To start off i will be talking about the linguistic style of A Clockwork orange. In this book a slang called Nadsat is used, which is a mix of rhyming slang and modified Slavic words. An example of these words is baboochka or chelloveck. Baboochka means old woman and Chelloveck means man or gentleman. The book is set in a dystopian future, usually dystopian books or novels will share features like a decline is society, or a totalitarian government. The reason for the youth in this book have a lack of morality and do not have any parental guidance, this would explain why they would run around beating up people and killing them. You could say he is like a wild animal running free. A lot of dystopian books are connected to real life issues, and a clockwork orange is. Anthony Burgess feared that youth in the future without a traditional upbringing (religion,family,school) would cause them to be amoral. I could also say that some of the paranoia comes from the cold war , as that was happening at the time , the Cuban missile crisis had happened and there was also the death of Stalin . the death of Stalin would have calmed the tensions between all the countries. A Lot still went on though. I don’t think Anthony Burgess wrote the book about the cold war, but could’ve been be influenced by it, you can tell this because of the nadsat used. This suggests that Russia could have had a lot of influence on a lot of countries, when and where the book is set, which is in the future at the time it was written. I dont really how far in the future the book is supposed to be set.
I think that he saw the freedom that the children had at the time, that he didn’t have which caused him to think they would grow up with a lack of morality . He was shocked and frightened to see the youth with long hair listening to rock, and using new forms of slang. Anthony Burgess overreacted and his predictions were wrong, for example the rape rates have decreased, but at the time there were more people being raped, causing him to think that they’d increase in the future, which is wrong as it is probably at a similar, stable level.
Most other texts that I’ve read don’t use as much slang or even the same type of slang as A Clockwork orange. The slang is used quite well and replaces normal words, it is also treated like a normal part of English . After you have read the book long enough you will figure out what the words are because there are only a certain amount of words in that work or can replace the word . The other book i’m reading (neuromancer) uses a different type of slang .
React!