast winter landscape and walked first along Marganita Boulevard, and then turned onto Boothbay Avenue and there we found what we were looking for - a small toltshok, with which we could start the evening. We came across a tattered stari kashka, a weak tshelovek in glasses, grasping the cold night air with his gaping lungs. With books and a ratty umbrella under his arm, he left the public biblio on the corner, where in those days normal people rarely visited. And in general, in those days, respectable, as they say, decent people did not really walk the streets after dark - there was not enough police, but broken malltshipalltshiki like us were hanging around everywhere, so this stari professor was the only passerby on the entire street. In general, I approached him, everything was neat, and I said: “I’m sorry, damn it.”

Story

Burgess wrote his novel immediately after doctors diagnosed him with a brain tumor and told him he had about a year to live. The author later told the Village Voice: “This damn book is a work of pain... I was trying to get rid of the memories of my first wife, who was brutally beaten by four deserters of the American army during World War II. She was pregnant and then lost the child. After everything that happened, she fell into a wild depression and even tried to commit suicide. Later she quietly drank herself to death and died.”

Name

Name " A Clockwork Orange"(A Clockwork Orange) the novel received from an expression that was once widely circulated among London cockneys - inhabitants of the working classes of the East End. Older Cockneys refer to things that are unusual or strange as “crooked as a clockwork orange,” that is, they are things of the most bizarre and incomprehensible kind. Anthony Burgess lived in Malaysia for seven years, and in Malay the word “orang” means “person”, and in English “orange” means “orange”

Plot

Alex served there for two years, and suddenly the opportunity to be released appeared: amnesty is promised to anyone who agrees to conduct an experiment on himself. Alex, without really thinking about what they are going to do with him, agrees. And the experiment is as follows: Alex is brainwashed, making him incapable not only of violence, but also of sexual intercourse. Even Beethoven's music hurts him.

Alex's ordeals after his release from prison make up the third part of the novel. One by one, Alex meets all his victims on the way and takes his soul away from him. Burgess emphasizes their cruelty. Even those who see him for the first time do not miss the opportunity to abuse a defenseless teenager. After an unsuccessful attempt to drive Alex to suicide, he suffers a concussion, and after treatment, all the reflexes instilled in him disappear - Alex goes out into the street healthy again.

Characters

Alex- the main character, a teenager, the embodiment of teenage aggression and rebellion. Alex is the leader of a youth gang, which, along with others like him, wanders the streets at night, fights with other gangs, attacks defenseless passers-by, maims people, and robs shops. Alex gets great pleasure from beatings and rapes. He stimulates his aggression with drugs and listening to the music of Beethoven. Alex is incorrigible, he is confused by the attempts of those around him and the state to make him law-abiding and manageable.

Tem- Alex’s accomplice and, perhaps, his antipode. " ...And indeed the guy is dark- hence the nickname. In the original his name is Dim (from English dim). He is not distinguished by intelligence and education, although he is physically developed: “ ...The one who, for all his stupidity, alone was worth three in anger and mastery of all the vile tricks of a fight" Alex describes him with obvious disgust. Tyom's favorite weapon is a chain with which he hits the enemy's eyes. He eventually leaves the gang and becomes a police officer.

Georgie- Alex's friend was jealous of his dominant role in the gang, which led to a conflict between them. Subsequently, this conflict became the reason for Alex’s excessive bravado and he, overestimating his capabilities, killed old woman and went to prison. Georgik was killed when he attempted to rob the house of a “capitalist”. The destinies of Tem, Georgica and Pete reflect three possible paths that a teenager in the world of Alexa can take.

Pete- the calmest and outgoing person from Alex's gang. He subsequently leaves the gang and gets married. It was he who helped Alex change his point of view on life at the end of the novel.
« Crystallography enthusiast" - one of Alex's victims. A frail elderly man who was first attacked by Alex’s gang, and then attacked the “cured” Alex in the company of the same old men. Burgess introduces it to emphasize the helplessness of the “cured” Alex, his inability to fight off even the weak old man.

