In Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange,” the main character Alex is that of an abnormality. The society Alex lives in is a violent one based on what Anthony Burgess faced under a communist government in Russia and the ruthless groups of young delinquents that roamed around Russia and Britain. Through the use of violence in the novel and a rather unusual main character who is an evil protagonist, the novel shows the necessity of evil in human nature, and freedom. When Anthony Burgess lived in Britain, an unfortunate incident occurred in his life, which may contribute to Alex’s violence. He claimed that the kernel for Alex’s brutal behaviour lay in an attack suffered by his first wife Llewela (Lynne) Jones. During the wartime blackout of 1944 London, Lynne was beaten up and robbed by a gang of American soldiers. A similar attack happens in the novel, when a writer’s wife is beaten and raped by Alex and his friends. (Anthonyburgess.org). Burgess …show more content…
A society’s individual liberties such as freedom of speech and expression are crushed.” (Novels for Students 7) According to this quote, it can be seen that evil is indeed a necessity. It is a necessity for the ruling government in a dystopian society. As Alex was introduced the to the Ludovico Technique, he did not know it was an experiment. The government chose Alex because he accidentally killed a prison inmate. However, the government did not want to actually change Alex’s evil nature, they wanted to manipulate everyone under their rule through a brainwashing system. So, this was the main reason Alex was used as an experiment, and when Alex tried a suicide attempt, he regained his evil nature back even after the Ludovico Technique
This itself alludes to America’s extreme response to communism during the Cold War era, under the influence of Senator Joe McCarthy. Similar to the paranoia that characterized the McCarthy era, Orwell’s dystopian society was expected to betray their friends, family and co-workers for the benefit of the state and themselves. This is made explicitly evident during Winston’s visit to the cafe, in which the telescreen sang; “Under the spreading chestnut tree/ I sold you and you sold me…”Foreshadowing Winston’s eventual betrayal of Maria in order to save himself, and his conformity to the party. Furthermore, the notion that “nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres in your skull” becomes ironic as the novel develops in which the criminalisation of unorthodox ideologies leads to the punishment of “thoughtcrime”, and the eventual “vaporisation” of dissidents. This itself alludes to the ‘great purges’ that took place under the terror that characterized Joseph Stalin’s reign. Likewise, the inherent fear of eccentricity amongst the oppressed citizens of “Airstrip one” is highlighted by the nature of “facecrime” in which the presence of an improper expression or any suggestion of abnormality could be punished. Thus, through Orwell 's effective use of allusion and characterisation, contextual audiences are provided with a didactic warning regarding the nature of a totalitarian reign, in which a “hideous ecstasy of fear” influences society’s
chosen to undergo a new “treatment” that the State has developed to “reform” criminals. After the State strips him of his choice to choose between good and evil, Alex can only do good now and even thinking of doing something bad makes him violently ill. Then, Alex is “rehabilitated” considered “rehabilitated”. Afterwards Alex is released where he encounters an “ex-droog” and one of his enemies, they beat him to a pulp and leave him out in the middle of nowhere. After coming to his senses, Alex makes his way to a house and in that house, right before Alex went to prison, h...
Alex seemed to find the love he didn’t get from his parents in his friends. Alex and his friends did a lot of damage to others, but of course they did it as a group. They beat up an old man who asked for change, they fought another group of people, they broke into a house and beat up the old man who lived there, then beat up his wife, killing her, but only after they raped her.
There have been many books published solely on philosophy, and many more than that solely written about human nature, but very infrequently will a book be published that weaves these fields together as well as A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. In this Book Burgess speculated on the fact “the significance of maturing by choice is to gain moral values and freedoms.” He achieved this task by pushing his angsty teenaged character, Alex, through situations that challenge the moral values of himself and his friends. In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, Alex himself, must choose good over evil in order to gain moral values which will allow him to mature into a “man” in the latter of his two transformations.
Anthony Burgess has been heralded as one of the greatest literary geniuses of the twentieth century. Although Burgess has over thirty works of published literature, his most famous is A Clockwork Orange. Burgess’s novel is a futuristic look at a Totalitarian government. The main character, Alex, is an "ultra-violent" thief who has no problem using force against innocent citizens to get what he wants. The beginning of the story takes us through a night in the life of Alex and his Droogs, and details their adventures that occupy their time throughout the night. At fifteen years old, Alex is set up by his Droogs—Pete, Dim, and Georgie—and is convicted of murder and sent to jail. At the Staja or state penitentiary, Alex becomes inmate number 6655321 and spends two years of a sentence of fourteen years there. Alex is then chosen by the government to undergo an experimental new "Ludovico’s Technique." In exchange for his freedom, Alex would partake in this experiment that was to cure him of all the evil inside of him and all that was bad. Alex is given injections and made to watch films of rape, violence, and war and the mixture of these images and the drugs cause him to associate feelings of panic and nausea with violence. He is released after two weeks of the treatment and after a few encounters with past victims finds himself at the home of a radical writer who is strongly opposed to the new treatment the government has subjected him to. Ironically, this writer was also a victim of Alex’s but does not recognize him. This writer believes that this method robs the recipient of freedom of choice and moral decision, therefore depriving him of being a human at all. These themes are played out and developed throughout the entire novel. Alex eventually tries to commit suicide and the State is forced to admit that the therapy was a mistake and they cure him again. The last chapter of the novel which was omitted from the American version and from Stanley Kubrick’s film shows Alex’s realization that he is growing up and out of his ultra-violent ways on his own. He realizes that he wants a wife and son of his own and that he must move up and on in the world.
