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- Used in similes and comparisons denoting a person or thing considered to be extremely peculiar; (also) as the type of someone (esp. a man) who is homosexual or overtly gay. Chiefly in as queer as a clockwork orange.
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Beverly Madnick. | Certified Educator. Share Cite. The title refers to the Cockney saying "as queer as a clockwork orange". It means that something appears to be natural on the outside, but on...
May 24, 2024 · Burgess claims that he heard the term “as queer as a clockwork orange” in a London pub in 1945. However, there is no knowledge of that phrase in any of the history of cockney slang, so that story is contested. In other interviews, he pointed out that the Malay word for man is “orang”, meaning the title would be “A Clockwork Man”.
Dec 17, 2021 · Released 50 years ago in 1971, A Clockwork Orange is celebrating a significant milestone in 2021, with the film being something of a prophetic message in reference to the contemporary influx of fear, violence and misinformation.
In a prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, he wrote that the title was a metaphor for "...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton.
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A Clockwork Orange, novel by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. Set in a dismal dystopian England, it is the first-person account of a juvenile delinquent who undergoes state-sponsored psychological rehabilitation for his aberrant behaviour. The novel satirizes extreme political systems that are based on opposing models of the perfectibility or in...
The novel opens in a totalitarian society where violent youths abound. Alex, the protagonist, has a passion for classical music and is a member of a vicious teen gang. He and his droogs (friends) engage in drug-fueled orgies (milk spiked with narcotics is the drug of choice), and their random acts of brutality—particularly against defenseless people—are detailed with enjoyment in Burgess’s made-up slang, Nadsat. At one point the group breaks into a cottage, beating a young writer and gang raping his wife, who later dies. When an attempted robbery goes awry and Alex murders an elderly woman, he is sentenced to 14 years in prison. He gradually adjusts to life behind bars, but one night he and his cellmates beat a new prisoner, who dies. Alex is chosen to undergo an experimental program called the Ludovico’s Technique, a brutal form of aversion therapy that includes Alex watching films of Nazi atrocities. The treatment causes him to become physically sick if he even thinks about committing a crime. It also results in Alex disliking classical music. While government officials deem the procedure a success, the prison chaplain, who had befriended Alex, questions the ethics of removing one’s free will. According to the chaplain, good behaviour should be a choice.
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Alex is released from prison, but his behavioral conditioning has left him harmless and defenseless. Among those that exact retribution are former gang members who have become policemen. Badly beaten, Alex ends up at the cottage of the droogs’ earlier attack, but the writer, F. Alexander, does not recognize him. Instead, he is sympathetic when he learns of the teenager’s aversion therapy and wants to publicize his story in order to turn public opinion against the government. However, after coming to suspect that Alex was involved in the brutal assault, he tries to make Alex commit suicide, which he plans to blame on the government. Locked in a room and forced to listen to Beethoven music, Alex jumps out off a window but survives. While he is hospitalized, the doctors undo his conditioning, and Alex ultimately reverts to his former behaviour. In the final chapter of the original British edition, Alex has grown tired of violence, and, after seeing an old friend who has left the gang, he renounces his amoral past. This chapter—which some consider unconvincing—was removed when the novel was first published in the United States.
Upon its release, A Clockwork Orange received mixed reviews. While some complained about its violence and language, others noted that the novel raised important ethical questions, such as whether it is better for a person to decide to be bad than to be forced to be good and if forcibly suppressing free will is acceptable. While its initial sales we...
May 26, 2020 · When he flicks through the book – the fictional non-fiction book called A Clockwork Orange, written by F. Alexander – Alex deduces that it is about how ‘all lewdies nowadays were being turned into machines’.
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novella by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence.
