Just kids being kids, isn’t it? You know, the weekend rolls around and in the absence of any kind of moral authority, what will your crew get up to?

Well, if you’re one of Alex’s ‘droogs’ you’ll dress up in cravats, masks and boots for kicking. You’ll speak a complicated street slang called NADSAT (a mix of Russian and Shakespearean English) and head on out to your local Moloko bar, where you’ll preload on milk doped with amphetamines and psychedelics. And then? Well, then the real fun begins and if you find yourself on the same streets as Alex and his crew you better hide because, oh my brothers, no-one is safe and the boys won’t be stopping until the night is done.

Of course, this can’t be allowed to continue and after being betrayed by his own crew Alex finds himself in the clutches of the law. What then should be done with a violent street thug like Alex? Will a long custodial sentence do the trick or does the new modern society Alex inhabits have other options? Alex doesn’t like the sound of prison so he agrees to a new treatment that, he is told, will have him back on the streets in no time.   He won’t be the same Alex, of course. Not at all. The new Alex will cower at the thought of violence and rape. He’ll be reduced to a retching wreck of a boy and in removing Alex’s choice to sin, society will be safe.

But what have we lost? Is it right to take away Alex’s choice for violence, and replace it with fear? Is Alex still free? Is he still even human? Is a Clockwork Orange really an orange?

In order to ensure that the story stays relevant and modern, the author Anthony Burgess, developed the NADSAT slang as a world building aid. It’s hard to pin a novel to an age when the language spoken is beamed in from the future. Once you get your ears tuned, the language places you front and centre as we witness, first hand, Alex’s orgies of rape and violence. As the book was written in 1962 you might think that the censors of the day would have ensured a certain ‘tameness’. Yeah, that’s not the case and it still hits hard.

So, what is the book trying to tell us? Can it challenge us to side with the unchecked brutality of kids with no moral compass? Or might we side with the society that ‘castrates’ elements of itself to protect the majority?   

Is it just kids being kids? Who’s to say? But we sure hope they’ll grow out of it. Until they do, we’re guaranteed a real horrowshow.

Simon Moore (Dudley Chapter)