Brief:
The daring and electrifying book that inspired one of the most notorious films ever made.
‘What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence’
In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex, and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost?
A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters.
‘Every generation should discover this book’ Time Out
‘Still delivers the shock of the new . . . a red streak of gleeful evil’ Martin Amis
The Brief
A Clockwork Orange is as dazzling and inventive to new readers today as it was when it was first published half a century ago. The story is well known both in celluloid and print so it is essential to come at it from a fresh angle. Try to design a new cover for a new generation of readers, avoiding the obvious clichés. Originality is key.
Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy as supplied and be designed to the specified design template (B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine width 10mm).
What the judges are looking for:
We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. While all elements of the jacket need to work together as a cohesive whole, remember that the front cover must be effective on its own and be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting. It also needs to be able to work on screen for digital retailers such as Amazon.
The winning design will need to:
have an imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief
be competently executed with strong use of typography
appeal to a contemporary readership
show a good understanding of the marketplace
have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against
be able to sit on the shelves of a supermarket or ebook store as easily as it sits on those of more traditional bookshops
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Research:
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Upon hearing that a clockwork orange was one book selected for this year's Penguin competition I was very excited to redesign it. I have already read the book and the film is one of my favorites.
Title Meaning:
The title comes from an old Cockney expression, "as queer as a clockwork orange," meaning very strange or unusual. Due to his time serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaysia, Burgess thought that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) human (orang, Malay for "man"). In an interview Burgess says that "...the possibility of getting these young thugs, not putting them in jail because jails are needed for professional criminals. But rather, putting them through a cause of conditioning. Turning them in effect into Clockwork Oranges. No long organisms full of sweetness, color, and light like oranges, but machines." On a whole the
Anthony Burgess:
Burgess was an English writer and composer.
Summary:
In a near-futuristic society, late teen Alex DeLarge is the leader of a gang of thugs - his "droogs" - who commit acts of ultra-violence, often with sexual components, without any regard for their victims, and purely because it strikes their collective fancies. These acts are largely fueled by drug use. In addition, Alex is a lover of music, especially that of Ludwig van Beethoven, which, when he listens to it during these acts, intensifies his pleasure, and in turn inspires him to commit further such acts. He does not tolerate any challenge to his leadership by his droogs. Although the authorities in general know of Alex's delinquency, they have so far been unable to catch him in the act of his crimes, until one night after a sexual assault of an older woman. Alex and Alex alone is charged, convicted and incarcerated. But Alex sees what he believes is an easy way out when the government looks for subjects to participate in a new rehabilitation therapy, the end result being release from prison after the two-week therapy. The therapy ends up having consequences that Alex did not envision. The questions become how Alex will function, and how others will act toward him in his changed state.
Themes:
- Order in Society vs. Freedom of Choice.
The freedom of individuals to make choices becomes problematic when those choices undermine the safety and stability of society, and in A Clockwork Orange, the state is willing to protect society by taking away the freedom of choice and replacing it with prescribed good behavior. In Alex’s world, both the unfettered power of the individual and the unfettered power of the state prove dangerous. Alex steals, rapes, and murders merely because it feels good, but when his violent impulses are taken away, the result is equally as dangerous, simply because freedom of choice, a fundamental element of humanity, has been taken away.
- The Necessity of Evil in Human Nature.
The importance of evil as well as good in human nature is a fundamental theme of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is despicable because he gives free rein to his violent impulses, but that sense of freedom is also what makes him human. Unlike so many of the adult characters in the film, he, at least, seems exuberantly alive. When Ludovico’s Technique eliminates the evil aspects of his personality, he becomes less of a threat to society, but also, the film suggests, less human. He is not truly good because he didn’t choose to be good, and the utilization of that choice is vital to being a complete human being.
The importance of evil as well as good in human nature is a fundamental theme of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is despicable because he gives free rein to his violent impulses, but that sense of freedom is also what makes him human. Unlike so many of the adult characters in the film, he, at least, seems exuberantly alive. When Ludovico’s Technique eliminates the evil aspects of his personality, he becomes less of a threat to society, but also, the film suggests, less human. He is not truly good because he didn’t choose to be good, and the utilization of that choice is vital to being a complete human being.
- The Interdependence of Life and Art.
