“What’s it going to be then, eh?”(Burgess 3). Each part of the book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess begins with the main character Alex asking himself this question. This is Alex’s conscience speaking to him about whether he should make moral or immoral decisions. The book begins with Alex and his Droogs: Pete, Georgie, and Dim going throughout town creating turmoil. This goes on until eventually Alex’s Droogs betray him and Alex ends up going to jail. After two years in, Jail Alex thinks he finds a “Get out of Jail Free” card, when in reality he is used as a guinea pig in what is called Ludovico’s Technique. During this time he is forced to watch horrific killings and raping’s with his favorite Beethoven symphony playing in the background …show more content…
In the first chapter, Alex and his droogs assault an old man, rob a shop, and beat the shop owner and his wife. After all of this is done, Alex says, “Still, the night was still very young”(Burgess 15). This not only implies that their violent acts will continue, but also implies that this is a normal activity for him to partake in. While most kids Alex’s age go to school and do chores for their pee and em, Alex assaults people on a daily basis. Another key moment that highlights Alex’s violent nature is his interaction with F. Alexander and his wife. Alex led his droogs into the country and said, “What we were after now was the old surprise visit”(Burgess 23). A surprise visit is basically Alex breaking into a random house and assaulting whoever is inside. The fact that he has little names like “surprise visit” for his violent act shows how he just rubs off whatever he does as something that doesn’t even matter. Even at the end of the book Alex just rubs his horrific actions off as just being a part of …show more content…
As stated before, Ludovico’s Technique is the governments way of brainwashing the bad to make it impossible for them to do bad anymore. Essentially, it removes the subject’s freedom of moral choice. Alex originally does Ludovico’s Technique because he can go back into society in a mere two weeks. After undergoing the torturous treatment and realizing he no longer has free will, Alex states, “Am I just to be like a clockwork orange? (Burgess 141). This refers to the fact that one cannot just put the workings of a clock into an orange and expect it to work. Once Alex realizes that he can no longer even listen to his beloved Beethoven anymore without feeling sick to the stomach, he goes insane. He eventually tries to snuff it, saying, “Then I got on to the sill, the music blasting away to my left, and I shut my glazzies and felt the cold wind on my listo, then I jumped” (Burgess 188). This proves further that the government cannot force one to be good or evil. Once Ludovico’s Technique is reversed, Alex, by himself, is able to become good and attributes his misbehaving to maturing. This is an important lesson that people are not born perfect, and that people must learn solitarily what is moral and
over evil and needed no treatment to help him do so. It is realized that in being unable to choose, one is not at liberty, and free will is taken away. Also if one has no say whether good or evil is chosen, it is of no importance because such a decision could be made by a machine. Alex was able to make two evolutions. He evolved from a machine into a human, and the evolved from a human choosing evil, to a human choosing good.
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...
Poverty can be a choice or a last resort for many across the globe. The Glass Castle a memoir written by Jeannette Walls, portrays how her family rejected civilization and embraced poverty. I felt Rex Wall’s notion of “sink or swim” (Page 66) portrays the failure and success of having a family. The situation in the Wall’s hopes manifested itself as a Glass Castle, a mysterious glass house the family would hope to build and live in. In order for the family’s dream to succeed, they would have to face many demons on the way. Throughout the book, I protested against some of the choices that were made, but I soon came to an understanding that some people will not change the way they live. I kept on thinking there always a possibility that there is always a cure to a problem, but sometimes there is too little time or understanding on both sides. A common theme that kept on going
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.
The two works suggest that freedom of choice needs to be taken away for the greater good of society. In A Clockwork Orange, social safety and security are the driving forces behind removing freedom from the people, especially Alex, the main character. The start of the movie depicts the struggle of a violent youth that exercises free will in an oppressive but safe and stable society. Alex and his gang, termed droogs, symbolize free will as they attempt to liberate themselves from all government limitations. They indulge in vices shunned by the society such as rape and murder, and bring out the dark side of free will by expressing themselves against a society that encourages safety. Alex’s violent nature makes him a threat and in an attempt to impose order, the government forces Alex to be “transformed out of all recognition” (A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick). T...
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
In the first introduction of music, Alex describes how his parents have learned to “not knock on the wall with complaints… I had taught them. Now they would take sleep-pills” (33) when he plays music loudly, showing the control Alex has manifested over his own parents with music. Alex also plays the Ninth by Ludwin van while raping two girls, as they were forced to “submit to the strange and weird desires of Alexander the Large with, what with the Ninth, were… very demanding” (46). By inevitably connecting classical music to violence, Burgess shows that there is little distinction in importance between the two for Alex, and the two become physically linked after the government’s brainwashing. This suggests that you cannot take Alex’s flaws without simultaneously taking those same elements that make him human. The focus on classical music as a pivot of Alex’s humanity accentuates the sympathy felt for Alex as he is being brainwashed, as the previous poetic love for classical music is replaced with “pain and sickness” as Alex had “forgotten what he shouldn’t have forgotten” (139). Without attempting to condone Alex’s actions, Burgess stresses the notion that humanity is not meant to be erased or forcibly removed, even if it means having to come to terms with the flaws that every person
The main idea is to be yourself, not to change for someone else. In the beginning, Alex lived in Quill, a place where you could be anything but yourself. If you showed creativity in any way shape or form, you had an infraction. At age thirteen, those with infractions were Unwanteds, depending on how serious the infraction. Quill believed that all unwanteds were eliminated in the Great Lake of Boiling Oil- Even the high priestess.When Alex was “eliminated” he was welcomed by Marcus Today, and the world of Artimè, where creativity was embraced and taught- pretty much a polar opposite of Quill. Alex becomes good friends with 3 other Unwanteds, Samheed, Lani, and Meghan. They were all really close- until they all began Magical Warrior training- all except for Alex. Alex pulls away from the others for a while, until eventually he starts training himself. The whole group was really brought back together after the battle with Quill.
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.
Alex is a 15 year-old boy cast into a problematic future society. He is the dominating only child of an ordinary working class family. He attends corrective school during the day and seeks violent pleasures with his droogs during the night. As ...
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
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.
Spirited Away is a Japanese anime movie by Hayao Miyazaki and produced under Studio Ghibli. The film was first released in July of 2001, and became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $274 million dollars worldwide. The film was so successful, it even overtook Titanic (top grossing film at the time) and because the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of $229,607,878. (Johnson, G. A.)
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 ...