‘A Clockwork Orange’: what is the meaning of the title?
In the grand history of British literature, no text feels quite as complexly beloved as Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange. With the help of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, the story has taken up a strange place in our collective cultural heart. But what does the title actually mean?
From the title to the content to the author’s own relationship with the text, everything about A Clockwork Orange is odd. It struck Burgess like a lightning strike of inspiration. He wrote the book in only three weeks, seemingly suddenly overcome with this dystopian satire. The form it took is utterly unique. At the centre, there is a discussion of free will and morality, but its make-up is made of a fictional language called ‘Nadsat’, meaning that the book flits between English and this new lexicon that readers are expected to pick up. As the narrative delves into the work of Alex and his violent gang of droogs, it’s a wild tale in both content and style.
And then there is Burgess’ complex relationship to it. It’s rare for a creative to talk badly about their creation. It feels like a parent disowning a child. But that’s precisely what Burgess did. “The misunderstanding [of the novel] will pursue me until I die,” he wrote in 1985, coming to hate the story’s existence in a society that seemed to simply not understand it. “I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation,” he continued. But part of that misinterpretation definitely lies at the feet of its purposeful complexity. What cursed the story in Burgess’ eyes is exactly what made it great, as it offers more questions than answers and demands active engagement from the reader.
That complexity is carried out on every level. On the surface, the mish-mash language often hides or twists the meaning of words, instead using terms like “horrorshow”, “ultraviolence”, or “in out in out”. Then there is the twisted nature of the characters, who are somehow still charming and captivating despite their depravity. Then there’s the title, which is now globally known, but who knows what it means?
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”. However, this would be the only random instance of him using Malay, which stands in contrast to the Russian-inspired language used throughout.
But really, the title is just as allegorical as the rest of the text. Burgess said that the title refers to “the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness.” As his main character, Alex DeLarge, is reformed and loses his ability to behave badly, and therefore loses his free will, the film asks the question of whether the ability to be bad is part of essential freedom. Kubrick articulated this well when he said, “Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become, as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange?”.
Another reading relates to gambling as the fruit images in slot machines are often referred to as “clockwork fruit”. In the film, as the government test out their new treatment on Alex, they’re gambling with his soul, turning him into one of the chance jackpot clockwork oranges.
Whatever way it’s read, whether the title is considered to be rich with meaning or purposefully complex, it suits Burgess’ metaphorical style perfectly, only adding to the mystique and enduring interest surrounding the book.