Dr. Branom- one of the scientists who conducted an experiment on Alex to cure aggression. In general, scientists are presented in the novel as ruthless towards the experimental subject (Alex is called “our subject”). As for Dr. Branom, he captivates Alex with his apparent friendliness, his smile - “such a smile that I kind of immediately believed him.” Branom tries to gain Alex's trust and calls himself a friend. It is possible that the prototype of Branom was J. Mengele, who gained confidence in his experimental subjects so that it would be easier to work with them.

Doctor Brodsky- one of the scientists who conducted experiments on the main character, Alex.

Joe- Alex's parents' lodger until he gets out of prison. Towards the end of the book, he goes home to get treatment because he was beaten by the police.

P. R. Deltoid- a policeman assigned to Alex to subdue him.

F. Alexander- a writer to whom Alex caused great trauma - in front of him he raped him along with his friends and killed his wife. Author of the book “A Clockwork Orange” based on the plot of the work. Towards the end, he conspires with his colleagues and drives Alex to attempt suicide by playing loud music for him, causing Alex great suffering. He is Burgess himself. Four American deserters raped his wife, and later she “quietly drank herself to death and died.”

Screen adaptation

Translation into Russian

Burgess, wanting to enliven his novel, saturates it with slang words from the so-called “nadsat”, taken from the Russian and Gypsy languages. At the time when Burgess was thinking about the language of the novel, he found himself in Leningrad, where he decided to create some kind of international language, which was Nadsat. The main difficulty of translating the novel into Russian is that these words look as unusual for a Russian-speaking reader as they do for an English-speaking reader.

V. Boshnyak came up with the idea of typing these words in Latin, thus distinguishing them from the text in Russian. Here, for example, is Alex’s altercation with the leader of an enemy gang:

Who do I see! Wow! Is it really fat and smelly, is it really our vile and vile Billyboy, koziol and svolotsh! How are you, kal in the pot, castor oil bladder? Well, come here, I’ll tear off your beitsy, if you still have them, you drotshenyi eunuch!

There is also a known translation in which “Russian” words are translated into English and given in Cyrillic in the text.

Basically in the novel, the characters use ordinary Russian common words as slang - “boy”, “face”, “tea”, etc.

The novel mentions some famous Russian places - Victory Park, the Melodiya store and some others.
Some editions are missing chapter 21, in which Alex meets Pete and rethinks his attitude towards life. Kubrick's film is based on this version of the book.
The British punk band The Adicts imitated the film's main characters, which is why they were nicknamed "Clockwork Punk". In addition, the group’s third album is called “Smart Alex”
The title comes from this novel musical groups Mechanical Orange, Moloko, The Devotchkas and Devotchka.
Brazilian metal band Sepultura released a concept album this year A-Lex based on this work.
In 2007, a dramatization of the novel written by Ukrainian writer Oleg Sery was staged at the Youth Theater in Chernigov.
The Russian group "Bi-2" released an album called "Milk". On the cover of the disc there are musicians dressed as the heroes of the novel.
The German band Die Toten Hosen released the album Ein kleines bisschen Horrorschau in 1988, dedicated to the book.

Published in Russian

The novel "A Clockwork Orange". Publishing house " Fiction", Leningrad, 1991. Translation from English by V. Boshnyak. ISBN 5-280-02370-1

Notes

Categories:

Books in alphabetical order
Novels 1962
Works by Anthony Burgess
Dystopian novels
Literary works in alphabetical order

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See what “A Clockwork Orange” is in other dictionaries:

- “A Clockwork Orange” UK, 1972, 137 min. Philosophical dystopia. One of the most famous films in the history of world cinema probably will not make such a stunning impression on viewers today as this... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema

Like, reviewer about interesting book. in my memory, after which I really wanted to see Kubrick’s film. “A Clockwork Orange” is a novel by Anthony Burgess, written in 1962, which formed the basis of the film of the same name, shot in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. cruel. Imbued with cruelty, but this makes it even more interesting. Reading is just for entertainment, nothing more. But quite high quality.

I read a book in electronic form. It won’t be difficult to download the book “A Clockwork Orange.” If you want to buy in paper form, then

The history of writing the novel

The novel received its title “A Clockwork Orange” from an expression that was once widely circulated among the London Cockneys, the inhabitants of the working classes of the East End. Older Cockneys refer to things that are unusual or strange as “crooked as a clockwork orange,” that is, they are things of the most bizarre and incomprehensible kind. Anthony Burgess lived in Malaysia for seven years, and in Malay the word “orang” means “person”, and in English “orange” means “orange”.

