Yes, A Clockwork Orange Is Banned!

Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel invented its own slang language, Nadsat, to narrate the exploits of fifteen-year-old Alex and his droogs as they terrorize a near-future Britain. After Alex is arrested and subjected to the Ludovico Technique, a form of aversion therapy that strips him of free will, the novel poses an uncomfortable question: is a person who can only do good truly good at all? Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation amplified the novel’s notoriety, and Burgess spent much of his later career ambivalent about a book that overshadowed everything else he wrote.

A Clockwork Orange has been challenged and banned since its publication, primarily for its unflinching depictions of sexual violence, assault, and drug use. The novel’s invented teenage slang doesn’t soften the brutality underneath. With 23 ban instances recorded in the 2024-2025 PEN America data alone, primarily across Florida school districts including Broward County, Hillsborough County, and Lee County, it remains one of the most frequently targeted novels in American schools. The book’s central irony, that suppressing free choice is itself a form of violence, tends to be lost on the people pulling it from shelves.