A Clockwork Orange is largely based on psychological oppression and governments exercising power over the youngsters in the book. Alex’s so-called ‘friends’ frame him and he goes to jail, where he learns of the ‘ludivico program’ that would get released from jail in two weeks. He was sentenced to be ‘cured’ and given shock treatment. He is told: “You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable of only doing good.” The restriction placed on Alex would limit him from free thought, which would therefore restrict his language use.
Nadsat is a dialect to be spoken in the future by the young people in London. By using Nadsat as a means to convey a plot, Anthony Burgess offers an insight into the ways of his character’s minds. This newly invented slang makes it easier for the reader to contemplate the ‘ultra-violence’ in the book, as it is a form of alienation. Burgess used extreme violence to shock and distance his audience. The dialogue, along with the disconcerting first person narrative, distances the reader and succeeds in ‘making it strange’. The Nadsat dialect also makes it impossible for the reader to forget that the story is taking place in another time and place, set in the future.
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novel and follows the tradition of other dystopias such as Nineteen Eighty-Four in the way it deals with language. In both novels, there is an implicit close connection between language and consciousness. Nadsat and Newspeak convey the idea that by delimiting vocabulary, you delimit thought. This suggestion would agree with the statement that human interaction takes place primarily through language. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, we see that when a person’s language is oppressed, their level of human interaction and way of life is oppressed also. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex uses Nadsat as a way of escaping the determinism in society. This is his way of rebelling. Alex and his ‘droogs’ rebel against the conventions of society through this language.
Burgess does not use Russian words literally, but with deliberate misuse. He hints at the Russian vocabulary. Some of the expressions used are: “grahzny bratchny” (dirty bastard) and “lubbilubbing” (love-making”.
The dialogue throughout the novel is used by Burgess to convey his Marxist view that behaviour is determined by a person’s role in society. The vocabulary of the book reflects his ideas of free will and escapism. In Part One, Chapter Five, Deltoid’s habit of answering with “Yes?” seems almost like an invitation to exercise free will. Deltoid is asking for affirmation, just as the “eh” from the opening lines of each part is an offer for Alex to make his own choices. However, when Alex uses it with friends, his tone of “Yes?” is more commanding, as he does not want his friends to exercise free will as much as he does. This is a simple example of the way language is used as the primary form of human interaction and a way for Burgess to imply connotations through speech, and therefore convey his message.
Nadsat demonstrates these ideas, for example, we learn in Part One, Chapter Five, from the sentence “Pete had given old Dim the soviet not to uncoil the oozy” that “soviet” means “order”. Ironically, the ‘droogs’ had just expressed their desire for the gang to be more democratic, yet orders are still given. Here, the word “soviet” also relates to Burgess’s views of soviet communism and the rigid hierarchies of power that the corrupt system had behind its façade of equality. Language, in this instance has hidden connotations but still is the primary form of human interaction, as it aims to convey a message.
At the beginning of each section, the phrase: “So what’s it going to be then, eh?” is repeated. This is a representation of the monotony in the world around Alex (not in his life). It is the opening line of the novel and is repeated four times within the first chapter. Though in different contexts, each use stresses free will. It emphasises the importance of the ability to choose for oneself how ‘it’ will turn out ‘to be’.
Burgess manipulates language in A Clockwork Orange so that the reader is aware of the views he portrays throughout. This is seen in the Nadsat dialect. Alex uses Nadsat in a creative and poetic way, more so than his friends. Their mixer of choice, milk, speaks volumes about their infantile behaviour and provides Freudian connotations, as milk is associated with the Mother.
In Part One, Chapter Four, Alex states his belief in Original Sin – the biblical idea that evil is natural in man and is not a product of the environment “badness is of the self… and that self is made by Bog or God”. This quote sums up Alex’s rejection of social conditioning and his rebellious attitude.
It is clear from this analysis of the dialogue in A Clockwork Orange that the way Burgess creates a unique dialect for Alex and the droogs provides a form of rebellion against the shallow conventions of society. They use Nadsat as a way of escaping and as their primary form of human interaction. In this novel, we can see that language and dialogue determine levels of human interaction. This is also the case in George Orwell’s novel. When contemplating the statement “Human interaction takes place primarily through language”, it is essential to discuss Newspeak.
Orwell, like many other literary scholars, is interested in the modern use of the English language, and in particular the abuse and misuse of English. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he realises that language has the power in politics to mask the truth and mislead the public, and the intention of the novel is to increase public awareness of this power. He does this by placing a great focus on Newspeak. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, language becomes a mind-control tool, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination. Newspeak, the ‘ultra-political’ new language introduced by Orwell, does precisely that: it facilitates deception and manipulation, and its purpose is to restrict understanding of the real world. Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English socialism.
Orwell’s use of Newspeak is a primary example of the fact that “Human interaction takes place primarily through language”, as restriction of language; and therefore thought, is treated as the main form of suppression by the Government.
The government in Nineteen Eighty-Four aims to ‘cut back’ the Newspeak vocabulary. One of the Newspeak engineers claims: “(we’re) cutting the language down to the bone… Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year”
By manipulating the language, the government wishes to alter the public’s way of thinking. This can be done, psychologists theorise, because the words that are available for the purpose of communicating thought tend to influence the way people think. This implies the implicit connection (seen in many pieces of dystopian literature) between language and consciousness. As seen in Nineteen Eighty-Four, when words that describe a particular thought are completely absent from a language, that thought becomes more and more difficult to communicate and think of. For the Inner Party, the goal is to impose an orthodox reality and make heretical thought (‘thoughtcrime’) impossible.
“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible” explains the Newspaek engineer “because there will be no words in which to express it”.
By design, Newspeak narrows the range of thought and shortens people’s memories. It is therefore ideal for a totalitarian system, in which the government has to rely on a passive public, which lacks independent thought and which has a great tolerance for mistakes both past and present. “To expand language is to expand the ability to think” (Myers, 1986: 353) While language in the traditional sense can expand horizons and improve our understanding of the world, Orwell’s novel demonstrates that language, when used in a maliciously political way, can just as easily become “a plot against human consciousness” (Rahv, 1988: 182)
After discussing the use of dialogue and language in Burgess’s A Closkwork Orange and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is clear that human interaction does take place primarily through language. Burgess and Orwell use language in unique and revolutionary ways, to highlight its significant impact on society and the way the restriction of language use can completely change and inhibit human interaction.
