One of the more
interesting subjects concerning A Clockwork Orange, and one that is most often
ignored by even the most
crazed fans, is its
title. There are many
interpretations of it, and
Anthony Burgess' is good, but
involved:
"...I do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil."
Burgess describes the term's origin:
"...I don't think I have to remind readers what the title means. Clockwork oranges don't exist, except in the speech of old Londoners. The image was a bizarre one always used for a bizarre thing. 'He is as queer as a clockwork orange' meant he was queer to the limit of queerness. It did not primarily denote homosexuality, though a queer, before restrictive legislature came in, was the term used for a member of the inverted fraternity. Europeans who translated the title as Arancia a Orologeria or Orange Mécanique could not understand its Cockney resonance and they assumed that it meant a hand grenade, a cheaper kind of explosive pineapple. I mean it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness."
With that in mind, the most widely accepted simplistic explanation is that the title is simply an adaptation of the phrase "a clockwork orang" ("orang" is French for monkey), which has long been used to describe mankind. Feel free to impress anyone who has even the slightest bit of literary knowledge with this little tidbit (they'll think you're like a scholar, or something).