The question of conscience – another question which can be made to resonate with Catholic significance – is also central to A Clockwork Orange. (There’s a handy glossary of the Nadsat slang used in the novel here.) ‘viddy’ for ‘see’ or ‘look’, where the word ‘viddy’ has suggestions of video technology (although video tapes would only be developed later on, the word ‘video’ was in use by 1935), as if all looking is a form of videoing. Such a ‘message’ of the book is borne out by some of the Nadsat slang used, e.g. Alexander – Alex deduces that it is about how ‘all lewdies nowadays were being turned into machines’. When he flicks through the book – the fictional non-fiction book called A Clockwork Orange, written by F. This is clearly Burgess tipping a wink to us as readers (readers who are themselves reading a not-so-fictional book called A Clockwork Orange): it’s as if Burgess is offering up his own novel as more than just a piece of fiction and speculation, but a tract of sorts, highlighting mankind’s worrying propensity for mindless violence and the moral questions a responsible government has to face when dealing with violent criminals who rape and kill others for money – or, perhaps even worse, because it gives them a ‘kick’. In this connection, and sticking with the novel’s title, consider the moment when Alex finds the fictional book called A Clockwork Orange, while he is staying with F.
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