Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, a critically acclaimed masterpiece about the horrors of conditioning, is unfairly attacked for seemingly gratuitous violence while simply using brutality, as well as linguistics and a controversial dénouement , as a vehicle for deeper themes. Although attacks on A Clockwork Orange are often unwarranted, it is disingenuous to defend the novel as nonviolent; in frightening content, its opening chapters are surpassed only by wanton massacres like Natural Born Killers. Burgess's Ted Bundy, a teenage Lucifer named Alex, is a far cry from the typical spray-paint-wielding juvenile delinquent. With his gang of “droogs,” or friends, Alex engages in sadistic rape and “ultraviolence.” As the story unfolds, the four rob a small store, beat the owner and his wife unconscious, and then strip the old woman for fun (Burgess, A Clockwork Orange 13-14). When the moon reaches the zenith, they feel the pain of "the old surprise visit" (Burgess, Orange 24). Wearing masks of Elvis, Disraeli and the like, they storm a writer's house and beat him to a pulp, tear his cherished manuscript to pieces, urinate in the fireplace and rape his wife while the author is forced to watch in horror (Burgess, Orange 27-29). The following day, Alex, taking a much-needed break from school, lures two ten-year-old girls into his room, gets them drunk, and rapes them against the backdrop of Beethoven's Ninth (Burgess, Orange 50-54). violence, the novel is not intensely graphic; the abrasive episodes are softened by the use of Nadsat, an adolescent slang invented by the author. As a Stanley Kubrick film, however, Orange is immediately shocking. The lack of a linguistic cushion, as well as the need to show on stage v...... middle of paper ......, Geoffrey. Anthony Burgess: The artist as novelist. University: University of Alabama, 1979.Burgess, Anthony. You've Had Your Time: Part Two of the Confessions. New York: Grove Press. 1990.Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986. Burgess, Anthony. Clockwork Marmalade, in: Listener, 17 February 1972, S. 197-199 "Contemporary Authors Online." The Gale group. 1999. November 27, 1999.Gladsky, Rita K. “Schema Theory and Literary Texts.” Linguistic quarterly. 30.1-2: 40-46.Hyman, Stanley E. Glossary of the Nadsat language.Hyman, Stanley Edgar: Afterword, in: Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. 28.Auflage. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984, (1965), S. 171-177Keckler, Jesse. "Biography." A critical look at A Clockwork Orange. November 27, 1999. Nadsat Dictionary. October 3. 1999.