authority in a clockwork orange

Butterworth and Burgess use their works to highlight the impact of a growing state authority in the face of a weakening personal one. They both first establish their protagonists as being antiestablishment individuals against a weak state, and then both increase the power of the state throughout Jerusalem and A Clockwork Orange to demonstrate how state authority harms the individual. However, where A Clockwork Orange presents a brutal state to deal with a brutal protagonist, Jerusalem prefers a more lifelike scenario. Both works also resolve differently: with Burgess painting a much clearer and happier ending than that of Butterworth’s play. It is this final difference that truly sets the works apart, even though they start from very similar places.

At the beginning of both A Clockwork Orange and Jerusalem, the authority of the state is undermined and treated with contempt, allowing Burgess and Butterworth to initially portray their protagonists’ personal authority as greater than the state’s authority. The state doesn’t help itself to be more authoritative, as Butterworth presents Parsons and Fawcett in such a way that both stick out like sore thumbs in the face of Johnny’s chaotic living situation. Dressed “in a suit” with “a clipboard” (J12), they impose order in a free land at the beginning of Act 1. State authority is portrayed as grey, mundane, rigid, and formal. The way that Parsons and Fawcett interact is wholly unnatural when compared with normal human speech, as exemplified in Fawcett’s first line- “Time.” (J12). The dry, empty tone of the command and the lack of pleasantry or surrounding question that is implied (‘What’s the time?’) demonstrates the rigid nature of the state’s authority. Parsons’ response is equally devoid of emotion as he becomes a human clock counting the seconds “fifty-five. Six. Seven.” (J13). Butterworth gives them such mundanity in order to allow Johnny to flout their authority with ease. He quickly discards the notice he is served and its very service is reduced in importance by the “loud barking [that] can be heard inside” (J13). This is the first time the audience gets to understand Johnny’s antiestablishment attitudes which are continually developed throughout the play. At the end of act one he “sets fire to the notice” (J50) in an act of defiance and then continues throughout the rest of act two to ridicule the council and the people supporting it. In doing so he presents Johnny to the audience as a Byronic hero; someone who defies authority, but in a ‘good’ way - as if the authority needs defying. In the early parts of A Clockwork Orange, Alex acts similarly to Johnny, often insulting agents of the state. He describes the “millicents” (ACO17) as “stinky grahzny bratchnies" (ACO67), words which have much the same effect as Johnny calling the “South Wiltshire police force” (ACO48), who are agents of the state, “dim-dumb brick-brained [and] sausage-fingered” (ACO48). In doing so Burgess creates the similar effect of legitimising Alex’s violence, since the authority is so absent that it doesn’t deserve to be obeyed. Thus, in both Jerusalem and A Clockwork Orange the authority of the state is initially presented as weak and ineffectual.

The nature of state authority then shifts to something more sinister in Jerusalem and A Clockwork Orange. Jerusalem’s “Council” (J14) uses threats of physical force whilst A Clockwork Orange’s “Government” (ACO90) actually harms Alex. In the play, the agents of the council return to Byron’s residence in Act 3 with a more confrontational tone. They present him with evidence of his crimes as formal documents and paperwork, and a reminder of the official “enforcement notice” (J96) Johnny was served. They threaten him with “a bulldozer”, “two dozen constables”, and the fact that tomorrow “your camp will be razed, your vehicles and belongings seized as evidence, you will be arrested” (J99). This tricolon of terror clearly indicates that the council now have some bite to back up their bark, and Butterworth here is demonstrating the true power held by state authority which can be (and by Johnny had been) underestimated by those who have not experienced it. Indeed, Johnny seems to have had many run-ins with the law before, but this time he seems more concerned, and the state seems more powerful – perhaps inspired by the ‘Police Bill’, which expands “police powers”. In A Clockwork Orange, Burgess has the authority of the state become much more visceral much more quickly. The physical force of the state is emphasised at first, before Alex then becomes a political pawn once his will has been broken. This former is made clear to Alex soon after his arrest, when he is treated to a “fisting […] in the yarbles and the rot and the belly” (ACO70) from the policemen. This violent and visceral language demonstrates how normalised this brutality has become for the police, who are supposed to be the enforces of goodness in society. Instead, they demonstrate to him that “knowing the law’s not everything” (ACO69). This line is central to the authority of the state in A Clockwork Orange, since it demonstrates that the state thinks itself to be above the law, framing “the Government” (ACO90) as an arbitrary regime, which contradicts Locke’s idea of how the rule of law should be implemented since he argues that “wherever law ends, tyranny begins”. Burgess hints at Soviet-style authoritarianism, which Burgess visited in 1961 and was highly critical of (saying “I’ve never supported Communism”). The Soviets ran an arbitrary regime the government could ‘disappear’ those deemed ‘harmful’ to the state. Similarly, “the Government” (ACO90) in A Clockwork Orange has supreme authority above all, since everything is subject to their ruling and their ruling is subject to nothing. Where the authority of the “Kennet and Avon Council” (J14) is rooted in paperwork and bureaucracy, “the Government” (ACO90) exercises an arbitrary power that has no checks or balances.