Free-will is a major part in the actions of this book. “The free will compels him to murder and rape, but also foster his esteem.” (LifeCharts). The opportunity to do as Alex wishes is what makes him to the crimes. It fuels him and in a way allows him to find himself. Alex is all about choices and he chooses to do the crime but also chooses to turn his life around. “Alex realizes that he benefits from living a normal life staying under the radar and it out-weighs the consequences of being a
Simions, Minodora O. "FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN ANTHONY BURGESS’ A CLOCKWORK ORANGE." (2013): 65-68. Web. 21 May 2013.
A Psychological Analysis of Alex in A Clockwork Orange & nbsp; In A Clockwork Orange, Alex is portrayed as two different people living within the same body of mind. As a mischievous child raping the world, he was as seen as filth. His actions and blatant disrespect towards society are categorized under that of the common street bum. However, when he is away from his evening attire. he is that of suave.
Although attacks on A Clockwork Orange are often unwarranted, it is fatuous to defend the novel as nonviolent; in lurid content, its opening chapters are trumped only by wanton killfests like Natural Born Killers. Burgess' Ted Bundy, a teenage Lucifer named Alex, is a far cry from the typical, spray paint-wielding juvenile delinquent. With his band of "droogs," or friends, Alex goes on a rampage of sadistic rape and "ultraviolence." As the tale unfolds, the foursome rob a small shop, beat the proprietor and his wife unconscious and then undress the old woman for kicks (Burgess, A Clockwork Orange 13-14). When the moon climbs to its zenith, they get an ache for "the old surprise visit"(Burgess, Orange 24). Donning masks of Elvis, Disraeli and the like, they storm a writer's home and beat him to a pulp, tear up his cherished manuscript, urinate in the fire place and rape his wife while the author is forced to look on in horror (Burgess, Orange 27-29). The following day, Alex, taking a much needed break from school, lures two ten-year-old girls to his room, gets them drunk and rapes them to a backdrop of Beethoven's Ninth (Burgess, Orange 50-54).
"John (Anthony) Burgess Wilson." DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 11 Mar. 2012.
Amidst a population composed of perfectly conditioned automatons, is a picture of a society that is slowly rotting from within. Alex, the Faustian protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, and a sadistic and depraved gang leader, preys on the weak and the innocent. Although perhaps misguided, his conscientiousness of his evil nature indicates his capacity to understand morality and deny its practice. When society attempts to force goodness upon Alex, he becomes the victim. Through his innovative style, manifested by both the use of original language and satirical structure, British author Anthony Burgess presents in his novella A Clockwork Orange, the moral triumph of free will within the controlling hands of a totalitarian society.
Imagine existing in a world run by sadistic and insane street gangs who reek havoc on innocent civilians, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Anthony Burgess created this world through his novel, A Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess was born in 1917 and died in 1963. A lot of social changes occurred during this period of time, such as: the roaring twenties, prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many more. Burgess not only lived through those changes, but also helped influences some social changes in literature and music. Anthony Burgess was a jack-of-all-trades throughout his 76-year-old life. He was a novelist, composer, children’s book writer, play writer, essayist, critic, and poet. Burgess is most famously known for his controversial novel, A Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess pushed the boundaries of what the “norm” was throughout his lifetime.
Clockwork Orange was an interesting movie to watch and it made the viewer think about the role our government plays in the judicial systems. The main character, Alex DeLarge, was a very violent and narcissistic guy. He and his gang of friends commit unruly acts through the streets of their city and commit all kinds of atrocities; such has gang raping the wife of a political dissident. Looking at the environment Alex was brought up in, it was not surprising that he ended up a violent ego-manic who cared only about himself and his needs, sexual ones at that. Because of this, the murder of a single woman by a phallus-shaped statue, led to Alex being incarcerated. We start to see the main theme while Alex is in prison.
In this novel Alex shows his freedom of choice between good and evil, which is that, his superiority over the innocent and the weak. In the beginning of the novel he chooses to be evil, he shows us that by committing violence act like stealing, raping, and also murdering an innocent person which he got arrested for and put into prison for about 12 years. The amount violence he commits shows his abuse of power and his decisions toward evil. The violent acts that are described in this novel are very graphical and are intended to shock the reader but they also show that the suppression of others is wrong, because it is destructive to the natural rights of humans. Alex consistently chooses evil and violence to show his freedom of choice, ?Now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one . . . then I cracked this veck" pg 7. Alex beats, rapes, and robs the weak and ...
All Alex knew was to be violent due to the failure and lack of family structure, the school system and the law. The lack of these assertive institutions Alex couldn’t properly generate proper moral values and social norms. According to Mead he analyzed that a child gets some sort of understanding of how to act properly by how others act toward the child. Later on in the child’s development he/she learns and understands “the generalized other”, values and cultural rules (textbook). Alex was never pressured into going to school, there is one scene where his mother wakes him and tells him to get ready for school and Alex tells her “he doesn’t feel like going today” and that was the end of it. With Alex missing out on school he never really self-aware and knowledgeable. His family is absent also. Again with Alex telling his mother he doesn’t feel like going to school and his mother just lets it go shows the carelessness of his parents. Alex can pretty much do whatever he wants when he wants. With their lack of parenting he never truly gained proper values and morals and instead he created his own by the morals and values his “droogs” know. He had many run in’s with the police even before he was