Difficulties of translation into Russian

Burgess, wanting to enliven his novel, saturates it with slang words from the so-called “nadtsat”, taken from the Russian and Gypsy languages. At the time when Burgess was thinking about the language of the novel, he found himself in Leningrad, where he decided to create some kind of international language, which was the eleventh. The main difficulty of translating the novel into Russian is that these words look as unusual for a Russian-speaking reader as they do for an English-speaking reader.

V. Boshnyak came up with the idea of typing these words in Latin, thus distinguishing them from the text in Russian. Here, for example, is Alex’s altercation with the leader of an enemy gang:

Who do I see! Wow! Is it really fat and smelly, is it really our vile and vile Billyboy, koziol and svolotsh! How are you, kal in the pot, castor oil bladder? Well, come here, I’ll tear off your beitsy, if you still have them, you drotshenyi eunuch!

In E. Sinelshchikov’s translation, the “Russian” words are translated into English and given in Cyrillic in the text.

At the sight of the uninvited guests, the girl made the letter “O” with her brightly painted mouth, and the young man in the horned glasses raised his head from the typewriter and looked at us in bewilderment. Paper sheets were scattered all over the table in front of him. To the right of the tie-pen they were folded into a neat column. That evening we were lucky to have intelligent men.

Basically in the novel, the characters use ordinary Russian common words as slang - “boy”, “face”, “tea”, etc.

Because of the same “11th”, Stanley Kubrick bequeathed the film “A Clockwork Orange” to be shown in Russian distribution exclusively with subtitles.

Interesting facts about the book “A Clockwork Orange”

The novel mentions some famous Soviet places- Victory Park, Melodiya store and some others.
Some editions are missing chapter 21, in which Alex meets Pete and rethinks his attitude towards life. Kubrick's film is based on this version of the book.
Members of the British punk band The Adicts imitated the film's main characters, which is why they were nicknamed "Clockwork Punk". In addition, the group’s third album is called “Smart Alex”
From this novel came the names of the musical groups Mechanical Orange, Moloko, The Devotchkas and Devotchka.
The Brazilian metal band Sepultura released the concept album A-Lex in 2009, based on this work.
In 2007 in " Youth Theater"In the city of Chernigov, a dramatization of the novel was staged, written by the Ukrainian writer Oleg Sery.
The Russian group "Bi-2" released an album called "Moloko". On the cover of the disc there are musicians dressed in the style of the heroes of the novel.
The German band Die Toten Hosen released the album Ein kleines bisschen Horrorschau in 1988, dedicated to the book

Reviews of the book “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess

I won't say anything about Alex. Without any retelling of the text, I will go straight to the meaning of the book (as it seemed to me)
I think that the author did not want the reader to put himself before the choice of which side he is on - good or evil, because good that adjusts the so-called evil to its mechanism is evil, since it interferes with the very living thing that is in us. We see this, of course, in the moment when Alex is zombified in the hospital. I think that at the age of 16 I will not give an answer about the existence of good as such. I’ll just add that large number goodness, this is a reflection of hypocrisy, and of course, evil actions should not be encouraged, no matter how sincere they are, even in this (intellectual, classics-loving) Alex.
Well, if for small nuances, then I would never believe that all these things, and the printed text came from a 15 - 18 year old guy (as previous responses said)

Like this interesting review with lifelib:

The review contains spoilers and obscenities.
Hmmm... after I removed all the swear words from my first mental version of the review for Orange, there were only two left - die, bitch
. In the second version there were 600 words (“die, bitch
“- repeat 300 times). I had to wait for the emotions to subside in order to regain the ability to speak clearly.

