Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange
Choice and free will are necessary to maintain humanity, both individually and communally; without them, man is no longer human but a “clockwork orange”, a mechanical toy, as demonstrated in Anthony Burgess’ novel, “A Clockwork Orange”. 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. Forcing someone to be good is not as important as the act of someone choosing to be good. This element of choice, no matter what the outcome, displays man’s power as an individual.
“A Clockwork Orange” starts with Alex posing the question: “what’s it going to be then, eh?”. Burgess begins the story by demonstrating that Alex and his gang are free to do as they choose. Alex and his “droogs” are rebellious modern youth in an oppressive society. The “droogs” are tempted like all humanity by sin and try to show their hatred for the government with acts of extreme violence. The violent and rebellious behavior is a result of free will, but without the presence of evil, there would be nothing for humanity to choose. Throughout part one of the novel the droogs’ choices often result in violent actions harming innocent people. Examples of their “ultra-violence” are rampant: Alex and his droogs choose to rob and assault a man, Alex rapes young girls, and the droogs rob an old “ptitsa” who later dies from Alex’s assault. As Burgess says : “evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate…Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive”. God gave individuals free will, and they are responsible for their actions. The government has no right to interfere with human nature. A person can choose to be good or evil as Alex tries to demonstrate when he says: “ what I do I do because I like to do”. With this statement, Alex clearly demonstrates that he is responsible for his actions and he chooses to act out against society simply because he likes to, because he is attracted to sin. When Alex and his gang attack F. Alexander and his wife, we again witness horrible acts of violence that are ultimately the result of Alex’s choice. This appalling scene is another example of Alex using his free will and his temptation towards evil.
Evil is not only part of Alex’s life but the government’s as well. Th...
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...at it’s going to be, brothers”. Alex willfully chooses to change his ways; he decides to be productive, and chooses love over sin. He realizes that what he did in the past was wrong, as well as the immorality of his ways. It is through free moral choice that Alex arrives at this conclusion, not through a government technique forcing him to make the “right” decision. As part of the process of maturity, Alex would have likely selected this path naturally. However, the interference of the government and F.Alexander’s interference with Alex’s moral choice ultimately drove him to attempt suicide to escape the evil ways they chose for reform.
Moral choice can lead to violence, but without the risks, there would be nothing for humanity to choose. The government and F.Alexander’s faction control Alex’s free will to justify their own political agenda. They control his ability to choose without realizing that interfering with humanity’s ability to exercise free will is evil. Both the government and F.Alexander’s faction claim to be “the good guys” when they are the true faces of pure evil. One has to remember that evil is a master of disguise. It often hides behind the mask of the hero.
Alexander Stowe is a twin, his brother is Aaron Stowe. Alex is an Unwanted, Aaron is a Wanted, and their parents are Necessaries. Alex is creative in a world where you can’t even see the entire sky, and military is the dream job for everyone and anyone. He should have been eliminated, just like all the unwanteds should have been. He instead comes upon Artimè, where he trains as a magical warrior- after a while. When he was still in basic training, and his friends were not, he got upset, he wants to be the leader, the one everyone looks up to.
To begin, Alex is one out of the four characters that reveals self-awareness broadly. Alex begins by stating, “What’s it going to be then, eh” (Burgess 1). The use of this quote explains to the reader that Alex is not only self-aware of himself, but he is careless, and he is an outlaw. Another quote that Alex states throughout the novel is, “O my brothers” (Burgess 5). “O my brothers” reve...
...ahlquist’s sacrifice highlights Heinlein’s belief, that the same self-sacrificing impulse that Winston had, might facilitate positive social change. Contrastingly, Le Guin highlights the continued anomalies in human morality where society willingly sacrifices its morals to meet selfish needs. Overall, people’s capacity to effect social change is relative to the prevailing social conditions, their ability to impact critical aspects of the prevailing conflict and their capacity to accept self-sacrifice as morally justifiable. Consequently, moral ambiguity prevails.
