The Wanting Seed
thanks Prof Eugene Narrett
| The Wanting Seed | |
 Cover of Pan Books edition | |
| Author | Anthony Burgess |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Dystopian novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Publication date | 1962 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 285 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Wanting Seed is a dystopian novel by the English author Anthony Burgess, written in 1962.
Contents[hide] |
Theme
Although the novel addresses many societal issues, the primary subject is overpopulation and its relation to culture. Religion, government, and history are also addressed. A healthy portion of the book is a condemnation of war.
According to Burgess, "I have spent the last 25 years thinking that The Wanting Seed could, in my leisurely old age, be expanded to a length worthy of the subject."
The noted literary critic, Mike Wilson, reportedly stated the book was too offensive to finish.
Plot
The novel begins by introducing the two protagonists: Tristram Foxe, a history teacher, and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, a homemaker. They have recently suffered through their young son's death.
Throughout the first portion of the novel, overpopulation is depicted through the limitation and reuse of materials, and extremely cramped living conditions.
There is also active discrimination against heterosexuals, homosexuality being encouraged as a measure against overpopulation. Self-sterilization is also encouraged.
One of the major conflicts of the novel is between Tristram and his brother, Derek. Very much alike at first, Derek chose a different path from Tristram and pretends to be homosexual while in public to help his career. In private, he has an affair with Beatrice-Joanna, and when she forgets to take her State-provided contraceptives, she becomes illegally pregnant. She has sex with her husband, Tristram, and his brother, Derek, within a 24-hour time span, thus the paternity of her twin boys is uncertain.
Life changes as the police ('Greyboys') become more active and more repressive - something that begins as a mysterious blight spreads across the world. Tristram is arrested after getting unintentionally mixed up in a protest and spends the next section of the novel in jail, as society outside changes rapidly.
While he is imprisoned, formerly repressed religion begins to bloom, fertility rituals are endorsed, and the structure of society, as well as government, are competely restructed. Most shockingly, cannibalism is openly practiced in much of England. Beatrice-Joanna has run away, and is staying with her sister and brother-in-law in the countryside on their Farm, where the blight is affecting even their chickens. She stays there until she delivers her twin sons, when a government agent arrives to take her and her children to the city.
With the help of his cellmate, a massive black man, Tristram escapes and tries to rejoin his wife. He travels across England to his sister-in-law's farm. He is so desperate for food, he briefly joins "a dining club," a rather chaotic affair which provides food for him - though he suspects that this food is composed of murdered human beings.
His journey eventually takes him to a sort of soup kitchen, where he is tricked into enlisting in the army. This is the third section of the novel. In the army, Tristram is shipped to an unknown location to fight in the war, though the reader later discovers that he is in modern-day Ireland. In his first battle he discovers that there is no real enemy; the purpose of the "war" is population control. Battalions are sent to a made-up underground battlefield to kill each other, and the dead bodies are sold to corporations for food. Every other member of his battalion gets killed in the battle, and Tristram begins his long way back to England.
Escaping back into general society, Tristram finds a new job. In his absence, Beatrice-Joanna has been moved to live with Derek. She has also brought the twins (it is implied that Derek is their father) and named them after her two brotherly lovers, Derek and Tristram Fox.
At the last scene Tristram meets again his wife at Brighton pier.
The book closes with Burgess clarifying his theme:
- "The wind rises... we must try to live. The immense air opens and closes my book. The wave, pulverized, dares to gush and spatter from the rocks. Fly away, dazzled, blinded pages. Break, waves. Break with joyful waters..."
Cyclical History
Often repeated in the novel is the concept that history is cyclical. As Tristram explains in the first few chapters to his slumbering history class, there are three phases: Pelphase, Interphase, and Gusphase.
Pelphase is named after Pelagianism, the theology of Pelagius. The Pelphase is characterized by the belief that people are generally good. Crimes have slight punishment, and the government tries to improve the population. The government works through socialism. According to Tristram "A government functioning in its Pelagian phase commits itself to the belief that man is perfectible, that perfection can be achieved by his own efforts, and that the journey towards perfection is along a straight road." The novel begins - and ends - in Pelphase.
Interphase is the darkening of Pelphase into Gusphase - an "Intermediate" phase. As Tristram explains things, the government grows increasingly disappointed in its population's inability to be truly good, and thus police forces are strengthened and the state becomes Totalitarian. In many respects, Interphase is a finite version of George Orwell's 1984.
- "'Brutality!' cried Tristram. The class was at last interested. 'Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging out of eyes. The firing squad in the cold dawn. And all this because of disappointment. The Interphase.'"
