A Clockwork Orange, Part 2

The most notable part of A Clockwork Orange is that it makes heavy use of a slang of Burgess's own devise.  This language is called "Nadsat" by critics and fans after its own word for "teenager," the group that makes up the bulk of its users.  The first thing that needs to be said about it is that it the way it is constructed is sheer brilliance.  It's mostly Anglicized Russian, with some infantile corruptions of English words thrown in.  And it's charming.  It's one of two things that make Alex a remotely likeable character despite his sociopathy (the other being his love of classical music.)  It really is a pleasure to read.  Burgess had a noted love of words, and it comes through beautifully even in something thrown together like Clockwork.

The problem with the vocabulary in the book is that the reader is drowned in it, from the very beginning.  In the version I picked up, Burgess sends the reader to the glossary at the back nineteen times.  Beyond the obvious, the problem with this is that Burgess did not himself provide a glossary at all - the version I have was provided by a literary critic who worked most of it out for himself.  Because of this, several of the words are uncertain even when you look them up in the back.


Burgess was not the first author to make up his own language.  George Orwell did it in 1948 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) and J. R. R. Tolkien did it in 1954 (The Lord of the Rings.)  While at this point I know rather more Nadsat than I do Newspeak or Elvish, I was never completely submerged in the latter two, and I was never left guessing what I had just read, at least not when it mattered.  But in Clockwork, the unfamiliar language interferes with the presentation of the narrative.  Orwell used Newspeak in a very judicious way.  Our first encounter with it is followed immediately with an explanation of what Winston is being told.  By the time we reach the end of the book, we have only been subjected to as much Newspeak as was necessary.  By the end of The Lord of the Rings, we only know a single Elvish word.  While the made-up language is a nice addition to the work, it never impedes our understanding of the author's words.  Nadsat occurs on every single page of Clockwork.  And some of the words are so similar that it's difficult to distinguish them one from the other.  "Grazhny," "grazzy," and "gromky," are all words the reader has to distinguish.  Oh, and let's throw "jeezny" in there for good measure.  It's all rather confused.