Everyone knows what the book is about, right? No? Well, I'll be brief then. There are 4 geeks sitting at that table in the Korova bar. Shorty Alex is their ideological inspirer. He is 15 years old. Now they will roll out “charged” milk “with knives” so that it will last all night and go outside to have fun. Today on the program: to warm up, take a break from some grandpa, yeah, there’s just the right one coming, with books in his hands. Tear books, beat grandfather and strip him for complete jokes. What's next? Robbery of a store, beat the saleswoman until she blisters with blood. And then the highlight of the program - an unexpected guest. This is real fun, my friends! To break into a house on the outskirts, beat the owner, tie him up, and then, before his eyes, arrange a group “good old showdown” with his wife. Before going to bed, Alex will definitely listen to something from the classics - Mozart or Beethoven, imagining how he rapes and beats, and daydreams so much that he even cums from an excess of feelings. (Kill, kill the creature!) As a result of a medical experiment, he develops a peculiar allergy to violence. Just thinking about it makes him feel nauseous and in pain. Dear, the poor thing was deprived of the right to choose! Ahah! This is inhumane! After all, every person should have free will! For a person, yes, it should. Such scum does not. Why does he need this freedom? What can he pick up there? Who else is in the gateway today? Which, in fact, is what he does as soon as he gets his right to choose back.

And the ending is a joke! It turns out (here I must speak in the tone of an exalted professor who has just done greatest discovery) our Alex was such an evil reptile because he was young! Too young! He is a rebel! And now he has begun to grow up and he already wants a chubby baby and some loving kitty at the stove. I don't believe it. If you are a moral monster, then this will last for a long time. So... die, bitch
.

And Burgess has my admiration. The book is captivating and delivers.

Well, one more opinion from Imkhoneta:

A long time ago I watched a film, I was about 15 years old. I really liked the film, it started my love for Malcolm McDowell. But, as I understand now, I realized little in the film. After more than 15 years, I remembered the film and decided to read the book. It's hard to read at first because of the slang. The eye always stumbles over the spelling of Russian words in transliteration, and this interferes with perception. I even stopped reading for a while. But then you get used to it, the book is amazing. Now I'm rewatching the film to see what I like better. Probably the movie and the book are not comparable. These things are masterpieces. And, most importantly, nothing changes in society. Violence begets violence. It is impossible to live honestly in society. If you are honest and decent, then they will label you a lyuli. And the cops themselves behave like out-and-out bandits. Everyone uses Alex for their own purposes, but he turns the whole world. The book makes you think. I will definitely re-read it to formulate my thoughts more clearly.

Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange

(Practical lesson)

The novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) brought world fame to its creator, the English prose writer Anthony Burgess (1917–1993). But the Russian-speaking reader had the opportunity to get acquainted with the novel almost three decades later, after its publication in 1991. The name of Burgess, widely known in the West, was not mentioned in Russian literary criticism, and the first publications about him and his “infamous”, as they put it, the author himself, the book appeared only after the novel was filmed in 1971 by American director Stanley Kubrick. Both the work itself and the film based on it were considered as a vivid illustration of the phenomenon of “decay” of the capitalist West.

“A Clockwork Orange” is a dystopian novel (dystopia) - a genre whose classic examples are represented in the literature of the twentieth century by the works of E. Zamyatin (“We”), Vl. Nabokov (“Invitation to an Execution”), A. Koestler (“Blinding Darkness”), O. Huxley (“Brave New World”), J. Orwell (“1984”). Burgess created his original dystopia, drawing on the experience of his predecessors (primarily George Orwell) and largely polemicizing with them. The writer sees the source of evil not so much in state system, how much in the person himself, his personality, overly liberated, prone to vice and evil that are irrational in nature. Thus, the novel puts forward the problem of the crisis of modern civilization, infected with cruelty.

Is there a real way out of this crisis? What to rely on: religious postulates, moral preaching or the latest socio-pedagogical methods that help “program” a person exclusively for good deeds, thereby abolishing his right to free choice between good and evil, showing distrust of the very consciousness of man, denying in him moral ability and conscience. One of these types of experimental techniques is described in detail by Burgess in the novel, and it is unlikely that it can be entirely attributed to the realm of the utopian, since it has a very real basis. Attempts to grow “clockwork oranges” were made several times in the 20th century. totalitarian states. It is no coincidence that the author introduces into the novel a borrowing from “Finnegans Wake” by J. Joyce, resorting to the semantic attraction of two similar-sounding homonym words: orange is an orange, and in Malay it is a person. Burgess satirically sharpens the picture of the life of a society driven by good intentions, which ultimately make the individual morally defective.

