There are a variety of ways in which Burgess and Huxley symbolise the notion of rebellion through their protagonists and submission through their eventual overpowering by the state. In both “Brave New World” and “A Clockwork Orange” the audience begin the book with a clear sense of rebellious characters exercising small individual freedoms against the backdrop of a repressive state which eventually deems their individuality unacceptable and crushes them. However, to say the similarities in the two books’ repressive states and rebellious characters proves that they explore the notions of rebellion and submission in the same way would be a massive oversimplification of two complicated books which both raise a multitude of ethical questions.
The submission of John to the stresses put on him by the World State in “Brave New World” is an event which the audience cannot help but sympathise with. It is clear that a state in which not only the authorities but the citizens are intolerant of difference has crushed John, a man who struggled greatly in an attempt to overcome a sense of being an outcast in the uncivilised world, only to move to the even more narrow-minded civilised world. It seems hard to imagine a reader not siding with John as his lifeless body is described with a powerful simile, spinning slowly like a compass point, “South-south-west, south-south-east, east…”. Indeed, the reference to John as, “Mr Savage!” immediately before his body is discovered perfectly underlines his dilemma: he was always an outsider in the uncivilised world and will never fit in in a civilised world where human behaviour is mapped out and controlled so tightly by the State. In many ways John acts as an audience surrogate, showing us how we would likely respond to being left in the World State, having been allowed to previously develop as freethinking individuals. It is, therefore, highly likely that the graphic description of John’s body was designed by Huxley to make the reader feel a very clear emotional response, particularly considering this final, very human use of language bookends the novel with its cold, analytical opening.
On the other hand, the eventual submission of Alex to the power of the state is a moral dilemma left unresolved by the author, who purposely avoids offering his own opinion on the matter. However, Burgess does use the interaction between a repressive society and one of its more rebellious individuals to ask an important question about the right to free will. Is it acceptable for the state to remove, or tamper with, an individual’s free will in order to protect others in society? Burgess leaves his thoughts on the matter unclear in the book and only commented on the issues raised 25 years later when he stated that if Alex, “chooses good, he must have the possibility of choosing evil instead; evil is a theological necessity,” demonstrating that he is against the, understandable yet morally questionable, actions of the state. Indeed throughout the book it seems obvious to the reader that “A Clockwork Orange’s” central character and narrator, Alex, is a deeply unpleasant person, yet when faced with the horrific Ludovico Technique designed to make him conform, which sees him feel he could, “sick up and at the same time not sick up, and began to feel like in distress,” the reader is left unsure as to whether this can truly be justified. Burgess, therefore, uses Alex to create a deeply troubling moral and ethical dilemma with the eventual submission of Alex, which Huxley does not with the death of John.
Indeed, Burgess spends much of “A Clockwork Orange” attempting to build up a sense of empathy for Alex, carefully setting up this moral dilemma with a constructed language which symbolises the protagonist’s rebellion. Alex and his friends’ invented language, Nadsat, is used by Burgess to draw the reader into the “ultraviolence” of the gang, giving the reader a sense of being complicit in their crimes. When Alex claims that, “we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos,” the juxtaposition of his blasé use of slang and the unprovoked act of violence which it is used to describe may act not to further shock the reader but actually to lessen the shock felt by the audience. In this way, Burgess uses language to manipulate what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward audience response of repulsion into something far more complicated. These violent acts of rebellion become almost mundane, with the reader becoming more of an accomplice than a bystander as a result of Burgess’s clever use of a constructed language which symbolises Alex’s rebellion. It is perhaps a remarkable irony that much of the inevitable backlash to this violent book was not as a result of its matter-of-fact depictions of rape and brutal violence, but as a result of its “objectionable language,” with this being the reasoning for its banning in numerous US high school libraries, demonstrating the great power of Burgess’s use of various types of language including, often thinly veiled, scatological language.
“Brave New World,” too, has, on numerous occasions, been banned and censored for its challenging of modern society. It is likely, though, that this negative reception from some corners of society has been seen by Huxley as validating his image of a society in which people are, “blankly uninterested in freedom of thought,” as he claims in his essay, “Brave New World Revisited”. Indeed, these attempts at censorship may make the book seem like an act of rebellion in itself, a key parallel between “Brave New World” and “A Clockwork Orange”.
Huxley, like Burgess, uses language to draw us into his dystopia and the rebellion of his protagonists, albeit in a more subtle way. The opening of the book throws the reader straight into the heart of the monotonous drudgery of the World State where even living things are described in a lifeless light, most notably, in the second paragraph of the novel with the metaphor, “some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh,” being used to describe scientists in a laboratory. Language is used consistently throughout this opening phase of the book to create a barren, miserable image of the World State and is perhaps best summed up by a phrase used by Huxley, “Wintriness responded to wintriness.” This drab, dystopian vision has been set up deliberately and carefully by Huxley’s language and imagery for a rebellious figure to challenge and come into conflict with.
