mentioned "A Clockwork Orange", most people will think of it: This is a masterpiece by the great director Stanley Kubrick. To this day, "A Clockwork Orange" is still a classic in the hearts of many movie fans, but not many people understand the original novel adapted from the movie. The movie version of "A Clockwork Orange" was released in 1971, and the novel version was published as early as 1962. The author of the
novel is called Anthony Burgess. He has multiple identities. He is a writer, a composer, and a linguist. wrote more than thirty novels in his life. What he didn't expect was that it was "A Clockwork Orange" that he was not satisfied with that made him famous. The sales of
"A Clockwork Orange" was quite bad when it was published in 1962. Many critics criticized the novel. For example, at the time, "The Times Literature Supplement" described the novel as "a bunch of unclear words. Like a pot-bellied person, it is the product of the changing world." But there are a few people who can appreciate this "deviant" novel, among them Kubrick.
Kubrick said that he was attracted by this novel, and the "intelligent plot, bright characters, and clear philosophical thinking" in it gave him the idea of visualizing it. However, in view of the medium differences between novels and movies, as well as the different ideas of novel authors and film directors, the movie version has made many changes to the novel version.
For example, teenagers in the movie version are generally older than the novel version, and the protagonist Alex is only 15 years old in the novel. At the same time, the movie largely deleted Nacha from the novel. What is Nacha? This is a black word designed by the author Anthony Burgess, a new language that is a mixture of Russian and English. In the Chinese translation, the translator has tried his best to restore the playful side of Nacha, but it is still inevitable that there is a part of losing meaning. This new language experiment of is a major innovation of the novel, and it is also a reason for criticism back then.
Our protagonist Alex is a person who wanders outside the rule of law and acts wantonly. He is like the incarnation of Satan. In order to show the image of the demon of Alex, the novel spreads a lot of violent descriptions. These descriptions After being visualized, the whole movie is like a violent carnival. Coupled with the fact that classical music is played every time the profiteering is performed, the whole picture is like a Nazi officer killing gracefully but ruthlessly under the echo of Wagner. With such a provocative expression, it is not difficult to understand why "A Clockwork Orange" has been a scourge for a long time.
But describing violence is not to describe itself, but to show the inner world of the character Alex. Reviewing the text carefully, it is difficult to find out why Alex is passionate about violence. In other words, his violence does not follow common sense. This kind of uncaused violence is a kind of complete freedom in a sense. Because it is no longer any external reason that drives your behavior, all actions are voluntary and free choices. Dostoevsky advocated a kind of "logical suicide" in "The Writer's Diary". The suicide has become an extreme way of expressing free will, in order to prove that people's will is self-discipline, and that people can work without God. The world controls its own destiny. Suicide is violence against oneself, and Alex's violence is violence against others, and violence is to demonstrate free will. The logic of
is dangerous, and the indulgence of free will breeds evil. In medieval philosophy, free will is a very important debate-man is given free will by God, but he does evil because of it. Does this mean God’s missteps? This problem has plagued people for centuries because it directly threatened the sacredness of God. But this problem was gradually resolved after the twentieth century, and because God died, everything was allowed. evil is undoubtedly the product of free will indulgence. Choosing evil is a human right.
"A Clockwork Orange" doesn't stop there. On this basis, it also gives readers a question: If evil is the product of free will indulgence, can good be produced after free will is eliminated? The second part of the
novel arranges for Alex to go to jail. In order to get him back to the right, he accepts a therapy called "Ludovich". The doctor injects and takes drugs that can cause unpleasant physiological reactions to the prisoner, and then forces the prisoner to watch a violent movie, which will eventually cause the prisoner to have a "conditional reflex" that will cause nausea or even vomiting when seeing violence. Violence is seen as a must be curedIn the future society, people will be able to correct one’s soul through science and technology, and truly make God implant everyone’s heart. Then Alex could no longer do evil, and he went from being an aggressor to a victim.
This kind of "ludovic" therapy is an oppressive therapy based on the elimination of free will, and the prisoner has to do good. The novel commented: "Does God like good, or does he want people to choose good? If people are forced to be good, is it better to choose evil? ... When one is deprived of choosing good and evil Right, maybe it means choosing good in fact." The puppet-like state of
echoes the name of this novel. The English "orange" of orange means "person" in Malay. Burgess, who is proficient in Malay, played a language game. "A clockwork orange" actually refers to "a clockwork man" ". Such people cannot choose evil or good. Everything is pre-set, and there is no so-called moral choice.
wrote in the novel: "A person who cannot choose can not be called a human." If Alex is allowed to indulge his free will, the price will be evil; but if his free will is destroyed , The result is that he lost his qualifications. These two extreme options become a dilemma in the novel. The dilemma here is actually a contest between humanism and scientism. In the 1920s of the last century, China once broke out a "scientific and metaphysical controversy". The question centered around it was the relationship between the outlook on life and science. The Scientology advocated "use science to guide the outlook on life, and try to avoid those uncertain subjective factors in human nature." The whole debate lasted for more than 20 years, and finally a group of intellectuals who advocated "Science First" were slightly better. Looking back at the entire debate now, there are still many warnings. Combining history, you will find that the result of advocating "scientific omnipotence" turned out to be the deduction of World War II.
The relationship between science and human nature has become the core issue of philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. And "A Clockwork Orange" more like a continuation of this philosophical thinking, and presented it in a novel way. Therefore, some people say that "A Clockwork Orange" is actually a "concept novel", and all the characters and stories are deduced around a concept. This can be regarded as a kind of criticism or as a kind of affirmation. The
novel did not develop on the tragic and tragic line of "Flying over the lunatic asylum" of "No freedom, give me death". The story develops to the third part. Alex becomes a bargaining chip for politicians and once again falls into another kind of no freedom. , The novel moves towards a critique of the system. Alex no longer feels sick with violence, he can choose evil again, according to his own statement: I really recovered. The biggest difference between the novel version of
and the movie version is that Kubrick’s movie comes to an abrupt end here, and he did not shoot the last chapter of the novel. At the end of the novel, after Alex regained his freedom, he finally got tired of all this and wanted to be an ordinary person and lead an ordinary life. It's like in "Training 1", Leiden suddenly had the idea of restarting his life after his crime. It seems that the bastard becomes an ordinary person, just a difference in thought. At the end of the novel, a slightly contradictory optimism emerges spontaneously, which makes people surprisingly discover that this is still a "growth novel". The endings of the two versions of "A Clockwork Orange" have their own merits, but because of the stronger spread of the film, the ending of the novel version is often overlooked, and the ending of the original can also lead to another thought. The appearance of "A Clockwork Orange" directly affected Western popular culture, and many bands' names are derived from "A Clockwork Orange." At the same time, "A Clockwork Orange" has also become an image, which has penetrated into our cultural context, invisibly shaping generation after generation. It may still be meaningful for to reread this novel half a century ago many years later.
Youth will always pass, yeah. But youth is just like a beast, no, not even like a beast, more like the little toys that can be seen everywhere on the street. Tin little man, there is a clockwork inside, the Shangjin mechanism is exposed outside, you click on it, and when you let go, it runs away, as if walking, oh buddy. But it only walks in a straight line, bumps into something, bangs and does not look back, it cannot stop by itself. Youth is like this little clockwork machine.
-"A Clockwork Orange"
