A Clockwork Orange The Original Ending Controversy Explained

A Clockwork Orange: The Original Ending Controversy Explained

The American edition of A Clockwork Orange lacked a 21st chapter that the British printing had, so why didn’t Stanley Kubrick adapt the full novel?

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A Clockwork Orange The Original Ending Controversy Explained

Warning: The following contains discussions of sexual violence and other potentially triggering content.

The original American and British printings of the novel A Clockwork Orange had drastically different endings, with the American edition omitting author Anthony Burgess’ intended final chapter. This fact was not widely known at the time filmmaker Stanley Kubrick began adapting A Clockwork Orange into a movie and Kubrick didn’t learn of the novel’s original ending until the film was already in preproduction using the American version as the basis for the script. Kubrick ultimately made a decision that added one more point of controversy to one of the most highly-debated films ever made.

Kubrick’s version of A Clockwork Orange remained largely faithful to the Burgess novel; ironic, given Kubrick’s reputation for taking wild liberties with his cinematic adaptations of other books, evidenced in the differences from Stephen King’s The Shining. Both the film and the book detail the story of Alex, a juvenile delinquent in a dystopic future, who indulged in acts of ultraviolence and sexual assault behind the backs of his clueless parents. After being betrayed by his gang and imprisoned, Alex became the test subject for a process that uses extreme aversion therapy to force habitual offenders to behave themselves. Unfortunately for Alex, the process had some unintended side effects, such as becoming nauseated by the classical music he once loved so much. The movie ends as Chapter 20 of the novel did, with Alex in the hospital, undergoing a new treatment to reverse the first treatment, having learned nothing and dreaming of the crimes he will commit in the future.

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Burgess’ original ending in Chapter 21 of A Clockwork Orange mirrors the story’s beginning, with Alex, now 18 years old, describing himself and his new gang as they are pondering what mischief they will busy themselves with that evening. Feeling oddly bored by the prospect of another night of random thuggery, Alex tells his gang he wants to be alone and wanders off into the night. By chance, Alex runs into Pete, the one member of his old gang unaccounted for by that point in the narrative. The two talk briefly and Alex learns that Pete had just gotten married and is now working for an insurance company. The novel ends with Alex pondering Pete’s apparent happiness, telling the reader that he has grown up and intends to start seeking a wife of his own the next day.

Anthony Burgess defended his original ending to his dying day, saying that A Clockwork Orange, which recently came to Netflix, had no point if it ends with Alex being unchanged by the events of the story. Burgess was an optimist who believed in the essential goodness of humanity and that Alex’s story required the hope that he could move beyond his criminal past and the ironic torment he suffered because of it. For Burgess, A Clockwork Orange was a character study and the story of Alex’s coming of age.

Burgess’ American editor disagreed, saying that it was completely unrealistic for Alex to suddenly decide to give up being a criminal just because it was time for him to grow up, and inconsistent with his earlier speeches about choosing to do evil for evil’s sake and holding no grudge against those who did good for good’s sake. Stanley Kubrick, the director who also ended The Shining differently, agreed with the editor and, after reading the British printing of the novel, elected to leave Chapter 21 out of his adaptation. For them, the focus of A Clockwork Orange was on the society Alex inhabited and an exploration of the philosophical ideas Burgess put forth regarding the value of virtue without the freedom to choose evil.

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Some fans of the original novel have dismissed Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange and the American printing as cynical. Other critics have accused Burgess of being naïve in his worldview and not realizing that the philosophy of his novel and politics of his world were far more interesting than Alex’s character arc. In either case, it cannot be denied that both the novel and the film have tremendous staying power to still be so hotly debated some five decades later.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/clockword-orange-ending-controversy-book-chapter-21/

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