Despite this, Bernard Marx, the first and most obviously rebellious character in “Brave New World” is not nearly as overt or shocking in his rebellion as Burgess’s protagonist, Alex. This is strange considering “Brave New World’s” vision of the future seems far worse than that of “A Clockwork Orange”, with far greater state interference in the personal lives of citizens and a far more entrenched, systematic method of repression. Perhaps, Huxley’s vision of rebellion in a dystopian future is fuelled more by the personal insecurities of its citizens than any sort of challenging of the system. Indeed, Bernard seems constantly aware of his difference in a world full of people who are the same. At the start of Chapter 2 it is said that he, “drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, bracing himself to meet the dislike and disapproval which he was certain of finding within.” This is one of many places in the book where Bernard’s miserable nature and constant self-criticism seem to affect the way he interacts with the world around him. In “Brave New World Revisited,” Huxley notes that intellectuals’, “critical habit of mind makes them resistant to the kind of propaganda that works so well on the majority,” supporting the idea that Bernard’s status as an intellectual “Alpha” may have allowed him to see through the World State’s propaganda to a certain extent. On the other hand, Alex’s rebellion seems to be fuelled by a far less introspective nature and instead more external, sensory led thinking. Indeed, he is far more likely to talk about his search for the, “in-out in-out,” than reflect on his own strengths and considerable weaknesses as a person. Conversely, Bernard is largely seen to be against the sexual promiscuity of the World State and driven by his own internal desire for a stable, monogamous relationship with Lenina. It is completely clear, therefore, that though Bernard and Alex are both rebellious protagonists in a dystopian world, they rebel in completely different ways and for completely different reasons.
Furthermore, the submission of these characters is also notably different. Whilst Bernard Marx is simply removed from society, Alex is allowed to continue to exist within the society which he committed his crimes but only after undergoing the terrifying Ludovico Technique, designed to force him to conform to the behaviour of society around him. However, whilst Alex takes his brutal punishment still fighting, shouting, “turn it off, you grahzny bastards,” Bernard’s far lesser punishment sees him sink into a fit of despair, grovelling as, “the tears began to flow,” and his emotional state became a, “paroxysm of abjection.” We can see that the authors of these books have symbolised the notion of submission in their protagonists in as diverse a way as they have symbolised their rebellion, through the contrasting of Bernard’s pathetic whining with Alex’s, futile yet implacable, resistance. Indeed, even within the scene of “Brave New World” in which Bernard collapses with the distress of being banished to an island we see Helmholtz Watson excited at the idea of being banished as it will allow him to get on with his writing. This difference in the reactions of the two characters shows perhaps the single greatest example of human diversity in the book. In a world of homogeneous people where everyone responds to challenges in the same way – by taking Soma – Helmholtz’s resilience and Bernard’s despair display refreshing glimpses of natural human emotion and are, therefore, acts of rebellion in themselves.
This, ultimately, is the enduring image of “Brave New World” with adversity and submission creating an almost bittersweet effect on the reader. Whilst Helmholtz and Bernard will never be able to go back to their former lives, the audience has seen that through their rebellion, and inevitable submission to the all-powerful World State, they have gained a new freedom from a society of vacuous consumerism and mind-numbing drugs, to a more open, if less comfortable, world. The most devastating submission in the book is that of John, who unable to reconcile his conservative upbringing and desire for solitude with the enforced promiscuity and overbearing nature of the World State, commits suicide. However, it is not the World State itself which forces him to this point, but its citizens who harass and cajole him into complete despair. This is interesting and clearly contrasts with “A Clockwork Orange” in which the state crushes Alex, in a deliberate manner, so calculated that it has its own name: the “Ludovico Technique”. Infact, it is likely that Burgess purposely gave this its own name as a way of highlighting the way in which the State treats its citizens like an experiment and perhaps chose the name “Ludovico” as an oblique reference to Alex’s favourite composer Ludwig van Beethoven, in an attempt to link a futuristic story to the real world. However, it’s unclear whether the actions of the state in “A Clockwork Orange” are really those of a dystopian dictatorship. Is it really wrong to remove the free will of criminals in order to protect other, law-abiding citizens?
This leads us neatly to the strange paradox thrown up by both “A Clockwork Orange” and “Brave New World”. Whilst it is easy to say that those who rebel in both books are morally just in their rebellion against an oppressive state or at the very least that they are products of the state they live in, it is also easy to argue that their submission is actually not that terrible. After all, Mustapha Mond notes that Helmholtz and Bernard’s, “punishment is really a reward,” allowing them to live with other freethinkers and although Alex’s punishment leaves him a broken man, it also protects everyone around him, with Anthony Burgess noting in 1987 that the book, “was a sort of Christian allegory of free will,” and that its reviews were, “mostly facetious and uncomprehending.” For all the differences in the ways language, structure and various literary techniques are used to symbolise notions of rebellion and submission in these two books, their core ethical question remains the same: is submission to the state always, universally, unequivocally a bad thing?
*Word count without bibliography – 2091
Bibliography
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (1962)
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (1932)
Brave New World Revisited – Aldous Huxley (1958)
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