Butterworth presents Johnny’s personal authority through his stories, from which he gains reverence from his friends. In contrast, Burgess shows Alex’s personal authority through his actions. Paul Kingsnorth describes Johnny as “a dangerous spirit of the old world and the new, leading the children astray, letting them stories, a story himself”. Johnny is immersed in story and Butterworth connects him and the play to Shakespeare as the play resembles A Midsummer Night’s Dream in parts and is set on 23 April, both St George’s Day and Shakespeare’s birthday. Butterworth uses these allusions to position Johnny as a modern figure who draws authority from the act of narrative itself, like Shakespeare. At the beginning of Act Two, Johnny addresses his gang as “Friends! Outcasts. [and] Leeches” (J53). Words which echo Mark Anthony’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, further connecting Johnny to the Bard and bathing his stories in the English canon. He can also produce ‘evidence’ for his stories as he pulls out a “bullet” (J53) and in the story of the giant he points out the “drum” (J64), thus suggesting all Johnny’s myths may be true. Burgess’ Alex has a more brittle version of personal authority, but still authority. He acts against the state on multiple occasions by committing various atrocities including rape and murder demonstrates his ability to act outside the demands of the state, to reject state authority. Burgess has Alex explain why he does “ultra-violence” (ACO23), stating “what I do I do because I like to do” (ACO44). The rhythmic nature of the phrase makes it sound childlike, making it clear that Alex perceives his choices to have come from himself. Indeed, Alex seems to see himself as one of these “brave malenky selves fighting these big machines” (ACO44), suggesting that he has legitimised his own violence and believes that he is a ‘freedom fighter’ of sorts – and this may be where he derives his strong sense of personal authority that he has in the first part of the book from; the idea that the state authority he derides is something that deserves to be attacked. Alex’s comes from violence for the sake of ‘freedom’, whilst Johnny’s comes from his linking to the great English canon that came before him. Burgess presents Alex’s personal authority as coming from his actions on the world, whereas Butterworth presents Johnny’s personal authority as being something almost innate to his person. The greatest example of this is at the end of the play, Johnny “relentlessly […] beats the drum” (J110) that supposedly summons the giants in his hour of need In the original 2008 production of the play, Johnny (played by Mark Rylance) stared out as the theatre shook with reverberations- which continued after the “blackout” (J110). Butterworth maintains Johnny’s mythic quality via this ambiguous ending. The shaking could be the march of the “bulldozer parked on Upavon Road” (ACO99), the state finally coming to end his misrule with a violent show of force. Conversely, this shaking could be the giants coming to protect him and everything he stands for. If the latter, this would be a final realisation of all his stories and therefore lending every other story Johnny has ever told a sense of credibility and thus giving him immense personal authority that can override that of the state. In this way, both authors are able to present Johnny and Alex as having great personal authority – though in Alex’s case it is derived from his actions whilst in Johnny’s case it is derived from his stories.

