Viddy This My Brothers

Malcolm McDowell and Rob Zombie as Alex

I've been thinking about A Clockwork Orange since the beginning of the semester. The language of this novel has always been an interest of mine. I wasn't going to go there, but Frye started it. "Yet synthetic languages, however absurd they often sound, do seem to belong to romantic decorum: two very different contemporary examples are the Nigerian story of The Palm Wine Drunkard and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (Frye, 110)." Clockwork, it seems is never far from my mind. It was one of my father's favorite movies and I saw it for the first time when I was very young. After seeing the film several times I checked out the book from the public library when I was 12 or 13, this version contained a glossary of terms which I remember being quite frustrating. It is much easier to dive right in and learn to swim.
In addition to my personal experience with the film and novel, this work is so totally ingrained into popular culture that it enters my consciousness on almost a daily basis. In the mid 90's Acid Bath used an audio sample from the film for the intro to "Cassie Eats Cockroaches" and at the turn of the century Rob Zombie wrote a song in Nadsat, the language used in Clockwork. The language of a novel published in 1962 showing up in a 21st century metal song. The image of Alex has also appeared in The Simpsons and Eminem appeared on a magazine cover as Alex, the list goes on and on. Awhile back I was at a book sale and picked up a copy of Clockwork, the back cover boasted that this edition includes "the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition", intrigued I had to have it and resolved to read it when I had time to read the novel in its entirety. Well after reading Frye, even though I really didn't have the time, the desire to read the book controlled me and had to be satiated.
In the Introduction, A Clockwork Orange Resucked, by Anthony Burgess he states "the book I wrote is divided into three sections of seven chapters. Take out your pocket calculators and you will find that these add up to a total of twenty-one chapters. 21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be...there is a profound difference between A Clockwork Orange as Great Britain knows it and the somewhat the slimmer volume that bears the same name in the United States of America...the rest of the world was sold the book out of Great Britain, and so most versions have the original twenty-one chapters. Now when Stanley Kubrick made his film--though he made it in England--he followed the American version and, so it seemed to his audiences outside America, ended the story somewhat prematurely (Burgess, v-vii)."
SPOILER ALERT!: the following will discuss the novel including the 21st chapter left out of the original American version of the novel.
 When it comes to great fiction, "it is logical for it to begin its series of adventures with some kind of break in consciousness (Frye, 102)", the language in Clockwork does just that. The reader must dive into this world and struggle with the language in order to ride this ride; and what a ride it is. After the readers initial descent into the world of violence in part one. The reader plunges further into the depths with Alex during his incarceration in part two. The events in part three are mirror images of the events in part one and Your Humble Narrator experiences a doubling. He discovers the name of the man who has taken him in, the writer of A Clockwork Orange, is named F. Alexander: "Good Bog, I thought, he is another Alex (Burgess, 158)." Additionally, I noticed a theme within the work of the beast. Dim is often described as in animalistic terms by Alex, "roaring like some animal" and " which he did in a beasty snorty howly sort of way (Burgess, 21&23)." Alex describes himself as an animal and is called 'beast' and 'beastly' by others. He describes his fellow prisoners as animals and the prison is a 'human zoo'. The concept of the beast and its relationship to romance led me back to Heinrich Zimmer. "Evil has to be accepted and assimilated, not avoided (Zimmer, 49)." That, O my brothers, best sums up Clockwork when read in its original version. For little Alex matures in the 21st chapter: "He grows bored with violence and recognizes that human energy is better expended on creation than destruction. Senseless violence is the prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive...There comes a time, however, when violence is seen as juvenile and boring. It is the repartee of the stupid and ignorant...comes to the revelation that he needs to get something done in life--to marry, beget children, to keep the oranges of the world turning in the rookers of Bog, or hands of God, and perhaps even create something--music, say (Burgess, vii)." Whereas the State was conditioning Alex to avoid violence, that he readily returned to once deprogrammed, the point of Clockwork is that "evil has to be accepted and assimilated, not avoided." Instead of being innocent and facing evil to grow and face a world of inherent duality like we saw in A Pagan Hero and A Christian Saint, Alex must move from being violent (ignorant) to being good (mature). Conn-eda experiences a second birth, "His eyes having been washed in death (Zimmer, 38), these stories are mirror images of each other proclaiming "youth must go. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal (Burgess, 190)."  Clockwork is not a romance, it is a very human coming of age story dealing with politics and morality, but it is still very influenced by romantic structure and even lends its storytelling to approach to romance literature.
What is the give and take, the ebb and flow, within the sea of stories, that is the relationship between romance and other types of literature? I've been thinking about Frye's possible reasons for mentioning this novel (although the mention was brief, I believe it to be deliberate) and for some reason it got me thinking about the Bodies exhibit I stopped at on the way to Mayhem Fest last summer, for those of you that are not familiar with this traveling museum exhibit I have borrowed a brief summary from the official website: "BODIES...The Exhibition offers an intimate and informative view into the human body. Using an innovative preservation process, the Exhibition allows visitors to see the human body's inner beauty in educational and awe-inspiring ways. Our Exhibitions have over 200 actual human bodies and specimens meticulously dissected and respectfully displayed, offering an unprecedented and wholly unique view into the amazing body. Specimens in the Exhibition are prepared through a revolutionary process called polymer preservation, in which human tissue is permanently preserved using liquid silicone rubber. This process creates a specimen that will not decay."
Most of the specimens are bodies 'stripped down' like athletes without skin, but there is one specimen that is cut into sections, like round sections of a tree and laid out with spaces between so the encased specimen is eight feet tall. If we think in terms of literature being human, from humans and about the human experience, then this comparison of the skinless athlete and the human tree is a model for the relationship between romance and the sea of stories. Clockwork is like the skinless athlete powerful, beautiful. A look into the depths of human nature and the depravity of those who hope to control the more bestial aspects of the human animal. Romance as a genre is the human tree it grows, changes and even though it is sectioned off into clusters of ideas and formulas there is room within those spaces for growth and interpretation. There is also room for interpretation in the structure of the skinned athlete. Even though there are many interpretations of the meaning of the title A Clockwork Orange, Burgess explains "I meant it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness (x)." Perhaps this is why Frye recognizes that non romantic literature contains aspects that do have their place in romance literature; reminding us that literature is liquid. I'd like to think that Frye chose Clockwork very deliberately to point out that even though we are analyzing literature we cannot impose rigid or mechanical requirements on these stories that are 'a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness'.
Suggested listening: "Never Gonna Stop Me" Rob Zombie