In A Clockwork Orange, characters view and use art in many different ways, creating a complex and conflicted picture of how art and real life interact. Alex uses music, film, and art to express and understand his life. During the two weeks that doctors show Alex reel upon reel of sex and violence, he is amazed that the real world looks, even more, real on a television screen. He and other characters also use art to detach from life and to cut themselves off from other people. When Alex beats Mr. Alexander and prepares to rape his wife, he sings “Singin’ in the Rain” and dances like Gene Kelly did in the musical. By making the violent act into a song and dance, Alex distances himself from the brutality and from his victims’ suffering. The cat lady, whom Alex kills, expresses her sexuality through her statues and the paintings on her walls, but when Alex touches her statue of a penis, she screams at him not to touch it because it’s a work of art. Through art, she makes sexuality an object not to be touched, rather than an act that is all about touching.
- Sexual Aggression.
Sex in A Clockwork Orange is not an expression of love or intimacy, but rather an exhibition of power and violence. The vast majority of sex scenes in the film are violent, including the attempted gang rape of the “weepy devotchka,” Alex’s rape of Mrs. Alexander, and the on-screen rape scene the doctors show Alex. Other less explicit scenes of sexual repression and aggression appear as well. For example, Deltoid, Alex’s probation officer, grabs Alex’s testicles. In A Clockwork Orange, most human relationships, including sexual ones, revolve around the question of control: who will control and who will be controlled. The minister of the interior sees Alex as a guinea pig for his experiment in law and order. Mr. Alexander sees Alex as an instrument he can use to bring down the minister of the interior and his party. Alex himself wields power not only over the victims of his crimes but also over his other gang members. Even the economy turns people into objects to be controlled or used. Alex’s mother goes to work in a factory, presumably functioning as just one piece of the machine. In this depersonalized world of users and used, sex ceases to be an act of intimacy and instead becomes an act of brutality and an assertion of power.
- Music: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
A Clockwork Orange challenges traditional ideas about music’s fundamental function, and here music taps into what is most dominant in Alex’s nature: violence. Throughout the film, classical music moves Alex to a version of ecstasy, and he imagines hangings, bombings, and other acts of violence. However, music remains valuable as a signal of his freedom of choice. Alex lives violently, brutally, and without compassion, but what initially sets him apart from adults is that he has so much more vitality. While his weary mother trudges off to her factory job, Alex sleeps all day, then wakes up to have sex, take drugs, and perpetrate more violence—only because he wants to and because it is exciting. He also listens to music, which for him is an ecstatic and liberating experience that expresses both the brute and the rebel in him. When the doctors condition Alex’s body to become ill from his own violent impulses, they simultaneously condition his body to reject music. Though this is an unintentional result of the conditioning, it is symbolically significant. Music connects to Alex’s drives and desires and stripping him of his ability to enjoy it is equivalent to stripping him of his humanity.The role music plays in both the novel and the film of A Clockwork Orange is Burgess and Kubrick’s nod toward history. All governments, particularly totalitarian regimes, have used music to heighten their citizens’ patriotic fervor. For example, Adolf Hitler was moved by music and used it as a tool of state control. In Alex’s case, the elimination of music from his life is how this control manifests itself, and the consequences are just as dire. Alex loves Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony more than any other piece of music, which is ironic because Beethoven meant to express the heights of human goodness rather than depravity. Through the four movements of the symphony, Beethoven traces humanity’s ascent. The symphony starts by depicting the plight of offenders in the lowest rungs of hell. In the second movement, humans find happiness in everyday pleasures. In the third movement, they turn to religion. In the fourth movement, the finale, Beethoven aimed to express a vision of humanity that had traveled spiritually from the depths of despair to the heights of fulfillment and glory. What Beethoven hoped the symphony would communicate, however, is quite different from what Alex hears. In A Clockwork Orange, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony punctuates the heights and depths of emotion Alex experiences, just as Beethoven hoped the symphony would express the heights and depths of human experience. The symphony literally drives Alex to his lowest point, when he jumps from Mr. Alexander’s window trying to escape the sickness Ludovico’s Technique has made him feel whenever he hears it. In turn, he knows he is cured of the effects of Ludovico’s Technique when the minister of the interior plays the symphony for him and he no longer feels sick. Unlike Beethoven’s vision, for Alex, the glory of the final movement represents simply his own personal glory.
