Notions of individuality in Anthony Burgess's novels

Abstract

This study focuses on Burgess's depiction of individuality within a twenty year span and deals primarily with the protagonists of The Wanting Seed (1962), A Clockwork Orange (1962), 1985 (1978), Earthly Powers (1980) and Enderby's Dark Lady (1984). The Burgessian individual, living in a world characterized by ambiguity and duality, is depicted in the throes of a crisis. As the novels trace his journey towards self discovery and consequently maturity, the puny protagonist is pitted against the might of the State or its agents in an unequal contest which the individual can never really win; yet the Burgessian protagonist does win in the only way open to him, namely by forging for himself a life that is freely embraced and resulting from a compromise or a synthesis of opposing forces, depending on how much freedom he is allowed by the State. Burgess applauds as mature hero the autonomous dynamic protagonist, an individual, inevitably with an artistic outlook, who is conscious of being an amalgamation of the God-like and the bestial, both an image of Pan and Christ. The span of novels reveals Burgess's ambivalent ideas on the individual's accessibility to truth, the notion of the past in the individual's evolution and the changing conception of "Home." Nevertheless, the successful protagonist is consistently an optimistic individual who, despite all, retains his humanity and a vision of truth and, experiencing an epiphanic vision of his Elysium, is able to look to the future with hope for a better existence.