The main problems of the novel are considered in philosophical and social aspects. The task of the practical lesson is to identify the features of the artistic embodiment of the stated problems, as well as to determine what the genre uniqueness of Burgess’s work consists of.

Let us recall that the emergence of the dystopian genre was preceded by a fairly long development of world utopian literature, the roots of which lie in ancient legends about the golden age, the “isles of the blessed.” The very term “utopia” to denote literary works came into use thanks to the work of the outstanding English thinker Thomas More, “A very useful, as well as entertaining, truly golden little book about the best structure of the state and about the new island of Utopia” (1516). Thomas More called “utopia” a fictional, fantastic island where an ideally organized society exists. Accordingly, the term “utopia” was assigned to works in which perfect image future structure of society.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the genre of literary utopia was transformed. There are such varieties of it as “dystopia” and “dystopia”. These terms go back to the concept of topos: “dystopia” - from the Greek dis(bad) and topos(place), i.e. a bad place, something directly opposite to utopia as perfect, to a better world[Shestakov 1986: 6]. A similar definition is contained in an article by E. Gevorkyan: “dystopia is an “ideally” bad society” [Gevorgyan 1989: 11]. The same “negative” utopia is represented by literary genre dystopia, therefore the boundaries of the terms “dystopia” and “dystopia” are quite arbitrary.

As in J. Orwell's novel, the action in Burgess's work takes place in England in the “near future” - in the 1990s. But if Orwell’s critical pathos is directed primarily against state totalitarianism, against the System, then with Burgess the emphasis is placed differently: he equally places responsibility for the fate of a person, his freedom on both the individual himself and the System.

For the modern reader, many of the writer’s predictions have long become a familiar reality (satellite television, lunar exploration, etc.). The descriptions of cities surrounded by working-class neighborhoods (“dormitory” areas?), twin houses with identical cage apartments, the unmotivated terrible cruelty of teenagers and the rise in crime among young people will not strike the reader’s imagination with their implausibility. All this has become characteristic features modern society.

In his Nobel speech A. Solzhenitsyn noted: “Language is the memory of the nation.” This idea is also implied in Burgess's novel. Absence internal culture in modern man - this is the root cause of cruelty. The novel is dominated by the elements of international (English-Russian) youth slang - another fantasy of the writer that has come to life today. The novel is narrated from the perspective of the main character, fifteen-year-old teenager Alex. As is known, to create a model of an international social dialect, Burgess used the vocabulary of Russian dudes of the late fifties, which he recorded during a trip to Leningrad. Later, recalling his time in Russia, Burgess admitted: “It dawned on me that the scumbag hooligans of the British future must speak a mixture of proletarian English and Russian. These teenage friends, professing a cult of vandalism and violence, speak the language of a totalitarian regime. This book is about brainwashing, and the reader was also brainwashed, whom I forced, unbeknownst to him, to learn a seemingly meaningless Anglo-Russian argot” (quoted from: [Zinik 2004: 4]). In the novel, interjargon from the future reveals the universal nature of the process of human depersonalization. Jargon replaces its essence and therefore ceases to be a common language problem. Burgess's heroes are deprived historical memory. The pride of English literature, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is for them just a certain Pae Be Shelley, and the Bible is “Jewish fiction.” However, Burgess is not at all inclined to see in speech sophistication an external indicator of high morality. In A Clockwork Orange, culture-conscious scientists conduct an experiment that has nothing to do with spirituality or humanity. Due to a coincidence of circumstances, the first victim of this experiment will be the criminal Alex, turned into a “Clockwork Orange”.

The theme of “a clockwork orange” takes on a special tone in each of the three parts of the novel.

The first part is a kind of kaleidoscope of events from the hero’s life over the course of two days, presented in the prism of his emotional perception and assessment. Alex, in the company of his teenage friends, wanders around the city at night. The Korova milk bar, where you can take a dose of drugs, deserted streets with rare passers-by, a beer bar, the outskirts of the city - the usual route of a small, close-knit gang of hooligans who regularly arrange “relaxation evenings” for themselves. An old man they met by chance was beaten, his books and clothes were torn; a store is robbed, and its owners suffer the same fate as the old bookworm; a “triumphant” victory over Billy’s gang was achieved. Finally, the teenagers raid the country house writer. Here, having sadistically dealt with the couple, they discover the manuscript of the novel “A Clockwork Orange.”

