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Violence in modern society
Violence and contemporary society
Violence in modern society
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In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess provides many examples relating to the topic of free will. Throughout the novel Burgess makes several attempts to show the importance of free will and many other themes through Alex, the main character. Alex goes through trials and tribulations in his journey through life. From being with his “droogs” in a milkbar to prison to being a guinea pig as they were trying to “cure” him. “Ultimately A Clockwork Orange shows that free will and choice can be harmful and dangerous but is ultimately an inherent part of human beings that cannot be repressed or manipulated for the benefits of the state” (Kolker, 2003).
The setting in this controversial novel is a futuristic society in which violence is acceptable, the youth induce fear into people, and where the government is not acting as it should. “Indeed, despite its reputation, the core of the book is actually a rather earnest religious debate on the fate of the soul in post-war modernity”(luckhurst). In the society where violence dominates everything Alex pays his dues with free will. Free will is the choice that humans have to either be good or evil. Although Burgess expresses the idea that man can not be completely
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good or evil but must have a balance of both in order to create moral choice. Along with free will you must have moral choice. In order to obtain moral choice you must have a balance between good and evil. Ultimately having free will and moral choice proves or distinguishes humans from machines or animals. These two concepts or themes are shown when Alex uses his free will by choosing the path of raping innocent people, robbing, and doing drugs. He chooses the evil path only to be “robbed” of his self control, determination and free will by the government. To choose a moral choice is a decision everyone must make in their life to guide their actions and determine their future. The element of choice, no matter the outcome, displays human’s power as an individual. Free will is very necessary to maintain humanity. Without free will or choice man is no longer human but “A Clockwork Orange.” A clockwork orange is having the appearance of an organism that resembles the color orange. Although they may appear one way in fact they are only toys being wound up by God, the Devil or the State. Burgess describes, “a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil” (pg xiii). If man is “A Clockwork Orange” then he is viewed as a mechanical toy that is controlled by the constant internal fight between good or evil. The novel starts with Alex posing the question, "what's it going to be then, eh?"(Burgess). The author 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 brutal society. Alex and his gang show their hatred for the State by rebelling and performing acts of extreme violence like robbing stores, beating up civilians and etc. The gangs behavior is showing their free will and moral choice. Without the choice to choose between good and evil then humans have no free will or moral choice. Although the government tries to interfere with moral choice, they do not have the right to interfere with humans choice as they choose their path in life. A person can choose to be good or evil. Alex tries to demonstrate that when he says, “what I do I do because I like to do it”(pg 45). Alex shows that he is responsible for his actions as he continues to choose to act out against society just because he likes to. All humans are attracted to sin just like Alex was in the novel. Burgess explains how humans find evil attractive due to the amount we have in the world. We see another example of how Alex chooses the horrible path of violence when Alex and his gang attacks innocent people including the couple in the house. This shows another example of Alex using his free will and his temptation towards evil. He makes these decisions and choices knowing the consequences and willing to live with them. Alex’s life is not the only thing that is evil in this society but also the government. The evil of the government is shown when Alex’s mind is controlled and forced to have no moral choice. The government controls Alex’s free will by means of the Ludovico Technique, which makes Alex physically ill when he even considers thinking about violent thoughts. When Alex is in the “staja” the Governor says,"Common criminals like this unsavoury crowd"--(that meant me, brothers, as well as the others, who were real prestoopnicks and treacherous with it)--"can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that' is all. Full implementation in a year's time. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment. They start murdering each other."(pg 102). The Governor does not understand that criminal intent is not a reaction if being restrained or not, but the result of freedom. The voice of reason in the prison is the prison Chaplain who questions the ethics of tampering with God’s gift of moral choice, “goodness comes from within….goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man”. Through the Chaplin the author is stating that restricting a person’s free will is more evil than a person’s ability to choose evil over good. If man cannot choose his own fate, man is no longer to be human but is exactly like a machine controlled by the government. Alex is not the only one to manipulate people, the government tries to manipulate the world in their attempt to maintain society and their version of utopia.
