66 pages • 2 hours read
Anthony BurgessA Clockwork Orange
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Free Will as Essential to Humanity
A Clockwork Orange lends itself to an examination of morality and amorality. The protagonist and antihero, Alex, revels in his criminality and violence, and he appears incapable of empathy though he clearly understands that what he does is wrong in the eyes of civilized society. As he himself admits, “you can’t run a country with every chelloveck comporting himself in my manner of the night” (46). In Part 1, Alex operates with a jubilant amorality, gratifying his every violent impulse and sexual whim. Eventually, however, his arrogance—and, ironically, his fastidiousness about manners and music—leads to his downfall, and Parts 2 and 3 turn Alex into a victim. He is chemically forced and mentally conditioned to make moral choices, which are, of course, not moral choices at all. Ludovico’s Technique robs Alex of what one might call a soul: Alex cannot make true moral choices—or become a fully realized human being—without the ability to exercise his free will.
Alex’s amorality does not come out of nowhere. As suggested elsewhere in this guide, the roots of Alex’s violent behavior and desire for instant gratification are grown from the soil of modern society. So-called civilized society nearly destroyed itself through two world wars, the media glorifies violence and criminality, and the forces of capitalism encourage rampant consumption as the answer to any and all spiritual yearnings. Alex points out the inherent hypocrisy in those who wish to understand—and, inevitably, control—people like him: “But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop?” (46-47). Alex understands the sociohistorical underpinnings of his behavior, his malignant role in modern society, and the role that the authorities are compelled to play. He states that badness is an outgrowth of self-actualization and self-expression:
More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. (47)
Moreover, Alex believes his anarchy is heroic in the face of the authoritarian establishment: “And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?” (47). The author foreshadows the destruction of the self via dismantling free will—the powers that be “cannot allow the self”—and Alex’s fight to save himself from becoming a cog in those autocratic machines.
Prison is the first step toward stripping Alex of his ability to make choices and decisions for himself—as well as the first peeling away of his humanity. Here, he is known as 6655321, not Alex; he is a mere number, not a person. He eagerly volunteers for Dr. Brodsky’s treatments as a way to barter for his freedom, though the chaplain warns Alex of the costs: “The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man” (96). In the absence of free will, Alex will lose not only the freedom of choice but his very humanity. Later, once it becomes clear that Alex will undergo Ludovico’s Technique, the chaplain is even more pessimistic and blunt:
“It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321,” he tells Alex. “It may be horrible to be good. [. . .] What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed on him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.” (109-10)
The erasure of Alex’s free will may ultimately be more immoral than his previous participation in violent assaults and criminal activities. This is especially true from Alex’s amoral point of view: he feels he is fulfilling a necessary role in society and that his antisocial tendencies and anarchic behavior are an antidote to the faceless institutions of authoritarian control. It is as if Anthony Burgess anticipates the antiestablishment, drug-addled, and ultraviolent appeal of punk bands like the Sex Pistols.
After Dr. Brodsky and his crew complete the process of “curing” Alex, they release him with virtually nothing, back into a society where nobody believes in his reformation and where he is essentially defenseless. Without free will, Alex has become even less of a human being than when he was just a number in prison. The writer F. Alexander knows this well: “They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good” (180). Free will and humanity are inextricably linked, and wicked Alex has been transformed into an object of pity to serve others’ ends. He is no longer Alex, the proud leader of horrorshow droogs. He is a product of the State, an example of their power and control, and he soon becomes a political pawn in F. Alexander’s attempt to oust the current Government.
Ultimately, Alex is returned to himself, “cured” of the “cure” offered to him by the State and its minions. What does he do with this opportunity? He returns to the scenes of his greatest triumphs, his glory days of violence, sex, and theft. Yet, in the aftermath of his imprisonment and indoctrination, Alex starts to yearn for more: a wife and family, a place of his own, and some peace of mind. He also acknowledges that the vagaries of youth eventually dissipate. One could argue that in the book’s conclusion, Alex finally yearns to make better choices with his hard-won humanity.
Ultraviolence and the Appeal of Spectacle
The role of violence in this novel cannot be understated. From attacking passersby to calculated plans to invade homes and the use of rape as a means of self-aggrandizement, Alex and his droogs commit all manner of ultraviolent acts. Often, this violence is celebrated rather than condemned, gleefully committed without remorse. (Watching the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, one gets the sense that this message—violence is a glorious spectacle—was fully received.) The author’s interest is not in excoriating Alex for his acts; in fact, he seems to genuinely like, or at least care for, his delinquent, antiheroic protagonist. Rather, he is interested in understanding the root causes of such antisocial acts, as well as the ways society and the State hypocritically condemn and commend wayward youths such as Alex. Violence is also examined as a spectacle, another symbol—or symptom—of the post-war modern society.