Alex, who always admired people who write books, only had to read a short passage to evaluate what was written as unheard of stupidity: the author of the manuscript declared that he was raising his “pen-sword” against those who were trying to “bring upon man, a natural being and prone to kindness.” , with all his being reaching out to the mouth of the Lord<…>, laws and regulations inherent only in the world of mechanisms.”

Returning home, Alex ends the “pleasant” evening with no less pleasant impressions: He listens to the “wonderful Mozart” and then Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto”, and suddenly the meaningless words pop up in his memory: “a clockwork orange.” The music of the old German maestro makes the juvenile delinquent yearn to return to the country cottage to kick its owners, “tear them to pieces and trample them into dust on the floor of their own house.” Schiller’s ode “To Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is repeatedly mentioned in the novel, does not inspire the main character to act righteously. It is noteworthy that Alex reinterprets the text of the ode in his own way, filling it with calls not to spare the “stinking world.” “Kill everyone who is weak and sire!” - he hears in the jubilant sounds of music.

It is no coincidence that the text of the novel contains in abundance the names of great composers, titles and detailed descriptions musical works. A sadist and criminal, Alex is an expert and fine connoisseur of Bach, Mozart, and Handel. Passion for classical music goes well with the desire to rob, kill, and rape. Alex is an esthete of violence. One of those who “already with the ideal of Sodom does not deny the ideal of Madonna” (F. M. Dostoevsky), who imagines himself as a superman, obedient only to his own will and instincts.

Reflecting on the problem of evil, the English writer comes to tragic, hopeless conclusions: evil is ineradicable, it lurks too deeply in man. Therefore, in particular, Burgess critically rethinks the theory of the educational impact of art on a person. Art cannot ennoble one whose personality is subject to moral decay.

Alex's story does not fit into the framework of the story of an ordinary villain; it embodies the real features of society and man of the late twentieth century - a man who ceased to be “ashamed of his instincts” (F. Nietzsche) and not only rejected moral norms and cultural prohibitions, opposed himself to God, but he also allowed himself to openly mock previous values. This process of “death of man” (for, according to Jung, man inevitably perishes as a spiritual entity, deprived of support for the transcendental) was, in particular, reflected in numerous, openly cynical statements of the protagonist: “Listening<музыку>, I kept my eyes tightly closed so as not to spugnut the pleasure, which was much sweeter than God, heaven and everything else - such visions visited me. I saw how veki and kisy, young and old, were lying on the ground, begging for mercy, and in response I just laughed with all the rotom and kurotshu with the boot of their litsa”; music “made me feel equal to God, ready to throw thunder and lightning, tormenting kis and vetav, sobbing in my – ha ha ha – undivided power”; “Well, I read about flagellation, about putting on crown of thorns, then about the cross and all other kal, and then it dawned on me that there was something in this. The record player played the wonderful music of Bach, and I, closing the glass, imagined myself taking part and even commanding the flagellation myself, doing all the toltshoking and driving in nails, dressed in a toga in the latest Roman fashion.”

The beauty hidden in music and designed to give “metaphysical consolation” releases the devilish principle in Alex’s soul (remember Dostoevsky: “Here the devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people”). His fantasies and way of life in general allow us to say that before us is a world of enraged matter abandoned by the spirit, “another Kingdom of death” [Eliot 1994: 141]. This is the apocalyptic model of modern civilization presented by Burgess, and its essence is concentrated in the image of the main character of the novel.

The problem of good and evil, posed in the first part of A Clockwork Orange and interpreted in philosophical aspect, gradually narrows and is considered in the future as social. Once in prison, Alex is forced to agree to a course of experimental therapy (“Louis’s course”), aimed at developing in the patient a physical aversion to violence, which previously gave him pleasure. The supposed results of the experiment inspire optimism in scientists, but terrify the priest. A Christian preacher and prison chaplain is convinced (following the existentialists) that only his inner choice makes a person free. And it is better to choose evil than imposed passivity. The chaplain tries to explain “strange things” to the prisoner: “Maybe it’s not so nice to be good, little 6655321. Maybe it’s just terrible to be good. And as I say this to you, I realize how contradictory this sounds.<…>What does the Lord need? Does He need good or the choice of good? Perhaps a person who has chosen evil has something better than man kind, but kind not by choice? These are deep and difficult questions, baby 6655321.<…>I realize with sadness that there is no point in praying for you. You go into spaces where prayer has no power.”

