The American version has twenty chapters, but Burgess wrote twenty-one chapters for the book. Why was it published with only twenty?
According to Burgess, his New York publisher felt that "My twenty-first chapter was a sellout…It was bland, and it showed a Pelagian unwillingness to accept that a human being could be a model of unregenerable evil."
The American version ends with Alex's deconditioning. The British version reveals that Alex 'grows up' and decides to change his evil ways and look for a wife.
The author feels strongly about the last chapter and comments, "When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable."
Although Burgess is not a fan of the movie, he does agree that it popularized the book, and there is no doubt that book sales increased because of it. Kubrick said the story is a running lecture on free will.
