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Analysis of a clockwork orange
Analysis of a clockwork orange
Analysis of a clockwork orange
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A Clockwork Orange is a book written by Anthony Burgess. It takes place in a somewhat futuristic Britain. The book is written with the point of view of the anti-hero, Alex. Alex is a 16 year old criminal who is involved in rape, violence, murder and robbery throughout the book. The book is divided into three parts, each part with seven chapters (three times seven is twenty-one, the official age of adulthood in Britain, where the book takes place). The first half of the book focuses on Alex’s criminal lifestyle, the second focuses on Alex’s rehabilitation in prison, and the third is based on Alex’s entry back into society.
The novel opens with Alex and his gang (he calls the three members “droogs”), Pete, Georgie, and Dim, at a milk bar. This milk bar is a regular hangout for Alex and his droogs, because the bar serves drug-laced milk. After drinking the spiked milk (Alex proclaims it will make him sharp and ready for violence), the boys assault an old scholar and rob a candy store. They then violently assault an old drunken vagrant with vicious force. Alex tells the reader he is enjoying his usual acts of violence. Alex’s enjoyment is boosted further when he comes across Billy Boy. Billy Boy is another teenager with an equally notorious gang, although they are more brute force and lack the brains Alex and Georgie have. About to rape a young girl with his friends around, Billy Boy sees Alex just before Alex ridicules him and mocks him. Billy Boy gets angry and the two groups break out into conflict. Alex’s group is more prepared and eventually rescues the young girl and scare away Billy Boy and his group. After robbing a store, the boys head out into the country on a stolen car. They stop at a small cottage, where they meet a writer named F. Alexander (very important to the story, in fact), who is writing a novel named “A Clockwork Orange”. Alex is disgusted by the lack of logic in the title, so he rips up the manuscript, disorganizes the house and rapes F. Alexander’s wife with him watching. After heading back to the city and escaping, Alex and his droogs decide they have had enough for one night and Alex retires to his home. After making up an excuse to stay home from school, he is paid a visit from his parole officer, named P.
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.
A hero is considered to be any man noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose;
to read. A Clockwork Orange is an interesting book, to say the least, about a young teenager, named Alex, who has lost his way, so to speak, and commits several serious crimes. These crimes that Alex and his “droogs” commit include: murdering, raping, beat downs, robbery, etc.
A Clockwork Orange is Kubrick’s one of the best works. This film is about the futuristic government state where citizens are estranged and blinded by the ferocious youth culture. Film is exceedingly thought infuriating as well as unsettling. This film is not just not about sex and violence, but it has a deep and psychological notion behind it.
The main character, Alex, is shown as a typical juvenile offender. He is shown in such a comparable manner not because all juvenile offenders are out robbing, rapping, and murdering people (although an argument could be made that today’s offenders are as bad, if not worse), but because he can do such things and feel no remorse until he is caught. His parents provide for him, but only in a financial light. What good is it if his parents don’t get involved in his extracurricular activities. He goes out all night doing wrong, and his parents think he’s out working, c’mon!! In today’s society, many parents are at the source of why a child may start to commit crimes. They are not involved, or in some cases just don’t care enough about their children to teach them the rights and wrongs of society.
Albert Camus has his own toolbox of literary devices when it comes to accentuating the theme of The Stranger, one of them being his unique sense and use of secondary characters. Whether major or minor, every character in the book serves a purpose, and corroborates the theme in some form of fashion. Camus describes his secondary characters as foiling Meursault in one aspect or another, and thus, shining light on Meursault’s characteristics. Whether through close connections like familial relationships (Maman) and friendships (Salamano, Raymond, and Marie), or through bonds as distant as people he briefly converses with (Chaplain), or even so much as complete strangers (Perez and unidentified lady at the restaurant), characters that Meursault encounters foil and therefore, emphasize many aspects of his nature. Furthermore, because Meursault aptly embodies Camus’s ideology of Absurdism, emphasizing Meursault through secondary characteristics simply highlights Camus’ doctrine and theme of the book.
Before they go and start the “ultra-violence” they drink milk that’s laced with drugs which makes Alex’s and his gang’s brutality even more nonchalant. At the beginning of the night the “droogs” beat a homeless man almost to death and right after they start a fight with another gang who are trying to rape a girl. After their fight they take a drive to a well-known author’s house, break in and beat the author almost to death and then raped his wife while singing “Singing in the Rain” and enjoying it. Alex’s victims are targeted because they apparently deserve it in Alex’s eyes. They beat that homeless man almost to death because he couldn’t stand to see a “slob” screaming about absolutely nothing.
The book that I read was called The Stranger written by Albert Camus. The book is globally famous and was translated to many different languages and texts. The original was called L’Étranger which was written in French in 1942. The plot of this story involved a man in his late twenties or early thirties. The man's name is Meursault. In the beginning of the novel, Meursault is notified that his mother had passed away in the nursing home that he occupied her to. Meursault’s income could not afford to take care of his mother any longer; therefore, he put her in a nursing home. Meursault took off of work and went to the nursing home where she passed away to pay his respects and attend the funeral ceremonies. When he arrived at the nursing home, the funeral director brought Meursault to his mother’s coffin. The director asked if he wanted to see her and he quickly replied to keep the coffin shut. Meursault sat in the room and nearly went through an entire pack of cigarettes while blankly watching his mother’s coffin. At the actual funeral, Meursault shows no signs of normal emotion which would normally be induced at such an event.
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...
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.
Existentialism as a mid-20th century philosophical trend introduced the idea of an absolutely free individual into the scheme of modern and postmodern individualism. A Clockwork Orange is a novel that raises a wide range of ethical questions from the definition of free choice and goodness to methods of punishment. Existentialism in the form presented by Jean-Paul Sartre and the German phenomenologists does not provide an ethical nor a psychological perspective to the novel. Applying 'existentialist thought' to Anthony Burgess' work will, however, give understanding of the narrator Alex as a case of a free individual who attempts to construct his world and relate to it authentically. Hence the main issue to be examined is the necessity of self-definition and the extent of its discouragement in Alex's social environment.
The beginning of this book puzzles the reader. It doesn't clearly state the setting and plot in the first chapter; it almost leaves the mood open to how the reader interprets it. In the romance story The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks, the plot then shifts from a nursing home to a small town -- New Bern, North Carolina. It baffles the reader so much that it urges one to read on. The romance of Noah and Allie in this book is so deep and complex that it will bring a tear to the eye of any reader.
Anthony Burgess integrates many social issues today between the Government and People into Clockwork Orange. Many of the issues that Alex faces along with the government are relatable in today’s society. Within the story Anthony Burgess teaches us how people act and how the government works in a more brutal way, The Clockwork Orange expresses this through free-will, maturity and karma, and treatment of people.
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.
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 ...