The choice between good and evil is a decision every man must make
throughout his life in order to guide his actions and control his future.
This element of choice, no matter what the outcome, displays man's power as
an individual. Any efforts to control or influence this choice between
good and evil will in turn govern man's free will and enslave him. In the
novel A Clockwork Orange, the author uses symbolism through imagery, the
characterization of Alex, and the first person narrative point of view to
prove that without the ability to choose between good and evil, Man becomes
a slave.
The symbolism through imagery proves how Alex's ability to choose
between good and evil is his ascendancy over the innocent and the weak.
The first symbol is the music to which he listens and loves. It is the
only thing in Alex's life that he truly cares for. This music represents
the element of his choice and free will. When his ability of choice is
robbed in an attempt to better him, he loses his love for music in which he
exclaims, "And all the time the music got more and more gromky, like it
was all a deliberate torture, O my brothers . . . then I jumped"(131).
The music that represents his freedom to choose is now gone. He is left
without any reason to live. When he realizes that he is no longer a man
because of his absence of choice, Alex decides to end his life. The author
illustrates through Alex's violent actions, how they represent his abuse of
power through his freedom of choice. Alex...
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...al power. The demonstration of his free will and his loss of power
through the absence of choice is effectively accomplished through the use
of first person narration.
Throughout this story, choice has proven many aspects of power and
it's abuse. Through strong symbols in imagery, Alex's characterization,
and his point of view, the absence of choice is proven as the most
debilitating and most overlooked depravation of man's individual power. In
everyone's life, the struggle for power exists in all situations. The
decision between good and evil is the power that anyone must have as an
individual. The choice of which path to take is dependant on the person
and the situation, but the realization that both exist is a power unto
itself.
There are many books that have been banned or challenged, but the one that is being presented in this paper is Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. The topic of this paper is to inform you of many things and when you have finished it will have you leaving asking yourself one question. First, a summary of A Clockwork Orange will be shared with you, so that you can have an insight as to how the rest of the paper relates to the book. Second, you will find out where, why and when the book was banned and/or challenged and you will discover what the book contains that would “offend” people. Finally, you will discover the literary merit of this book, which means you will discover if is a work of quality.
Carver, Raymond. "Cathedral." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 1052-1062.
The narrator’s prejudice makes him emotionally blind. His inability to see past Robert’s disability stops him from seeing the reality of any relationship or person in the story. And while he admits some things are simply beyond his understanding, he is unaware he is so completely blind to the reality of the world.
Vision is something many people take for granted every day. Society only deals with the matter of being blind if they are the less fortunate ones. According to the Braille Institute, "every seven minutes a person in the United States loses their sight, often as part of the aging process" (1). Only two percent of legally blind people use a guide dog and thirty-five percent use a white cane. Blindness can be caused from various different types of things including (in order) age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related cataracts. (Braille 1). However being blind does not mean a person is in total darkness. Some people can see lights and the shapes of objects, but the most import thing is for family and friends to provide hope and encouragement. The last thing a person who has lost their sight wants is to lose their family and support, which will led to loneliness. Likewise, in the short story "Cathedral," by Raymond Carver's, blindness is the key element in the story and shows in detail how the characters manage it. The theme Carver conveys in the short story is being able to see without sight and is revealed through the characters, tone and plot of the story.
The film, “A Clockwork Orange,” is, to me, an almost exact replica of today’s society. Basically, one kid, who seems to have come from a financially sound home and community, goes through about three stages--1. He violates the laws society has set forth to maintain order. 2. He is caught and punished for his crimes against society. 3. He feels remorse for his violence and sexually deviance (although, at the end of the film, he’s back to his old, delinquent self).
Knowing whether or not man is free involves knowing whether he can have a master ... For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil." You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all-powerful.3
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” (Eleanor Roosevelt). This is just one of the infinite examples of how human nature has been explored by so many different people. Each and every human is born with the capability of making their own choices. The decisions that they will make in the future will determine how evil they are viewed by others. Although one’s nature and nurture do affect their life, it is their own free will that determines whether or not they are evil.
This debate has produced two familiar interpretations of the Second Amendment. Advocates of stricter gun control laws have tended to stress that the amendment’s militia clause guarantees nothing to the individual and that it only protects the states’ rights to be able to maintain organized military units. These people argue that the Second Amendment was merely used to place the states’ organized military forces beyond the federal government’s power to be able to disarm them. This would guarantee that the states would always have sufficient force at their command to abolish federal restraints on their rights and to resist by arms if necessary. T...
after his girlfriend becomes brain dead. His time for childhood is over, and he struggles with
After dinner the husband continues to test Robert and ask him if he would like some marijuana. The narrator is surprised when Robert accepts his offer to smoke. His first smoke was a little awkward because the narrator had to explain to Robert how to smoke it. After a couple puffs, the narrator is impressed on how well Robert smoked the marijuana. This is when the husband starts to see Robert as a person and not a blind man; he is starting to relate to Robert a little bit.
A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. Depicts the life of Alex, a young sociopathic delinquent who lives a life of crime set in a dystopian future. Faced with betrayal by his co-conspirators Alex is sentenced for the accidental murder of one of his victims. Whilst in prison, Alex is selected as a guinea pig for the trial of a new drug that ‘cures’ users of their ultraviolence. Alex, after his release, is still haunted by his past and soon inherits a key role in the politics of his own country. Kubrick explores the theme of freedom through the characterisation of Alex throughout the film and uses various cinematic techniques to achieve this. The film depicts freedom in terms of Alex in three various stages. Before,
"look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstances. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await" (Emerson 1653). Emerson is stating how everything can be a poem and a poet can reflect on valuable resources like nature to draw on and write. Whitman clearly uses this guide in order to write his poetry. He agrees that nature is a valuable tool.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
Good, is portrayed by God, and evil seems to be what fate has in store for the
“Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, the protagonist, Alex is faced with many opportunities to make choices. Although the majority of Alex’s choices are bad, they are still choices. Alex’s freedom of choice is ripped from him when he becomes the subject of an experiment that forces him to make good choices, however, he is still the same bad person even through this control mechanism. It is only when he is presented with the freedom of choice again, that he becomes a good person, is truly cured.