Although Alex manipulates people, like the chaplin, in believing he is “cured” because he only really cares about himself. William Cho asked, “should the state be able to control the thoughts and actions of people for the sake of elimination crime? If we are not able to think for ourselves and only do good because we are unable to do otherwise, are we actually good, or are we simply a clockwork orange?”. These questions are answered when Alex if forced to go through the treatment. By forcing him into the treatment they are stripping him of his free will therefore he is no longer a human but simply a mechanical
toy. Alex is no longer human and is tortured as his body refuses to act according to his will. J. Harvey states, “Alex chooses to decipher between good and evil before he is brainwashed. Although his choices were generally evil, they still were his free choices to make. The importance of having moral choice is what makes human beings unique”. Some people argue that no one is truly able to express their free will due to restrictions placed upon them by the government. However in A Clockwork Orange the presence of law enforcement is minimal up until Alex’s arrest. As Alex goes through the treatment in prison the doctors describe it as “being made sane” or “becoming healthy”. Instead of making him “sane” they are just stripping away his free will. They are controlling his ability to have a choice in deciding his path of life he wanted to choose. Alex’s love of music and free will were being taken away from him through the treatment. The government limits his moral choice to only good which is truly evil because it tampers with the gift of free will given to humankind by God. Without the ability to have a moral choice and free will, then choices are no longer choices they are just a meaningless gesture. Especially when your decisions do not have any meaning or intention behind them. They become repetitive decisions that do not require any more thinking than needed. People become blind to the actions that they make because it becomes second nature and they become comfortable thinking inside the box. Through the treatment from the doctors, he is made to connects acts of violence with nausea and excruciating pain. The side effects of the treatment does not remove the desire, just the ability to act upon it. Burgess makes this clear near the end of Alex’s treatment. Alex is shown off as a success at the end of his 'rehabilitation'. To prove this to Alex, Dr. Brodsky presents a young woman in a neglige, and Alex's reaction is quick to respond and with deep feelings, “the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I would like to have her right down there on the floor with the old in-out real savage, but skorry as a shot came the sickness...and now the von of lovely perfume that came off her made me want to think of starting to like heave in my keeshkas, so I knew I had to think of some new way of thinking about her before all the pain, thirstiness, and horrible sickness come over me real horrorshow and proper.” (pg 142). As we can see Alex still desperately wants to commit the act of violence, but is made so physically nauseous by the thought of it that he can not. He has been “reformed”to fit into society, “cured” of his deranged behavior, but in the process they have removed what makes him human. Not only can he not commit violence if he wants to, but he is incapable of even defending himself from attacks of any type. This is demonstrated this when the doctor allows a man to beat Alex up brutally and Alex is powerless to even raise a hand to protect himself. Alex discovers that he is no longer able to stand up for himself like he could in his past life. He has been converted into a tool or a mechanical toy just like the chaplin warned him about. Realizing that he is no longer in control of himself and just a vessel for the government Alex tries to reverse the effects by trying to attempt suicide. Due to the failed attempt his free will was restored and thus his humanity. Alex goes back to the streets trying to restore his old self only to realize that he has no interest in the violence anymore. “Alex begins to lose his taste for violence spontaneously, when he sees a happy, normal couple in a cafe, one of whom is a former associate of his” (Darlymple). Alex is beginning to realize that he has choices to make in his life and he needs to grow up. Moral choice has the tendency to lead to violence, but without someone taking the risks needed, there would be nothing for humans to choose. It was through moral choice and free will that Alex came to the conclusion that he did. The government's treatment that forced him to make certain decisions made him want to rebel. Alex realized that his past was wrong and because of maturity he would have naturally selected the right path.
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...
Timshel; meaning “thou mayest”, holds a significant role in East of Eden. It shows that anyone can desire to surmount vile in their hearts and create morality within them self. In the novel, Steinbeck portrays the significance of timshel through the introduction of free will, the internal conflict of Caleb, and the blessing of Adam.
