The language of "A clockwork orange"
“A clockwork orange” is a novel, properly a novella, as Anthony Burgess himself specifies, taking into account its short extension, narrated in 1st person by its main character, Alex, a young thug whose only pastimes are “ultraviolence”, rape and classical music. Maybe the aspect that is more likely to generate a great interest in this book is the language used in it throughout all the narration. Admirable for its originality and innovation, bearing an evident symbolic content and, at the same time, being a veil partly occulting some other content and, definitively, bringing out the atypical personality of both its protagonist and the epoch in which he lives, that is to say, a near future.
Talking about that peculiar use of language, which is mostly represented by Alex’s speech, what is more noticeable, since the moment we start reading the novel, is that we find a series of unknown words. They are part of the jargon Alex and his friends or “droogs” use: “Nadsat (transliteration of the Russian suffix for “teen”) language”, which is at first incomprehensible for us, but, as we are in some way obliged to learn it, we will finally understand it as if we had always known it.
Nadsat language is mainly formed by words of Slavic origin that have been anglicised: “horrorshow” as a result of “khorosho” (good or well) or “millicents”, derived from “militsia” (police). There are also some traces of Cockney rhyming slang incorporated in that jargon: “pretty polly” for “money”, or “luscious glory” for “hair”, and even the title of the novel itself is a Cockney slang expression, fact that explains the difficulty in understanding its real meaning in the translated versions to other languages. Other “nadsat” words are simply logic associations, like “cancer” for “cigarette” and others have been originally invented by Burgess himself..
The use of that particular jargon has certain causes and certain consequences. Given that “A clockwork orange” is a futurist novel, it is comprehensible that the use of an existing and contemporary jargon would make it implausible and doubtful. Thus, we may say that the main reason for the appearance of that slang is the need for transmitting likeliness. But this is not its only raison-d’être, there is other important and influential motive in the creation of Nadsat talk: the intention of creating a language that would serve as a mirror to the society invented by Burgess, a society strongly influenced by the two biggest political powers emerged after the Second World War: the United States and the Soviet Union, a society in which chaos is reigning while totalitarianism is progressively growing up.
If we look at the consequences of the language used in Burgess’ novel, the most evident one is the fact that these Nadsat words soften considerably the explicit content in the violent and sexual acts, in a way that it is not explicit anymore. We don’t receive the information directly (that would be shocking and possibly intolerable) but through a linguistic wall we have to go beyond, that is our understanding and assimilation of words and the consequent entire meaning of what we read.
Then, we are talking about euphemisms, and it can be assumed that the totality of Alex’s behaviour (and this includes his talking) is, to some extent, euphemistic. We will explain this. Nadsat language is not the only peculiarity in the use that Anthony Burgess makes of language in “A clockwork orange”.
Alex’s talking is not that of a rude and unmannered delinquent. It is plagued with elements denoting childishness (in the end he is only fifteen): schoolboy transformations (“appy polly loggy” for “apology”, “baddiwad” for “bad”, “eggiweg” for “egg”, “skoliwoll” for “school” and so on), frequent onomatopoeias used to describe behaviours, repetitions (“and then the glass going smash smash smash”), brevities (Alex call their parents “pee” and “em”) and the constant use of recurrent words such as “like”, “sort of”, etc. (“I started to like cry, feeling like sorry for myself”). All these details are some kind of cloak for his wickedness.
But it is not only the immaturity reflected by his language, but the bizarrely condescending but also cordial and adulatory tone he uses when talking. Alex’s sense of aesthetic seems to be noticeable more developed than his sense of ethic and morality and that makes him unique. He performs brutal acts of violence but hates nastiness and vulgarity, as he sees those acts as art and does them for the pleasure of doing them, and the way he expresses himself may illustrate that idea. “The gang’s solipsistic and dehumanizing argot reflects this cold-bloodedness”. – Theodore Dalrympe , from “A prophetic and violent masterpiece” , appeared on City Journal.
He refers himself as “your friend and Humble narrator” and sometimes as “your little droog Alex”, and, with his repeating expression “O my brothers” he creates an atmosphere of complicity with the readers, so that they feel inevitability involved and even identified with him. But this is a coin of two sides, as this kind of contradiction between what is said and what is done places the reader in the line between a complete contempt for Alex’s character and a certain empathy with him.
In short, “A clockwork orange” has been and will be remembered not only for the originality of the story and the moral and philosophical questions that it implies, but for its linguistic value. The innovative jargon used by Alex and his “droogies” helps to create a controversial character and epoch and makes them impossible to forget.
“I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr. Burgess has done” – William S. Burroughs