Over the years, and still to this day, many prominent figures in society continues to defend the one thing every individual deserves, freedom. Part of our existence and personality is the ability to make our own choices and map out our own journeys through the stages of life. Whether we choose the right or wrong path, we learn valuable lessons either way and this is the way people should live their lives. We would all like to believe that in this day in age, we have free will, but do we really? In different cases, there are external factors that remove our freedoms slyly and as a result, our nature is altered. For example, the government system, the law and family somehow manage to use different techniques to take our freedom on how to think and act and we adapt to the human nature they make us believe in. In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess tells a story of a violent teenager, Alex, who is sentenced to two years in prison after convicted or rape and murder. To reduce his sentence and potentially free jail space, Alex agrees to become an experiment in the new government-made rehabilitation program. During the sessions, various methods are used to strip him of all his freedoms and he is compelled to fall ill at the sight of violence. This program ultimately changes the nature of Alex and forces him to act the way the government wants him to, which potentially keeps him out of prison. In the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, inmates in a mental asylum are forced to conform to the ward’s routine and rules. They are given orders by the power thirsty Nurse Ratched, who runs the ward. She uses several manipulative and vicious methods to hold control over the patients and keep them in the asylum which diminishes the...
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...Are we supposed to be the way we are supposed to be?” Meaning, is there one right way of being human? No, the fact that we can choose our own actions and have our own personal opinions is a huge portion of our personality. And, our personality is what makes us human. Whether it be good or bad, every human deserves their rights to freedom and safety and should have the right to live in society the way they want, not how others want them to.
Works Cited
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. England, Penguin Group, 1972.
Lesson, Ben. “Child Soldier’s story grips Sudbury students.” The Sudbury Star. 14 Apr, 2014. Web. 20 Apr, 2014. < http://www.thesudburystar.com/2014/04/24/child-soldiers-story-grips-sudbury-students>.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Dir. Milos Forman. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield. Warner Home Video. 1975. DVD.
Those who choose to reject the pressures society employs to keep people docile and impressionable are punished. Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a prime example of those perspectives. Nurse Ratched used rules and psychological abuse to chip away at the individualism of her patients and gain power over them. McMurphy showed these oppressed people how to combat their oppressor and think for themselves. He was punished by Ratched, but served as a martyr for freedom and inspired Bromden to reject his imprisonment and escape the institution. However, we are forced to question whether Bromden actually escaped and on top of that, whether or not escape is even possible. The open-endedness of the story leaves the reader to question their individual essence, how they are being affected by their society, and if human beings are able to completely reject society while maintaining their
Imagine the world we are living in today, now imagine a world where we are told who to marry, where to work, who to hate and not to love. It is hard to imagine right, some people even today are living in the world actually have governments that are controlling their everyday life. In literature many writers have given us a view of how life may be like if our rights as citizen and our rights simply as human beings. One day the government may actually find a way to control and brainwash people into beings with no emotions like they have in the book 1984 where they express only hate, because that’s what they have been taught by the party.
With freedom comes a great deal of responsibility which is the major theme of the book, Clockwork Orange. In the book, Alex says, “Nobody will tell me what I get out of this. Tortured in jail, thrown out of my own home by my own parents and their filthy overbearing lodger, beaten by old men and nearly killed by millicents--what is to become of me?” (183). This quote clearly exemplifies the meaning of the book. When people get the privilege to live freely, they have to honor that freedom. Once something is done against the law or the norms of society; there are consequences. Jail is a major role when it comes to settling consequences, and if jail is the punishment being treated like a trash is a given. Connecting this to the book, Alex went to jail because of all his murders he convicted. He was not treated with any respect because he did not deserve it. When Alex learned the hard way that respect is gained he wanted to change his ways, but no one wanted to be part of his life anymore. Not even his parents. Once the freedom is taken away nothing is ever the same, and this is what happened to
Author Ken Kesey effectively reflects on the social climate of the 1960s in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By creating a fictitious mental institution, he creates an accurate and eye-opening mirror image of repressive modern day society. While it’s both a microcosm and exaggeration of modern day society, Kesey stresses society’s obsession with conformity, while demonstrating that those individuals who reject societal pressure and conformity are simply deemed insane. However, Kesey infuses the power of the individual in his portrayal of the charismatic outlaw Randall McMurphy, and proves that it only takes one to defeat the restrictions of a repressive society. McMurphy’s evident superiority among the other patients in the hospital immediately established his power and authority over the other patients.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the idea of what it is like to be free or confined and most importantly on what basis can one define what does freedom stands for, in the view of any individual. One of the novel’s most important feature is that the psych ward, Nurse Ratched, and all the other people looking after the patients in the asylum who are portrayed as tools of “sanity” in the novel are, in fact, insane in their own way. For them the meaning of freedom should be unknown to the patients and they shall be the one confining them to the boundaries of freedom as known by them. This question of what should be the judging aspect of freedom and confinement becomes more relevant with the arrival of Randle McMurphy to the ward, a highly likely gambler who with all the possibility may have faked psychosis and pretended to be mentally unstable to get relocated to the asylum from a work camp. . The most easily noticable themes is that of freedom and confinement discussed through the characters in the novel. Many types of freedoms are addressed ranging from the substantial and concrete to the conscious and implicit. The setting mainly takes place in a mental asylum on a locked ward which curbs the characters’ freedom physically. The characters are constantly pushed and degraded by the antagonist Ms. Ratched which
Very few modern or even classical novels present a psychological tale like that presented in Anthony Burgess's magnum opus and controversial novel, A Clockwork Orange. The novel follows the protagonist and narrator, Alex, who is not a given a surname until the film adaptation. Alex, while the protagonist of the novel, is a violent person up to the second to last chapter of the novel. However, the underlying psychology behind every one of Alex's actions rings true and presents a compelling argument about the nature of free will, violence, and what makes a man human.
