Burgess was full of pessimism, presenting another version of a possible future. In his novels, both The Wanting Seed and 1985, the reader is confronted with “an incredible variety of cultures,” but not in colonial countries – in London itself. Chaos, which Burgess describes as an essential feature of colony life, becomes an integral part of his dystopian vision of the future. Burgess believes that the national culture of Great Britain is collapsing, its capital is losing its political and cultural basis, and parodies are the only form to depict postcolonial England properly. Therefore, he takes it upon himself to develop and orchestrate a dualistic narrative, where his reader would experience a tremendous clash between desperation and opportunistic humor.
Burgess’ 1985 combines both artistic narrative and non-fiction text. In his non-fiction reasoning, Burgess speaks in terms of philosophy, using allegories of cyclicality when speaking of politics. Clarke (2018) states that “in Burgess’ works, the modernist urge to merge form with content renders non-narrative elements of his fiction subordinate to his aesthetic purpose” (21). The gravity of his wording attracts the reader, catching them in a loop of dystopian phases reviewed through different perspectives. Pradeeban and Narayanan (2019) add that “his creativity is a matter of style, of words combined in strange new shapes rather that specifiable political, philosophical or religious ideas” (77). In 1985, he painted the grand picture of his own concept of dystopia, developing it further in The Wanting Seed, The Clockwork Orange, and 1985 itself as well.
Developing the gang slang in 1985, Burgess uses Latin and Greek to subtly underline the attempts of rebelliousness the gangs take in order to separate themselves from the government and its dull educational system. It becomes clear as Burgess (1979) writes, “‘Festina lente,’ smiled a cocoa-coloured youth in a sweatshirt that showed a huge-fisted flying-cloaked Shakespeare with the legend WILL POWER” (12). The universities only support and concentrate on practical subjects – so the gangs base their slang on languages that seem to have no meaning in a person’s outlook anymore. Masters (2018) explains that “Burgess’ prose develops a bespoke logics and ethics.” This move is highly political, and Burgess uses its implications greatly to show the struggle against the governmental order.
The world of The Wanting Seed is represented by a cycle of alternating phases: Pelphase, Interphase, and Gusphase. In Pelphase – or Pelagian Phase, named for Pelagia, who “denied the doctrine of original sin” – the government sees a person as sinless from the start. Interphase, then, represents the natural fall of utopia, and it is shown clearly in the harsher language of the narrator: people’s fear and desperation are written out clearly. It is the apogee of a totalitarian regime that marks the transition from Pelphase to Gusphase, or Augustinian Phase. The writer turns to biblical meanings: Augustine Aurelius believed that both good and bad are predetermined in a person by God, given to everyone from birth. A person is a priori sinful. Therefore there is no good to expect from them. “Laughter” and “duality” are the keywords for understanding Burgess’s books. They give the reader the opportunity to sympathize with his heroes and even laugh at their misadventures, although the problems raised in the novel are not at all a reason for fun.
In the world of Burgess, the reader would still be hit by emotional shock, but there is an ambiguity, a duality of perception. The novel ends with the last stanza from Le cimetière marin by Paul Valéry, translated into English. What is interesting is that Burgess uses different punctuation than the original text: exclamation marks are replaced by periods and dots. The motivating, inherently stoic appeal of “we must try to live” (Burgess, 1973, p. 22) sounds almost hopeless it. This might be said by people who know they are doomed to trials and tribulations but who are unable to prevent them. Those words are longing for forces that are many times more powerful than the power of government – the eternal, spontaneous, unchanging “huge sky,” “life-giving sea.”
Works Cited
Burgess, Anthony. The Wanting Seed. Heinemann, 1973.
Burgess, Anthony. 1985. Schønberg, 1979.
Clarke, Jim. Aesthetics of Anthony Burgess: Fire of Words. Springer International PU, 2018.
Masters, Ben. Novel Style. Ethics and Excess in English Fiction since the 1960s. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Pradeeban, R., and R. Suriya Prakash Narayanan. “Free Will in Anthony Burgess’ The Wanting Seed.” Literary Endeavour, no. Special, 2019, pp. 77–79.