Many people have different views on the moral subject of good and evil or human nature. It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be. Hobbes and Locke both picture a different scene when they express human nature.
...erson of increasingly reputable morals. Now Alex wants to break away from the group and adopts more the philosophy that “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule” (Neitzsche 90).
This is also often the next step after a severe loss in a family, evolving from the ‘recovery period.’ In the middle of the book, Alex becomes aware of his larger and larger isolation from the rest of his family. From this, he seems to try to change his actions; becoming less agitated and irate, but changing to just becoming focused on solving Caroline’s murder. “It didn’t take long for Tony Nicholson to start talking a blue streak about the club and the blackmail scheme after that. I’d seen it so many times before, the way suspects will start competing with each other once they sense the ground is shifting. To hear him tell it, Mara Kelly had set up the entire back end: Asian underground banking, public key cryptography -- everything they needed to stay out of reach for as long as they had.” (page 210) Alex begins to completely forget about ‘taking out his rage’ or ‘getting revenge’ to just solving his niece’s case and giving the rest of his family some closure. To achieve this, however, Alex slowly begins to seek more and more help from the rest of his family. “You’re going to be just fine, she had said to me. Maybe not quite the same, but still, just fine. You’re a police officer. She was right, of
His youth is characterized as that of a rapist, practitioner of extremely violent acts, and a lover of Beethoven. These three adjectives point out what drives Alex’s actions: emotion. He follows no moral code nor does he even have one. However, he does follow his natural desire to sin, and can thus be described as a clockwork orange in that his actions are controlled by his emotion. We can clearly see how Alex’s inclination to do things that satisfy his emotion are strikingly similar to our desires to d...
From birth, children are dependent on parents for survival and safety. Infants need this attachment in order to survive. Basic needs like shelter and food are things in that all human beings need; but for infants and children, in particular, they cannot survive independently without parents and guidance. Furthermore, as children grow, the parent-child attachment is not just physical, but it is also psychological. Adults who care for children through unconditional love and acceptance, provide positive living environments and self confidence which helps the child grow independently into an adult. Failure in this child-parent relationship in the form of long term neglect or trauma can have consequences in a child’s development physically and psychologically.
If all of these events did not happen, Alex would still be a static character. Through all of his courage, he found what he was looking for. He dug deep and went to the extremes that were not normal of himself. All of his work lead to his dynamic
“Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space” McLeod (2009), as a core component of social and emotional development, the necessity and role of caregivers is a heavily researched area. Theories differ on the impairment that a crippled or complete lack of attachment causes to an infant in terms of social, emotional or intellectual development. These theories range from Harlow’s unethical work with infant rhesus monkeys to Chisholm’s study of Romanian orphans, the work remains relevant however in order to be aware of how to support or setback the deleterious affects that studies appear to be congruent on occur in infants of abuse or that have been abandoned.
Attachment theory is the idea that a child needs to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver. The theory proved that attachment is necessary to ensure successful social and emotional development in an infant. It is critical for this to occur in the child’s early infant years. However, failed to prove that this nurturing can only be given by a mother (Birns, 1999, p. 13). Many aspects of this theory grew out of psychoanalyst, John Bowlby’s research. There are several other factors that needed to be taken into account before the social worker reached a conclusion; such as issues surrounding poverty, social class and temperament. These factors, as well as an explanation of insecure attachment will be further explored in this paper.
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“Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.” (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 1). Vaccines helped humanity for many years in eliminating illnesses that disfigured, disabled and a lot of times took lives away. Children who do not get vaccinated not only risk themselves by being an easy target for diseases they also, harm everyone around them. In the end, today's children are the fuel of the future. Every parent should think carefully before taking any chance that may harm the coming generation.
Preview: This book provides a lengthy indoctrination of the what and why of performance management. This summary will cover both the pragmatic and practical pieces of the text; while excluding some of the specific instruction for those who oversee the overall orchestration of performance management in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to allow its readers to grasp some main themes of performance management and develop a vocabulary for discussion and debate of the topic.
One of the major question that needs to be consider when vaccinating a child, do the risks of the...