- Slang.
Alex uses a slang spoken only by young people. Adults don’t understand the language, which highlights the emotional and ideological distance between the generations. Burgess invented the language for the novel and called it Nadsat, which is the Russian suffix for teen. Nadsat is a language that, like Alex himself and like youth more generally, overflows with energy. Sex, for instance, is called “the old in-out in-out.” In contrast, the language the adults speak is far drier and more predictable. Alex’s parents speak in clichés. The prison guards speak the language of law and order. The doctors speak in medical lingo. Only the youths’ language transcends these linguistic categories and barriers. In Nadsat, high and low forms of language coexist. Street words, baby talk, and rhyming slang accompany grammar and syntax that sometimes follow formal Shakespearean English. The most dominant linguistic influences on Nadsat besides English are Russian and Slavic. Before Burgess wrote his novel, he spent time in Soviet Russia, where he witnessed youth gangs running wild, just like the ones he’d seen in England. He decided to create a language that incorporated both English and Russian, the two most powerful political languages in the world at that time. The fact that Alex, a completely apolitical youth, speaks it also makes it a language of rebellion. The youths who use the language don’t care about the politics that divided the world at the time that Burgess wrote his novel.
In A Clockwork Orange, characters view and use art in many different ways, creating a complex and conflicted picture of how art and real life interact. Alex uses music, film, and art to express and understand his life. During the two weeks that doctors show Alex reel upon reel of sex and violence, he is amazed that the real world looks, even more, real on a television screen. He and other characters also use art to detach from life and to cut themselves off from other people. When Alex beats Mr. Alexander and prepares to rape his wife, he sings “Singin’ in the Rain” and dances like Gene Kelly did in the musical. By making the violent act into a song and dance, Alex distances himself from the brutality and from his victims’ suffering. The cat lady, whom Alex kills, expresses her sexuality through her statues and the paintings on her walls, but when Alex touches her statue of a penis, she screams at him not to touch it because it’s a work of art. Through art, she makes sexuality an object not to be touched, rather than an act that is all about touching.
- Sexual Aggression.
Sex in A Clockwork Orange is not an expression of love or intimacy, but rather an exhibition of power and violence. The vast majority of sex scenes in the film are violent, including the attempted gang rape of the “weepy devotchka,” Alex’s rape of Mrs. Alexander, and the on-screen rape scene the doctors show Alex. Other less explicit scenes of sexual repression and aggression appear as well. For example, Deltoid, Alex’s probation officer, grabs Alex’s testicles. In A Clockwork Orange, most human relationships, including sexual ones, revolve around the question of control: who will control and who will be controlled. The minister of the interior sees Alex as a guinea pig for his experiment in law and order. Mr. Alexander sees Alex as an instrument he can use to bring down the minister of the interior and his party. Alex himself wields power not only over the victims of his crimes but also over his other gang members. Even the economy turns people into objects to be controlled or used. Alex’s mother goes to work in a factory, presumably functioning as just one piece of the machine. In this depersonalized world of users and used, sex ceases to be an act of intimacy and instead becomes an act of brutality and an assertion of power.
