5.CHARACTERS AND INTERPRETATION AUTHORAnthony Burgess (born on Feb. 25, 1917, died on Nov. 25, 1993), who also published as John Burgess Wilson and as Joseph Kell, was a versatile essayist, linguist, translator, musician, and comic novelist whose inventive use of language and taste for parody reflected his interest in James Joyce, about whom he wrote in Re Joyce (1965). He is perhaps best known for his futuristic novel A Clockwork Orange (1962; film, 1971).Raised a Roman Catholic in Manchester, England, he was trained as a composer and frequently used musical forms in his fiction, such as Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (1974). After serving in the British Army in World War II, he became a teacher and education officer, first in England (1950-54) and then in the Far East (1954-59), the setting of Time for a Tiger (1956), his first published novel.Sent back to England with a supposedly fatal brain tumor, he wrote five books in a year. His many other books include such novels as The Right to an Answer (1960), Enderby Outside (1968), and MF (1971); fictional (Nothing Like the Sun, 1964) and factual (Shakespeare, 1970) biographies of Shakespeare; variations on the Oedipus legend; and critical studies of literature, such as Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (1985). The first volume of his autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God, was published in 1987. 2. TITLEThe title of the novella is a memorable and richly suggestive one adapted from a piece of slang: As queer as a clockwork orange is a Cockney expression meaning very queer indeed (the meaning can be, but is not necessarily, sexual).Alex must be able to choose to be good; he must be an orange, capable of growth and sweetness, not a wound-up clockwork toy! 3. VOCABULARYPerhaps the most fascinating thing about the book is its language. Alex thinks and talks in the nadsat (teenage) vocabulary of the future. A doctor in the books explains it. Odd bits of...