“Criminal”, according to the chaplain’s definition, the experiment nevertheless took place. Alex, having gone through torment, humiliation, temptations, turned into a saint. The paradox of the situation is that the transformed Alex is destined for a pitiful fate: society rejects him. Newly minted prodigal son, who knocks on the door of his house will be expelled by his own parents. Then he will be beaten by the scribes and cynically used by the Pharisees for their own purposes. The world from which the hero was isolated and where he was returned again is vile and pitiful. However, this circumstance does not relieve responsibility from the individual, since ultimately the person himself does final choice in favor of Good or Evil. Alex once made such a conscious choice, which allowed him there, in a “past” life, to make fun of a newspaper article by the “scientist papika”: “...he wrote, allegedly having thought everything through, and even as a man of God: THE DEVIL COME FROM OUTSIDE, from without it takes root in our innocent youths, and the responsibility for this lies with the adult world - wars, bombs and all other kal. Apparently he knows what he is talking about, this man of God. Therefore, we, young innocent maltshipaltshikov, cannot be blamed. This is good, this is right."

Burgess does not give clear answers to the questions posed. In an interview with Playboy magazine, the writer noted that his task was “to show a world where people are apathetic or direct their energy to barbaric actions” (quoted from: [Nikolaevskaya 1979: 216]). The ending of the novel is open: Alex recovers, that is, he returns to his previous state, which he can probably overcome if he finds in himself something that “raises a person above himself (as part of the sensorily comprehended world)” [Kant 1966: 413].

PRACTICAL LESSON PLAN

2. The main character of the novel, Alex, in the character system.

3. Christian motives in A Clockwork Orange and their reinterpretation. The image of a prison chaplain.

4. Artistic time and space of the novel.

5. Poetics of the novel:

Parodying utopian traditions;

Symbolism;

The role of irony;

Allusive context of the novel;

“Stream of consciousness” technique;

The language of the novel.

6. Burgess as a successor to the traditions of J. Joyce.

Questions for discussion. Quests

1. Describe the system of spatial images (toponymy and topography) of the novel “A Clockwork Orange”.

3. How is the theme of music implemented in each part of Burgess’s work? What is the author's ethical and aesthetic position in addressing this topic?

4. The image of “another Alex” - the writer F. Alexander in the system of image-characters of the novel.

5. Expand the meaning of the basic metaphor “clockwork orange” in the novel. How does it relate to the ideological setting of Burgess's work?

6. Researchers of the work of E. Burgess note that his novel “A Clockwork Orange” evokes associations with literary works J. Joyce that Burgess continues the traditions of his famous predecessor. What is the typological similarity between the aesthetic positions of the two artists?

Lyrics

Burgess E. A Clockwork Orange. (Any edition)

Critical works

Belov S. B. If a person collapses. William Golding and Anthony Burgess // Massacre number “X”: Literature from England and the USA about war and military ideology. M., 1991.

Doroshevich A. Anthony Burgess: the price of freedom // Foreign literature. 1991. No. 12. P. 229–233.

Subaeva R. Universal problems of humanity // Literary Review. 1994. No. 1. P. 71–72.

Timofeev V. Afterword // E. Burgess. A Clockwork Orange. St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000. pp. 221–231.

Further reading

Galtseva R., Rodnyanskaya I. The obstacle is man: the experience of the century in the mirror of dystopias // New world. 1988. № 12.

Melnikov N. Groovy Anthony Burgess // New World. 2003. No. 2.

Nikolaevskaya A. Requirements of the genre and adjustment of time (Notes on dystopia in English literature 60-70s) // Foreign literature. 1979. No. 6.

Novikova T. Extraordinary adventures of utopia and dystopia (H. Wells, O. Huxley, A. Platonov) // Questions of literature. 1998. No. 7–8.

