Anthony Burgess wrote a few sci fi books over the span of his life. Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers being the most popular. Clockwork Orange was later adapted to a movie in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. Burgess hated the movie adaptation because it wasn’t exactly what he pictured and felt it was very dramatic. Even if Kubrick followed the plot, his visions were colorful and sexual escapade brought to life. In a futuristic London, similar to the 1960’s, that is heavily based around sex, a charismatic hoodlum named Alex is the 15 year old leader of a gang of “droogs”. His main interests are rape, Beethoven and ultraviolence. In the night Alex and his 3 droogs go to the Korova Milkbar and have laced drinks to prepare to torment civilians for kicks. After one particular night of torments, Alex get caught after his droogies turn him in. Alex is sent to prison but is given the opportunity to be released early if he …show more content…
The title itself shows this theme. A writer in the story writes a book called Clockwork Orange and explains to Alex that all humans are like oranges, full of juice and vibrancy and the ability to live in fulfillment; yet some people become like machines. Clockwork, being something that happens over and over. At another point in the story the Minister claims to be against the experiments saying, “If you take away a man’s ability to choose, he ceases to be a man.” In layman's terms, The message of the story is that all people have the ability to become machine like and that we have to essentially work to stay human. It deals quite a bit with our human nature and how we treat others as a correlation to our own dark urges. Along with these dark urges I believe the book looks at Freud’s 3 personality traits, the ego, the ID, and the superego. I think this because all three are shown in Alex’s character over his
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.
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...
Human beings love to be entertained. We love being interested in the things we like, and intrigued by the things we’re not supposed to like. Whether it be someone else’s pain or another person’s joy, all of us hold the capability of finding entertainment within anything. Thus, contrasting the capability of boredom. However, the point of all this is to express the duality. The duality between good and evil; joy and pain; entertainment and boredom. It’s an inevitable fact that we humans have the freedom of choice, but without detailed studies and thorough research, those effects are a mystery. In the film A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick, the main protagonist had an evil mind and committed evil acts. After being imprisoned, he submitted to a behavior modification experiment in order to shorten his sentence. The experiment was based on the Pavlovian study of conditioning. The researchers had Alex, the main protagonist, constantly
It can be argued that at the end of the Second World War, arts were the first that began to feel the sense of liberalisation that society will later experience. In 1951 the British Censor Board introduced the X rating which dealt directly with films that were not “merely sordid films dealing with unpleasant subjects, but films which while, not being suitable for children, are good adult entertainment films which appeal to an intelligent public”. This was also the way in which the board perceived A Clockwork Orange. However, at the beginning of the 1960s, this sense of post war liberalisation received a strong backlash and began raising questions regarding the direction in which art was going. These questions started be asked more frequently and by the time A Clockwork Orange was released, they managed to shed a negative light on the ideas presented in the movie.
The picture opens to a close up of an eye with a peculiar long eyelash. The camera fades back onto the face of a young gentlemen, he begins to narrate: "There was me, that is Alex. And my three droogs (friends), that is Pete, Georgy and Dim. And we sat at the karuba milk bar trying to make up our plans for the evening…"
The Clockwork Orange unfolds in the streets of a dark, mysterious, futuristic city. Alex, the 15 year old leader of a violent gang that goes on a rampage involving: mugging, a convenience store robbery, a rival gang fight, grand theft auto, gang rapes, vandalism, and arson. Alex who entice himself with all these violent acts eventually gets jailed for his crimes. Alex will undergo in a "reform" treatment called Ludovico's Technique. A behavioral-brainwashing procedure involving certain types of elements to his learning, the treatment would last roughly two weeks, after which the criminal is to be completely unable to even think of committing crime either so complete one. Alex will change his way of life and will currently try to live a “normal life.”
	It is fascinating to consider that Burgess may have written A Clockwork Orange as a prophetic view of warning to future societies. He was a peaceful person who didn’t want the stark consequences of the fictional Alex to become a grim reality. Through the first of three parts in the novel Burgess displays Alex as the embodiment of all that society would like to ignore or eliminate - but can’t. This first person narrative is told by Alex a youth of fifteen, who spends his nights with his "droogs", terrorizing the public with their bits of "ultra violence" and engaging in the old "in-out in-out". He beats the elderly, fights other gangs with his "britva", robs stores, breaks into houses, rapes young girls, drinks milk laced with drugs (moloko) and is eventually convicted of murder. Burgess portrays the immature Alex, as a mixture of good and evil possibilities with evil taking the upper hand. As the reader is taken deeper into Alex’s morbidly exciting world, he/she begins to feel complete hatred towards Alex. Not only does Burgess permit Alex to commit such heinous crimes, he describes them in a very disturbing manner.
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.
"John (Anthony) Burgess Wilson." DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 11 Mar. 2012.
It shows the need for people to conform to societal expectations to survive and thrive in society. It also shows the consequences of going against those expectations to purse matters of the heart, whether that is helping a condemned man or trying to keep your family from being taken away. Fighting these societal expectations puts a target on these people’s backs, which is why so many people decide to just succumb to these expectations, which is much easier on these
According to Freud the id, superego, and ego are the three parts of the human personality. Jack a character in Lord of the Flies by William Golding is only capable of accessing his id. The id is the wild and untamed side of man, while the ego and superego are the critical and organized sides of man. He has no sense of rules or others and is only focused on self- satisfaction when he hunts his “laughter [becomes] a bloodthirsty snarling”(Golding 4.33). His id takes him over making him wild, and savage, making him numb to his superego and ego. He has no remorse for other people Jack the leader of his own tribe “got angry” and had his members “tie Wilfred up” and left him there in the sun “for hours”(Golding 10.356). He got angry with Wilfred,
Psychoanalytic Theory itself has, what seems to be, two contradictory halves: Freudian psychoanalysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The first half focuses solely on the author and the unconscious mind; the second considers the unconscious, but prefers to concentrate on outside influences by deconstructing the text itself. According to Freud, interpretation is achieved by examining conflicts and symbols, such as Freudian slips and dream images. These outlets are help to determine whether an individual’s external behavior coincides (or conflicts) with their internal emotion. Freud placed emphasis on sexuality and the Oedipus complex, which is the idea of repressed sexual feelings toward a parent of opposite sex. He also defined three levels of the subconscious mind: the ego, the super-ego, and the id. Barry explains that the stages align with “the consciousness, the conscience, and the unconscious” respectively (93). On the other hand, Lacan, a follower of Freud, concentrated on the relationship between an author and his or her work. He claimed the two were inexorably connected, that objectivity is nonexistent. In an essence: an author’s personality is used to interpret the text and, in contrast, the text is used to gain insight about the author. Regardless of the emphasis, psychoanalytic criticism engages an
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 ...