Politics of Irony in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange

Abstract

This research paper examines Burgess's politics behind using radical irony in A Clockwork Orange. It explores the ways of subverting high values and reinforcing marginalized ones and also investigates the resistance of working class people against bourgeois discourse. The ultra-violence is presented ironically in order to bring stated brutality of Alex, the protagonist and unstated brutality of the state. This paper brings the theoretical concept from Linda Hutcheon and Claire Colebrook in order to investigate Burgess's politics of making radical use of irony. Hutcheon's transideological and subversive functions of irony are applicable in this research. By using Hutcheon's concept, it finds out the Burgess's politics of irony that helps him to subvert the high discourse, values, and hypocrisy and at the same time to reinforce the marginalized discourse and values. Thus, it is concluded that irony helps Burgess to make marginalized people aware by unmasking complexity and multiplicity of high culture.