TOPICS FOR ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS

1. The question of the genre definition of dystopia.

2. E. Burgess’s novel “A Clockwork Orange” and the classic dystopia of the twentieth century.

3. Philosophical and religious aspects of the novel “A Clockwork Orange”.

4. Functions of foreign language inclusions in the novel by E. Burgess.

5. Mythological archetypes in A Clockwork Orange by E. Burgess.

From the book World artistic culture. XX century Literature author Olesina E

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Anthony Burgess A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Fragment 7I didn't believe my usham. It seemed like I was being kept in this filthy place for an eternity and would be kept for just as long. However, eternity fit entirely into two weeks, and finally they told me that these two weeks were ending: “Tomorrow, my friend,

* PART ONE *

- Well, what now, huh? The company is like this: me, that is, Alex, and my three drugs, that is, Pete, Georgik and Tem, and Tem was really a dark guy, in the sense of stupid, and we were sitting in the Korova milk bar, making mozgoi about that , where to spend the evening - such a vile, cold and gloomy winter evening, although dry. The milk bar “Korova” was a zavedenije, where they served “milk-plus”, although you, damn it, probably already forgot what kind of zavedenija they were: of course, nowadays everything changes so quickly, it is forgotten right before our eyes, No one cares, no one even really reads newspapers these days. In general, they served “milk-plus” - that is, milk plus some additives.
They didn’t have a permit to sell alcohol, but there was no law yet against mixing some of the new shtutshek into good old milk, and you could drink it with Velocet, Drenkrom, or even some other shtutshek , from which a quiet baldiozh comes, and for about fifteen minutes you feel that the Lord God himself with all his holy army is sitting in your left shoe, and sparks and fireworks are jumping through your brain. You could also pitt “milk with knives,” as we called it, it gave off tortsh, and I wanted dratsing, I wanted to gasitt someone in full, one for the whole kodloi, and on that evening from which I began my story, This is exactly what we drank.
Our pockets were full of babok, and therefore, to make a toltshok to some old hanyge in an alley, obtriasti him and watch him swim in a pool of blood while we count the loot and divide it among four, nothing to us, in general, it didn’t particularly force me, just as nothing forced me to do krasting in the shop of some shaking old ptitsy, and then rvatt kogti with the contents of the cash register. However, it is not without reason that they say that money is not everything.
Each of the four of us was prikinut on the last one. fashion, which in those days meant a pair of black tight-fitting pants with an iron cup sewn into the step, like those in which children bake Easter cakes from sand, we called it a sandbox, and it was attached under the pants both for protection and as a decoration, which in certain lighting stood out quite clearly, and so, I had this thing in the shape of a spider, Pete had a ruker (hand, that means), Georgie got this fancy one, in the shape of a tsvetujotshka, and Tem thought of adding something completely disgusting, sort of like a clown's morder (face, that is) - but what's the demand with Tema, he was generally weak in his thinking, both in zhizni and in general, well, dark, in general, the darkest of all of us. Then we were given short jackets without lapels, but with huge false shoulders (s myshtsoi, as we called them), in which we looked like caricatured strongmen from a comic book. Damn it, there were also ties that came with them, whitish ones that looked like they were made from mashed potatoes with a pattern drawn with a fork. We didn’t grow our hair too long and wore a powerful shoe, like a govnodav, to kick. - Well, what now, huh?
There were three kisy (girls, that is) sitting side by side at the counter, but there were four of us, patsanov, and we either have one for everyone, or one for each. Kisy was dressed up, God willing, in purple, orange and green wigs, each costing no less than three or four weeks of her salary, and the makeup matched (rainbows around the glazzjev and a widely painted rot). At that time they wore black dresses, long and very strict, and on the grudiah there were small silver badges with different men's names - Joe, Mike, and so on. It was believed that these were the mallshiki with whom they lay spatt when they were under fourteen.
They all looked in our direction, and I almost said (quietly, of course, from the corner of my mouth) that wouldn’t it be better for the three of us to have a little porezvittsia, and let poor Tem, they say, rest, since we have only problems, that he should give him half a liter of white wine with a dose of synthemesc mixed in there, although still it would not be comradely.