“He has finally learned to love big brother” was how George Orwell in his novel 1984 described Winston, conversion to the party are represented by big brother at the end of the novel. It is easy to believe that at this instance, after torturous reeducation that Winston has endured, he has lost free will and no longer be able to freely choose to love big brother but was forced to, against hiss will. Therefore Winston was never free to love big brother, and in fact not free at all after his “reeducation.” But if we are to accept a definition of free will that stipulates that we are able to produce and act on our own volitions we must accept that Winston has retained and has chosen to love big brother out of his own free will.
In conclusion it is seen that Alex has effectively changed into a man and has become a morally sensitive individual. He, for himself has chosen good
As Madeleine L’Engle aptly said, “because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person,” taking away freedom of choice is equivalent to stripping off humanity. Mankind has evolved to have the ability to use the mind for reason and understanding, which separates humans from beasts and machines. It is this ability that allows man to analyze and formulate different choices, and have the freedom over them. Despite the knowledge that freedom of choice is fundamental in making humans human, social control has always been one of the leading reasons to justify the removal of that freedom. Through showing the need for the loss of freedom for social stability and the resulting problems, both The Unincorporated Man and A Clockwork Orange highlight the conflict between control and freedom.
It concerns violence in the society as an essential social concept in the story that needed to be observed. The man and his boy, however, decide not harm others unless violence is required for their survival. There are many elements to this novel that mean a lot more than it appears to. As it exhibited by the author in the story, the father consciously formed his character and his response to the conflict between self and society when he talks to his son and says, “You,” he reminds the kid, “are no stranger to that feeling, the emptiness and the despair. It is that which we take arms against, is it not?” (Robinson 89). His brave is measured by different social facts such as honesty, tolerance, and optimism to express a personal value and follow an individual goal instead of the opposing with the
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.
About 2 weeks ago my thoughts towards the reality of free will ceased to exist. Everything that I had previously thought did not mean a thing; I was given a new perspective that grasped me almost instantaneously. Robert Blatchford, author of "The delusion of Free Will" provided me with a new perspective that has taken over my thinking on free will. Blatchford states, "the will is not free, and that it is ruled by heredity and environment." All it took, were those words, ...
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.
to live. When he realizes that he is no longer human because of his lack of choice, Alex decides to end his
The modern field of cognitive science combines research from fields such as computer science, psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience in order to study the processes of the mind. Using a framework of representational structures and operational procedures, cognitive science has been able to make significant contributions to the study of cognition and information processing. This interdisciplinary approach has been so successful that its application has been extended to areas like metaphysics, which was once considered to be outside the realm of empirical study; theorists hope that cognitive science may provide insight into questions related to the fundamental nature of existence, such as the debate between free will and determinism.
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.
In the novel A Clockwork Orange, the author Anthony Burgess tells a story about a young man name Alex and his friends, every night they go around and start committing violent acts. In the novel Alex expresses his freedom of choice between good and evil. The freedom of choice is a decision that every person must make throughout his life in order to guide his actions and to take control of his own future. This Freedom of Choice, no matter what the outcome is, displays person power as an individual, and any efforts to control or influence this choice between good and evil will take way the person free will and enslave him. In this novel the author uses this symbolism through imagery. He shows that through the character of Alex, and the first person narrative point of view to prove that without the ability to choose between good and evil person becomes a slave.
And a Clockwork universe is comparing the universe as a mechanical clock, it’s a perfect contraption, but every aspect of it is science controlling it. So, I asked questions after each paragraph about Alex. With Alex being a deviant criminal in the beginning due to his environment which wasn’t his fault for being the way he was to being put through “treatment” that cured him to be a perfect citizen, he still wasn’t fully “cured”. Once Alex was put into the real world he became the perfect victim, and he was put through horrific acts just like he used to do to his victims and tried to commit suicide. With jumping out a window Alex’s new conditioning isn’t a thing anymore, he doesn’t get ill when subjected to violence and is able to listen to his favorite song by Beethoven without getting sick also. Once Alex figures out that he doesn’t get violently ill when subjected to these things government officials apologize to him and compensate him for their fault. The camera pans out and Alex just smirks at the camera, so will he learn from this experience and learn new ways to cope with violence or was it all a waste and goes back to his