Though, Burgess and Butterworth leave space for the personal authority of their respective protagonists to be undermined through the actions of the state in A Clockwork Orange and of friends in Jerusalem. Charles Sumner writes that “Alex’s crimes […] represent local moments of autonomy from political and legal forces that, paradoxically, serve to strengthen those very forces”. His point is not unfounded considering that even when Alex tries to escape everything by committing suicide (which is the only way one can be free of any expectations or constraints of society), his attempt is actually constructed by F. Alexander and his sinister friends. Alex’s attempt is then used by the state to portray itself in an even more positive light. His attempts to exercise agency are turned into propaganda for the state. Similarly, in Jerusalem Johnny’s authority is undermined when his friends turn on him. The aforementioned speeches and attempts to incite rebellion from Johnny at the beginning of Act Two are undermined by small exchanges such as that between Ginger and Pea. Ginger asks, “Don’t you live on the New Estate?” (J56) and Pea immediately responds with “Pendragon Close. Up the end” (J56). Pea answers Ginger in such a matter-of-fact tone, as if she doesn’t recognise the oxymoronic nature of having just shouted “Fuck the New Estate!” (J56). In doing this, Butterworth shows the audience that whilst Johnny can be perceived to having a great sense of personal authority, he is ultimately, to this gang of youths, a source of entertainment. It is Troy, at the end of Act Two, who finally shatters this illusion as he reveals to Johnny that behind his back his ‘friends’ have been mocking him and “pissed on [him]” (J84) and filmed it whilst he was blackout drunk. This outburst from Troy silences the group surrounding Johnny, and short, terse phrases uttered by the characters subsequently mark a stark departure from the banter of earlier in the play. In both A Clockwork Orange and Jerusalem, our protagonists have their person authority destroyed in the latter stages of the novel and play – though differently as one is betrayed by friends and the other pressured by a more authoritative state.

Both Burgess and Butterworth allow their protagonists to restore their personal authority, but in different ways. Burgess resolves immoral characteristics not by ‘curing him’ from the state but instead by having Alex “like groweth up” (ACO177), giving up his personal authority against the state and amongst his newfound friends in return for a good life for his child. In contrast, Butterworth has Johnny rebuild his personal authority from the ground up. Battered and bruised both physically and psychologically, Johnny speaks to Marky (his son). He connects himself to all the ancient traditions and myths of England and “every Byron boy that e’er was born an Englishman” (J110). Butterworth has Johnny double down on his personal authority, digging deeper than anywhere else in the novel to link Johnny to England itself, whilst Burgess has Alex submit to the will of the state in exchange for an easier life. Although, Alex is not forced to surrender his personal authority. Burgess himself stated he was “more scared of the possibility of the individual being cured under the state”. Instead, Alex is presented as simply growing up, and in doing so he subverts the state one final time – since he didn’t require “the Government” (ACO90) to ‘cure’ him of his badness, but instead ‘cured’ himself. Conversely to Alex’s growing up, Johnny remains a teenager hanging around with other teenage delinquents, whilst his former partner and former friends (i.e. Tony and Dawn) have grown up and moved on. Yet Butterworth doesn’t necessarily present this as a negative thing, since Johnny’s final speech glorifies him and his lifestyle. In this way, both Burgess and Butterworth portray personal authority as having greater gravitas than state authority, even if the authority of the state is more powerful.

Ultimately, Jerusalem and A Clockwork Orange present authority in two ways: through the personal authority of their protagonists, and through the authority of the state. However, Burgess “believed in the primacy of free will” and therefore he has his novel end with the redemption of Alex by his own means. Butterworth has no such obligation and therefore ends his play much more ambiguously, allowing the audience to question whether Johnny’s personal authority or the state’s authority wins out in the end. Both authors still break down their protagonists’ personal authority and both still emphasise the negative aspects of a powerful state authority. So, whilst authority is broken down into similar groups and those groups are characterised in similar ways, Jerusalem and A Clockwork Orange differ in their certainty as to whether personal authority wins the day.