Gusphase is named after Augustinianism, the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo. In short, Gusphase involves the lifting of the Interphase. The leaders begin to realize how horrible they have become, and realize that they are being overly harsh. Therefore, the government relaxes its rules and creates havoc. Tristram describes the Gusphase:
- "The orthodox view presents man as a sinful creature from whom no good at all may be expected... It eventually appears that human social behaviour is rather better than any Augustinian pessimist has any right to expect, and so a sort of optimism begins to emerge. And so Pelagianism is reinstated."
Characters
- Tristram Foxe — a history teacher
- Beatrice-Joanna Foxe — Tristram's wife
- Derek Foxe — Tristram's brother, becomes head of the Ministry of Infertility
- Mr. Livedog — the term used for God, who is both good and evil. He makes masses of useless life and it is the job of Mr. Homo, his master, to eliminate it. The phrase 'god knows' is replaced by the phrase 'dogsnose'. Note that the first part of the name, "Live", spelled backwards is "evil" and the second part, "dog", spelled backwards is "God".
- Roger Foxe - the deceased son of Tristram and Beatrice-Joanna
- Mavis - Beatrice-Joanna's sister
- Shonny - Mavis' husband and Beatrice-Joanna's brother-in-law
- The Blessed Ambrose Bayley - an unfrocked priest whom Tristam first meets in a bar, then shares a prison cell with
- The Right Hon. Robert Starling - the Prime Minister of the English-Speaking Union
- Captain Loosley - a Population Police officer who distrusts Derek Foxee
- The Right Hon. George Ockham - the new Prime Minister following the entrance into Gusphase
  Choose another writer in this calendar: by name: by birthday from the calendar. TimeSearch | Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) - also called Joseph Kell, original name Jon Anthony Burgess Wilson | |
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English novelist, composer, and critic, whose novels are characterized by verbal inventiveness and social satire. Burgess has also written several biographies. However, the author's first love was music: he composed a number of works before publishing his first books. Among Burgess's best-known novels is A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962). "'What's going to be then, eh?' John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born in Manchester into a Catholic middle-class family. His father was a cashier and pub pianist. After his mother died in the flu pandemic of 1919, he was brought up by a maternal aunt and later by a stepmother. Burgess studied at Xaverian College and Manchester University, where he read English language and literature, graduating in 1940. During World War II Burgess served in the Royal Army Medical corps, leaving the army as a sergeant-major. In 1942 he married Llwela Isherwood Jones, who died of alcoholic cirrhosis in 1968. From 1946 to 1950 Burgess lectured at Birmingham University, he was the Ministry of Education lecturer in phonetics, and taught at Banbury Grammar School. Until 1959 Burgess wrote comparatively little, but primararily studied music composition. His first novel, A VISION OF BATTLEMENT, was completed in 1949 but published in 1965. It was loosely based on the Aeneid and showed the influence of Joyce. THE WORM AND THE RING, which drew on his experiences as a grammar school teacher, was withdrawn and pulped soon after its appearance in 1961 as the result of a libel action. MERSAH MATRUH (1956), a war story published by Digit Books, was set in a North African holiday resort which became the front line town in September, 1940. In 1954 Burgess became an education officer in Malaya and Brunei, and wrote during this time his trilogy TIME FOR A TIGER (1956), THE ENEMY IN THE BLANKET (1958), and BEDS IN THE EAST (1959). Later he said that "Malaya acted as a midwife to a wordly gift that had an inordinately long gestation." The work juxtaposed the progressive disintegration of a hapless British civil servant, Victor Crabbe, against the birth of Malayan independence. At the time of its appearance, the trilogy attracted relatively little attention. After collapsing in classroom at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin College in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, Burgess returned to England. "One day in the classroom I decided that I'd had enough... I just lay down on the floor." Burgess was diagnosed as having a cerebral tumor, and given twelve months to live. Concerned about leaving his wife without means set off a rush of literary activity. Under the too early death sentence Burgess feverishly wrote novels, reviews and he also studied. The doctor's diagnosis was wrong, and the author lived another 33 years, producing over fifty books and hundreds of journalistic pieces. His first wife Lynne proposed the pseudonym Anthony Powell and her second suggestion was Anthony Gilwern. Burgess was the maiden name of John Wilson's mother. He also used the pseudonym Joseph Kell and once reviewed Kell's novel INSIDE MR ENDERBY (1963) for the Yorkshire Post; when the editor sent him the author's novel – Burgess thought it was a practical joke but it wasn't. Burgess himself wrote letters to the editor of the Daily Mail as Mohamed Ali, an outraged Pakistani moralist. In 1959 Burgess devoted himself entirely to writing, living since in Malta, Italy, US, and Monaco. Between the years 1960 and 1964 Burgess wrote eleven novels. THE WANTING SEED (1962) depicted