A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

goolied

Went

poogly

Frightened

goloss,

Voice

I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.’

skvatted

Snatched

skorry.

Fast

slovo?

Wotd

I started to rip up the book I’d got, and the others did the same with the ones they had,

starry

Old

platties

Clothes

smecked

Laughed

tolchock

Hit

chepooka,

Nonsense

shoomny smeck—‘Ho

Loud laugh

gollies—so

Coins

hen-korm

Pocket change

appy polly loggies

Apologies

cutter

Money

shop-crasting,

Shoplifting

baboochkas

Old women

zoobies,

Teeth

I couldn’t help a bit of disappointment at things as they were those days. Nothing to fight against really. Everything as easy as kiss-my-sharries. Still, the night was still very young.

‘It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there’s no law nor order no more.’

‘What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there’s not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more.

There’ll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.

Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name—A CLOCKWORK ORANGE—and I said: ‘That’s a fair gloopy title.

The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen—’

It was like he was singing blood to make up for his vulgarity when that devotchka was singing music.

butter, a glass of the old cold moloko. Hohoho, the old moloko, with no knives or synthemesc or drencrom in it. How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

Which was true, there being this law for everybody not a child nor with child nor ill to go out rabbiting.

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop?

But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.

‘Who you getten, bratty? What biggy, what only?’ These young devotchkas had their own like way of govoreeting.

Each generation seems to have what amounts to their own language or dialect. This was probably quite novel at the time of writing but all too real now.

These two young ptitsas were much alike, though not sisters. They had the same ideas or lack

‘One can die but once. Dim died before he was born.

Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’

Now what I want you to know is that this cell was intended for only three when it was built, but there were six of us there, all jammed together sweaty and tight. And that was the state of all the cells in all the prisons in those days, brothers, and a dirty cally disgrace it was, there not being decent room for a chelloveck to stretch his limbs.

What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.

And then, O my brothers, the film-show started off with some very gromky atmosphere music coming from the speakers, very fierce and full of discord.

The State must have committed all these crimes in order to film them. All much worse than anything Alex has done.

It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.

The like minds of this Dr Brodsky and Dr Branom and the others in white coats, and remember there was this devotchka twiddling with the knobs and watching the meters, they must have been more cally and filthy than any prestoopnick in the Staja itself.

What is happening to you now is what should happen to any healthy human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil, the workings of the principle of destruction. You are being made sane, you are being made healthy.’ ‘That I will not have,’ I said, ‘nor can understand at all. What you’ve been doing is to make me feel very very ill.’

When we’re healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.

‘Each man kills the thing he loves,

Oscar Wilde

And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.

Not quite. Prison taught him the false smile, the rubbed hands of hypocrisy, the fawning greased obsequious leer. Other vices it taught him, as well as confirming him in those he had long practised before.

charlie. ‘He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.’

‘Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?’

‘You have no cause to grumble, boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.’