These three pieces of literature were written around the time of the Civil war, which was a war fought between the Northern States and the Southern States in America. While the main topic of the Civil War was slavery, that was not the only reason for the hostility. These pieces were written about slavery, all with a completely different perspective. From My Bondage and My Freedom was written by Frederick Douglass. He was an actual slave who learned to read and write, and he wrote this book about his journey as a slave and the hardships he endured. Douglass says in his book that “One cannot easily forget to love freedom…” (345) which displays the feelings that he had toward his slavery. From Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe,
History is taught and perceived in different ways throughout the country, however historians and teachers play a major role in how history is understood. My history teacher made me understand that the African-American slaves suffered adversity in different manners but never explained how their efforts led to a revolution in America. This gap has been filled by David Roediger in his book Seizing freedom where he reminds us of what we have missed in our prominent and scholarly accounts of emancipation and what we might gain by revisiting an era when “profound and unimaginable changes exploded” across the country(p.9). In reference to WEB Du Bois analysis of Civil war as workers strike, David Roediger accounts for the upsurge and
Insanity is a blurred line in the eyes of Ken Kesey. He reveals a hidden microcosm of mental illness, debauchery, and tyranny in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The remarkable account of a con man’s ill-fated journey inside a psychiatric hospital exposes the horrors of troubling malpractices and mistreatments. Through a sane man’s time within a crazy man’s definition of a madhouse, there is exploration and insight for the consequences of submission and aberration from societal norm. While some of the novel’s concerns are now anachronous, some are more vital today than before. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution.
When you act in a way you feel is right and unforced, there is an example of what true freedom is. When Alex is converted into acting only positively, he acts in a way that doesn’t make him feel sick. He is shown all sorts of appalling scenes when taking part in the experiments, which eventually cause him to react in disgust; especially when he hears the music that was being used. After completing Ludovico treatment he is left vulnerable and unable to act freely, locked in this mindset of only acting as a ‘good’
Simions, Minodora O. "FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN ANTHONY BURGESS’ A CLOCKWORK ORANGE." (2013): 65-68. Web. 21 May 2013.
...take away the freedom of thought. It will stay with us until the end of time. Viktor E. Frankl illustrated this in his essay “An Inner Freedom” from the book Man’s Search for Meaning. He stated, “The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not the result of amp influences alone.”
The 2007 movie Freedom Writers gives a voice of hope and peace in a fragile environment where hate and sorrow battle in the life of urban teenagers. This drama film narrates the true story of a new English teacher, Erin Growell, who is designated to work in an inner-city school full of students surround by poverty, violence and youth crime bands. During the beginning of the movie, the teacher struggles to survive her first days at this racially segregated school in which students prejudice her for being white and ignore her authority in the classroom. The teacher encounters the life of students who are hopeless for a better future and attached to a delinquency lifestyle of survival. In addition, she confronts a reality of lack of educational
The film Freedom Writers directed by Richard La Gravenese is an American film based on the story of a dedicated and idealistic teacher named Erin Gruwell, who inspires and teaches her class of belligerent students that there is hope for a life outside gang violence and death. Through unconventional teaching methods and devotion, Erin eventually teaches her pupils to appreciate and desire a proper education. The film itself inquiries into several concepts regarding significant and polemical matters, such as: acceptance, racial conflict, bravery, trust and respect. Perhaps one of the more concentrated concepts of the film, which is not listed above, is the importance and worth of education. This notion is distinctly displayed through the characters of Erin, Erin’s pupils, opposing teachers, Scott and numerous other characters in the film. It is also shown and developed through the usage of specific dialogue, environment, symbolism, and other film techniques.
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.