Is A Clockwork Orange Reactionary Or Radical In Its Meaning?
...– meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State’. In other words; a person who by all physical characteristics seems a free individual, but can not think for himself. By that definition, I feel that Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange can be considered a reactionary novel. The novel is in fact a reactionary statement in relation to many of the social and political issues which were present during the time of the novels creation. Many of Burgess’ views that are presented in the novel are very much radical, however, the overall idea and emphasis of the novel is focused on society’s current situation and the current view regarding ‘free will’ and individual choice.
Roman Macha states that:
Generally, I have to state that there is no likeable person in the book – apart from Alex, who can at least be called quite smart – or anyone, capable of looking through the deceptions of the government and the self-deceptions of man.
(Macha on A Clockwork Orange; p. 5)
In A Clockwork Orange, Burgess is critiquing the nature of totalitarianism, the state in which too much power and control resides in the hands of the government. In the novel, we are confronted with an ‘anonymous, totalitarian country’ very similar to the one Orwell creates in 1984 and highly reminiscent of the governments under communist and socialist reigns in the 1950s and 60s. When we are first introduced to Alex we see a criminal; a boy with no morals and surely no remorse concerning the foul deeds that he commits. However, if we look deeper into the situation we can conclude that Alex is a product of his environment. Alex became this menace due to the failure of the state. He has been raised on violence, no...
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