Literary Devices in The Wanting Seed
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
It isn't too hard to pinpoint the setting of The Wanting Seed, because even though some boundary limits have been altered, the place is still recognizably England. Specifically, Beatrice-Joanna and...
Narrator Point of View
The Wanting Seed makes use of a pretty standard Third Person Omniscient point of view, with a narrative voice that not only describes what's going on, but also offers extra contextual information w...
Genre
When we say that The Wanting Seed is a comedy, we don't mean like funny, ha ha; instead, we're thinking of the conventions of comedies like William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Much Ado About No...
Tone
No question about it: Anthony Burgess sets out to ruffle some feathers in The Wanting Seed, and the novel's tone ranges from gently satirical to full-on caustic. Take a gander at one of the novel's...
Writing Style
Even we here at Shmoop have to reach for the dictionary as we read through The Wanting Seed. Anthony Burgess uses so many high falutin' words that the novel may as well be a love letter to the Quee...
What's Up With the Title?
Anthony Burgess does us a favor and tells us straight out what the title is about: it comes from the refrain of an old English folk song called "The Wanton Seed." If you've ever heard the old-timey...
What's Up With the Ending?
Given the sea's symbolic significance in The Wanting Seed, it's no surprise that the novel's final section stages Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram's happy reunion at the seashore. In fact, in the very...
Tough-o-Meter
Unlike Anthony Burgess's better-known novel A Clockwork Orange, The Wanting Seed isn't full of strange futuristic slang and lingo. Instead, Burgess flexes some powerful proper-English muscles here,...
Plot Analysis
A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad DayBeatrice-Joanna and Tristram try to get through a day that starts with the death of their son, and ends with police brutality, "accidental" impregnation,...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
It'd be a big understatement to say that the heroes of The Wanting Seed start out in a state of darkness and confusion. Not only do Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram live in a grim dystopian society, th...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
The First Act of The Wanting Seed runs through Parts One and Two. By the time it draws to a close, Beatrice-Joanna is illegally pregnant and fleeing towards Northern Province, and Tristram has been...
Trivia
In May 1963, Anthony Burgess was fired from his job as the fiction reviewer at the Yorkshire Post, for publishing a review of one of his own (pseudonymous) novels. That's a pretty bold move, especi...
Steaminess Rating
Folks, there's a lot of sex in this novel, and a whole whack of it goes on in the open fields of rural England. Anytime you have local villagers skipping through the pastures singing "Apples be rip...
Allusions
T.S. Eliot (1.3.4)William Shakespeare (2.7.2)François Rabelais (5.4.10)Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1.9.14)James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1.12.7)John...