A clockwork orange

             The English language is widely diversified and, for many people, is common ground for strangers. Anthony Burgess is very knowledgeable in English and can manipulate words in context to his advantage. Burgess proudly uses his gift of words in his novel A Clockwork Orange to display his awareness of a totalitarian government's exploitation of psychological control, inspiring him to write warnings of post-World War II Britain (Ruggles).
             In the novel, Alex and his gang are "Simply the products of an England where the bourgeois middle-class have become so quiet and passive that the young who have succeeded them have chosen evil as their way of life, as one assertion of the will" (Scott-Kilvert 190). Burgess modeled his main characters in A Clockwork Orange after hoodlums interrupted him and his wife's dinner in a restaurant in Leningrad. "Burgess believed the delinquents were after him and his wife, the capitalist enemy. Having escaped the restaurant safely, Burgess believed them to resemble the 1950's English Teddy Boys" (Flynn 166).
             The derivative language spoken by the young probably indicates the effects of propaganda through subliminal penetration. The situation in A Clockwork Orange is not a very difficult one to imagine and not too far removed from the present. Today, the English language bears the traces of numerous invasions and the resulting influence on the English people, most notably that of the Scandinavians, the Romans, and the Normans (Scott-Kilvert 190). The vernacular is cleverly based on odd bits of rhyming slang; it includes some gypsy talk, and its primary roots are Russian. Nothing is told about the history or whereabouts of this strange futuristic society, but deductions can be made from the language. The organization has been subject to American and Russian intervention (Scott-Kilvert 190). "I gave the ultra-violence, the casting, the drafting, the old in-out, the lot, right up to this night's beach ...

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A clockwork orange. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 08:40, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/25082.html