Viddy this well O my brothers (and with appy polly loggys to Anthony Burgess - my sisters as well). For this Sinny Styles edition of Book to Film I will be doing Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Previously I had done The Shining by Stephen King, adapted to the screen by Stanley Kubrick. I could have gone with another choice I suppose rather than load up on Kubrick adaptations, but I pulled the book off the shelf and the dvd from the cabinet and figured, "What the hell, it's not like I'm getting any pretty polly for this cal," so I plopped down on my sharries and decided to write it up, real horrorshow like.
The book and the film are both admirable pieces of work in their respective forms and offer insights into the characters that complement each other well. There are minor differences between the two (in the book the rape of the writer's wife is more extensive and cruel and Alex reflects on it later that night (wishing he'd hurt them more); the girls he takes home from the record store are ten years old but much older in the film; Alex himself and his droogs are a couple of years younger in the book as well). However, on the whole, the film pretty much trods the same path as the book with one jarring, glaring momentous difference: The movie ends one chapter short of where the book ends. Unless you've got the wrong edition that is. If you have a Ballantine published edition prior to 1986, you have a copy of The Clockwork Orange that is twenty chapters long. The original British edition is twenty one chapters long. The American publishers felt the last chapter softened the impact of the story and excised it. Burgess was furious. When Kubrick started writing his screenplay he didn't even know there was a twenty-first chapter.
So how can we compare the two if Kubrick didn't even know? Because he found out before finishing the screenplay and decided he liked the American version better. He found the original version too staid, too dull.
Ahem... I beg to differ.
The original end to the book may not be as exciting and jawdropping as the end to Chapter Twenty or the film but it completes the story in a way the film cannot hope to do. Kubrick should have taken the story all the way.
For those familiar with either the American published version of the book or the film the ending is the same in both and quite spectacular. Alex has been "cured" of his violent tendencies in 
prison through a special program that causes him to grow violently ill at even the thought of violence. He has been programmed by the state to be a peaceful citizen. As the film (and American book version) ends Alex is recovering in a hospital after his attempted suicide. This was brought on by the torture inflicted upon him by the writer whose wife he raped and killed. Since he could not defend himself lest he grow violently ill, he opted for suicide instead. But the attempted suicide changed him. The illness no longer occurs when he hears Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (a side effect of the treatment) and he imagines himself "carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cutthroat britva." That is, cutting the whole face of the screaming world with his razor. Rather than use this quote in the film, he instead imagines himself raping a woman in front of a cheering crowd. Either way, it's clear: He no longer gets sick when he hears the music or thinks violent thoughts. And then in both book (Chapter Twenty) and movie he delivers the final ominous/hilarious line, "I was cured all right."
It's a clever wink and a nod to the reader/viewer about the state no longer having control over Alex, no longer able to supress his free will. But Burgess' ending is far more meaningful and, yes, far more defeatist. Defeatist, but honest.
Chapter Twenty One begins the same way Chapter One (and each of the books three parts) begins: "What's it going to be then, eh?" Alex says this at different times to his droogs, himself, and the reader. It is his general question, his statement of free will. At the end, Alex is addressing his new droogs; Len, Rick, and Bully. His new droogs are two to three years younger than he is and look up to him as their leader. They are in a familiar setting, the Korova Milkbar. Alex narrates:
Suddenly I felt both very very tired and also full of tingly energy, and I said:
'Out out out out out.'
'Where to?' said Rick, who had a litso like a frog's.
'Oh, just to viddy what's doing in the great outside,' I said. But somehow, my brothers, I felt 
very bored and a bit hopeless, and I had been feeling that a lot these days.
Alex is bored with the ultra-violent lifestyle and when his droogs tell him of a setup they have for that night he tells them to go on without him. They don't understand.
'Where to, then?' asked Rick.'That know I not,' I said. 'Just to be on like my own and sort things out.' You could viddy the old baboochkas were real puzzled at me going out like that... "
He's older and restless. He works at the National Gramodisc Archives and even enjoys it for the music he gets there plus the money. As he wanders he meets up with one of his old droogs, Pete who is now married. He tells Alex that Georgie's dead and Dim is still a brutal cop. Pete's wife comments on how funny Alex's speech is and asks Pete if he used to talk like that too. They leave and Alex is left pondering his future. He envisions he may settle down and marry. And then comes this passage in which we get from Burgess his true intent of the novel and its title:
Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.
My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers.
It is youth that is the clockwork orange, not the peaceful Alex programmed by the State. By ending the novel and film at Chapter Twenty the point is lost. Burgess was not making the point that the State takes away our free will but that in youth we have no control over it. Take away this final chapter and you have fundamentally altered the meaning and purpose of the book. No wonder Burgess was furious.
Both the film version and the American published version of the book offer a scathing commentary on comtemporary society and State control and I think it can be said that they both do it well. It is not that the film version is a bad film at all. For what it chooses to tell it is quite good. It is simply that by omitting the last act, comparing the two becomes a case of apples and (no pun intended) oranges. In a way, it's the best of both worlds. We now have a film version offering us a telling satire of State control over the individuals free will as it programs him to become a clockwork orange. And it's ending affirms that the individual can overcome this.
The book on the other hand tells us we already are clockwork oranges until life experience expands our minds and then ends by reminding us there is nothing we possess in our power that can change this. It is decidedly a downer, more defeatist, more of a hit in the gut. It is odd that one of Kubrick's complaints about Chapter Twenty One was that it gave the book an "optimistic" ending. That, I think, is a misreading. Burgess did not consider it optimistic nor do I. But I don't consider it despairing either, just honest. No one ever wants to hear that they have much less control over their life than they think they do.
As Alex wanders off in his thoughts he bids his farewell to the reader:
But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go... And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip-music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.
Alex can now finally exercise his free will. Age has granted him that. He's moved beyond the clockwork mechanisms of his youth and must now deal with it (youth) from the other side. But at least he understands that. I guess he was cured after all.
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