SOURCE: "Freedom and Art in A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess and the Christian Premises of Dostoevsky," in Thought, Vol. LVI, No. 223, December, 1981, pp. 402-16.

In the following essay, Bowie compares the thematic treatment of freedom and beauty in A Clockwork Orange and in works by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In 1961 Anthony Burgess interrupted his work on A Clockwork Orange and made a trip to the Soviet Union. Later he wrote a different novel, Honey for the Bears, based in part on his experiences in Leningrad, a novel that surely would never have been written if he had not made the trip. But there is also reason for asserting that without his knowledge of Russian language and literature Burgess would not have written A Clockwork Orange in the form it appeared. What comes to mind immediately is the "nadsat" language, based largely on Russian. But in this novel Burgess also develops...