- Music: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
A Clockwork Orange challenges traditional ideas about music’s fundamental function, and here music taps into what is most dominant in Alex’s nature: violence. Throughout the film, classical music moves Alex to a version of ecstasy, and he imagines hangings, bombings, and other acts of violence. However, music remains valuable as a signal of his freedom of choice. Alex lives violently, brutally, and without compassion, but what initially sets him apart from adults is that he has so much more vitality. While his weary mother trudges off to her factory job, Alex sleeps all day, then wakes up to have sex, take drugs, and perpetrate more violence—only because he wants to and because it is exciting. He also listens to music, which for him is an ecstatic and liberating experience that expresses both the brute and the rebel in him. When the doctors condition Alex’s body to become ill from his own violent impulses, they simultaneously condition his body to reject music. Though this is an unintentional result of the conditioning, it is symbolically significant. Music connects to Alex’s drives and desires and stripping him of his ability to enjoy it is equivalent to stripping him of his humanity.The role music plays in both the novel and the film of A Clockwork Orange is Burgess and Kubrick’s nod toward history. All governments, particularly totalitarian regimes, have used music to heighten their citizens’ patriotic fervor. For example, Adolf Hitler was moved by music and used it as a tool of state control. In Alex’s case, the elimination of music from his life is how this control manifests itself, and the consequences are just as dire. Alex loves Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony more than any other piece of music, which is ironic because Beethoven meant to express the heights of human goodness rather than depravity. Through the four movements of the symphony, Beethoven traces humanity’s ascent. The symphony starts by depicting the plight of offenders in the lowest rungs of hell. In the second movement, humans find happiness in everyday pleasures. In the third movement, they turn to religion. In the fourth movement, the finale, Beethoven aimed to express a vision of humanity that had traveled spiritually from the depths of despair to the heights of fulfillment and glory. What Beethoven hoped the symphony would communicate, however, is quite different from what Alex hears. In A Clockwork Orange, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony punctuates the heights and depths of emotion Alex experiences, just as Beethoven hoped the symphony would express the heights and depths of human experience. The symphony literally drives Alex to his lowest point, when he jumps from Mr. Alexander’s window trying to escape the sickness Ludovico’s Technique has made him feel whenever he hears it. In turn, he knows he is cured of the effects of Ludovico’s Technique when the minister of the interior plays the symphony for him and he no longer feels sick. Unlike Beethoven’s vision, for Alex, the glory of the final movement represents simply his own personal glory.
- Slang.
Alex uses a slang spoken only by young people. Adults don’t understand the language, which highlights the emotional and ideological distance between the generations. Burgess invented the language for the novel and called it Nadsat, which is the Russian suffix for teen. Nadsat is a language that, like Alex himself and like youth more generally, overflows with energy. Sex, for instance, is called “the old in-out in-out.” In contrast, the language the adults speak is far drier and more predictable. Alex’s parents speak in clichés. The prison guards speak the language of law and order. The doctors speak in medical lingo. Only the youths’ language transcends these linguistic categories and barriers. In Nadsat, high and low forms of language coexist. Street words, baby talk, and rhyming slang accompany grammar and syntax that sometimes follow formal Shakespearean English. The most dominant linguistic influences on Nadsat besides English are Russian and Slavic. Before Burgess wrote his novel, he spent time in Soviet Russia, where he witnessed youth gangs running wild, just like the ones he’d seen in England. He decided to create a language that incorporated both English and Russian, the two most powerful political languages in the world at that time. The fact that Alex, a completely apolitical youth, speaks it also makes it a language of rebellion. The youths who use the language don’t care about the politics that divided the world at the time that Burgess wrote his novel.
- The Inherent Evil of Government
Just as A Clockwork Orange champions free will, it deplores the institution of government, which systematically seeks to suppress the individual in favor of the collective, or the state. Alex articulates this notion when he contends, in Part One, Chapter 4, that modern history is the story of individuals fighting against large, repressive government “machines.” As we see in A Clockwork Orange, the State is prepared to employ any means necessary to ensure its survival. Using technological innovation, mass-market culture, and the threat of violence, among other strategies, the State seeks to control Alex and his fellow citizens, who are least dangerous when they are most predictable. The State also does not tolerate dissent. Once technology helps to clear its prisons by making hardened criminals harmless, the State begins incarcerating dissidents, like F. Alexander, who aim to rouse public opinion against it and thus threaten its stability.
Film Visuals:
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Experimentation
I started first with the type. The font is Biko Black. The book is set in a futuristic world and i wanted a typeface that represented this, but also had a quirky twist. On the C and O I added eyelashes to represent Alex's eye. I think that this is one of the key visuals people think of when they think about a clockwork orange and was an important thing to include. The colour scheme that I have used is from a lot of the muted pastel tones that appear in scenes during the film, and of corse felt I had to include the colour orange.
The first concept I started working with was from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I created a pattern from all the notes that appear on the sheet music. However, visually, I wasn't happy with how this turned out.
This design is in reference to Alex's suicide attempt, the image is meant to mimic falling. I angled the picture to feel as is you are looking down from a great height. However overall I dont think that people would understand that this is for a clockwork orange, just from looking at the cover.
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Final Design/Mock-up
The design i decided to go with is basically just a modernised version of the current cover. Including the profile of a head, bowler hat and cog in a different way. The concept is in reference to the title meaning of 'the mechanical man.'
