Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Night Time Is The...Wrong Time
Alex is like a vampire in a few respects. He's a killer, for one. He waxes rhapsodic about blood. And he exists primarily in the nighttime.
We're going to focus on that third fact real quick. Alex and his droogs operate under cover of night—with the exception of the rape of the girls he picks up at the record store, all of Alex's crime are committed in the darkness. In fact, Alex understands the world to be divided into the day-dwellers (the old, the middle class, the boring) and the night-dwellers (the young, the vibrant, the cool).
He understands that people are afraid of the darkness/night—in fact, he thinks they should be afraid:
The devotchka sort of hesitated and then said: "Wait." Then she went off, and my three droogs had got out of the auto quiet and crept up horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now, then I put mine on, then it was only a matter of me putting in the old rooker and undoing the chain, me having softened up this devotchka with my gent's goloss, so that she hadn't shut the door like she should have done, us being strangers of the night. (1.2.15)
At this point you might be rolling your eyes, thinking "You're so obvious, Burgess. Of course these hooligans operate at night—there's nothing new about crime happening at night—it's when crime happens." And you're right.
But Burgess adds a linguistic layer to this darkness/light nighttime/daytime dichotomy. The nadsat that Alex and his droogs speak is also a product of nighttime: they speak a different dialect so they can have privacy. Much like nighttime offers privacy and secrecy, so does nadsat.
But wait—there's more:
"These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulliver and my plott," I said, "that's what it is."
"Quaint," said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, "the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?"
"Odd bits of old rhyming slang," said Dr. Branom, who did not look quite so much like a friend any more. "A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration." (2.6.13-15)
The doctors ferret out the roots of nadsat and determine that it's Slavic-influences. And, in fact, they're right: Alex says "horrorshow" to describe something excellent; the word "excellent" in Russian is "хорошо" (pronounced "xorošo" or "horosho"). He says "starry" for "old"—"old" in Russian is "старый" (pronounced "staryj" or "star-ai-uh").
When this book came out, the Cold War was in full rage, and Western propaganda made a big deal of contrasting democratic "light" with the threat of Soviet "darkness." Everything about Alex and his droogs—from the crimes they commit to the slang they speak, belongs in the "dark/night" side of the spectrum.