an overpopulated England of the future, caught up in the alternating cycles of libertarianism and totalitarianism. In 1962 his most famous science fiction fable, A Clockwork Orange appeared, which made him famous as a satirical novelist, and which was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in the 1970s. The novel was born from the growth of teenage gangs and the universal application of B.F. Skinner's behavior theories in prisons, asylums, and psychiatric clinics. In 1961 Burgess had also observed the stilyaqi, gangs of young thugs, in Leningrad. A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London and is told in nadsat, a mixture of Russian, English and American slang, gypsy talk and, odd bits of Jacobean prose. Burgess has given at least three explanations for the title of the book. One is that it is a Cockney expression ("as queer as a clockwork orange"), which he overheard in a London pub in 1945. In an essay published in the Listener, Burgess claimed that the title was a pun on the Malay word orang, meaning man. And the third explanation is that the title is a metaphor for "an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton." (prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, 1987) Gary Dexter has suggested in Why Not Catch-21 (2007) that Burgess had misheard in the pub "Chocolate Orange", a part of everyday speech in 1940 London, as "a clockwork orange". Alex, the main character, is a juvenile delinquent, who rapes and kills people with his "droogs" (friends). He is captured, and brainwashed by the Ludovico technique to change his murderous aggressions. As an unexpected side effect of the Pavlovian treatment he starts to hate Beethoven's music, his unspoiled self. The central question of the story is a philosophical one: is an "evil" human being with free will preferable to a "good" citizen without it? The character of Alex, played in the film by Malcolm McDowell, gained cult status. Kubrick later withdrew his film following a moral panic about a copycat killing allegedly performed by a youth wearing the costume of Alex and his droogs. A Clockwork Orange received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay but critics were on the whole furious. Kauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker (January 1, 1972): "Literal-minded in its sex and brutality, Teutonic in its humor, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange might be the work of a strict and exacting German professor who set out to make a porno-violent sci-fi comedy. Is there anything sadder – and ultimately more repellent – than a clean-minded pornographer?... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?" – The original British Heineman edition includes a final chapter that anticipates a future for Alex wherein he chooses a law-abiding life. The American Norton version ends with Alex reverting to his natural, evil self, in the hospital. "But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes the little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal." Burgess returned to the questions of A Clockwork Orange in the humorous novel ENDERBY (1968), which followed the travels of a non-conforming poet in England and the continent. In the sequel, THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT; OR, ENDERBY'S END (1975) the hero, Burgess's alter ego, lived in New York. The book was a merciless assault on American media and academia, and the decline of language. In 1968 Burgess married Liliana Macellari, a translator and daughter of La Contessa Maria Lucrezia Pasi Piani della Pergola. They spent much of their time on the Continent – although he managed to appear frequently on TV chat shows and as a columnist in British newspapers. When he appeared on BBC's Newsnight immediately after the death of author Graham Greene, Burgess could not help talking about himself. In 1970-71 Burgess was a visiting professor at Princeton University, a Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York (1972-72), and a writer-in-residence at the University of New York at Buffalo (1976). He was appointed in 1972 a literary adviser to the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, in 1972. Burgess published in the 1970s and 1980s some thirty books, among them THE EARTHLY POWERS (1980). "I write a thousand words a day," Burgess once said. "At that rate you'll write War and Peace in a year... or very near the entire output of E.M. Forster." The Earthly Powers is considered by many critics Burgess's finest novel. It was narrated by an 81-year-old successful, homosexual writer, Kenneth Toomey, a figure loosely based on W. Somerset Maugham. The novel also had many jokes about other major literary figures. THE KINGDOM OF THE WICKED (1985) takes the first years of Christianity as its subject. Burgess wrote film scripts and several critical studies – he was a specialist in Shakespeare and Joyce. In 1972 he signed a three-year contract as playwright-in-residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre. His musical compositions include symphonies, a ballet, and an opera. Burgess's autobiographies, LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD (1987) and YOU'VE HAD YOUR TIME (1990) reveal a more self-doubting person than the one that was his public image. Burgess's third symphony was performed at the University of Iowa in 1975, and his musical version of Ulyssess, Blooms and Dublin, was performed on radio on the centenary of James Joyce's death.
Selected works:
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