Ironically, boredom is often the catalyst for violence. In the first pages of the book, Alex and his gang are just hanging out in the milkbar, waiting for the evening to start. When the spiked milk begins to take hold, Alex’s restlessness boils over, and he urges his droogs to leave the bar, “just to keep walking [. . .] and viddy what turns up” (7). Alex is aimless; he has no specific plan. He simply wants to expend his drug-fueled energy in senseless acts of violence. Near the end of the book, the impetus for violence remains the same, though Alex grows bored even of this ultraviolence. He once again urges his droogs, “Out out out out out” of the milkbar (208) and feels the malaise of his pointless existence take hold: “But somehow, my brothers, I felt very bored and a bit hopeless, and I had been feeling that a lot these days” (208). To make himself feel better, he punches a drunken man in the stomach. Another underlying pretext for violence is the confusing pace of change that leaves the lower classes alienated, disenfranchised, and dislocated. Alex lives in the deteriorating, graffiti-riddled public housing. The future is frightening, not liberating, and anger toward the authorities festers as a result. In this sense, violence is the anarchic expression of wayward, lower-class youths.
Yet there is also the underlying sense that Alex’s violent crime sprees are the expression of an antiauthoritarian stance. For example, after being questioned by the police about the convenience store heist (wherein the old ladies at the pub provide a false alibi), Alex is disappointed that nothing comes of it. “I couldn’t help a bit of disappointment,” he thinks, “at things as they were those days. Nothing to fight against really” (16). He is spoiling for an altercation with authority, which he will—to his detriment—eventually get. His various encounters with the cops certainly culminate in violence—against Alex himself, as well as against the police. As an excuse for savagely beating Alex after the botched home invasion, the police suggest Alex initiated the brutal response: “‘Violence makes violence,’ said the top millicent in a very holy type goloss. ‘He resisted his lawful arrest’” (80). What the officer says is true, though not in the way he intends: The police officers’ authoritarian violence engenders violence in those that seek to defy them. It is also notable that Alex appears to harbor special contempt for scholars and writers; this is another kind of authority—authorial, intellectual—against which Alex rebels. Attacking the man with the rare tomes and invading the home of F. Alexander, author of A Clockwork Orange, are ways of committing violence against the written word.
Violence is also presented as a spectacle, a performative act. For example, Alex and his gang flatter the old ladies drinking at the Duke of York in order to secure an alibi for their future criminal activity. They bribe them with drinks and sweet-talk them into becoming allies—all for show. When they commit their crimes, the gang all don masks in another performative act (especially given that one mask is of Elvis Presley). When they come across the rival gang commandeered by Billyboy, the ensuing fight reads like a scene from West Side Story, choreographed and creative:
Dim had a real horrorshow length of oozy or chain round his waist [. . .] and he unwound this and began to swing it beautiful in the eyes or glazzies. [. . .] I for my own part had a fine starry horrorshow cut-throat britva which, at that time, I could flash and shine artistic. (20)
Additionally, there is always a soundtrack playing in Alex’s head during these violent activities. When Alex undergoes his first session at Dr. Brodsky’s treatment facility, he at first enjoys the violent imagery and notes the enhancement that theatricality provides to the violence: “Then there was this close-up of this beaten-up starry veck, and the krovvy flowed beautiful red. It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen” (118). Significantly, the core methodology of Ludovico’s Technique involves showing gruesome films in a theater-like space. Later, when the treatments are complete, Alex himself becomes the violent spectacle, as the voyeurs from the prison and the government watch him be beaten underneath an actual spotlight. When the half-naked woman is trotted out to provide proof that his sexually violent impulses have also been brought under control, Alex tries to avoid his sickness by performing chivalry: “‘Let me like be your true knight,’ and down I went again on the old knees, bowing and like scraping” (147). The “cure” will not allow his mind to return to thoughts of rape; instead, he is forced to play the gallant knight.
When violence is not being employed to fend off boredom or to fight back against authority, it is explicitly transformed into an entertaining, albeit horrific, spectacle. Like the husband forced to watch Alex and his accomplices gang rape his wife, the reader is forced to endure the violent spectacles performed by both the lawless youths who engage in senseless violence and the authorities—the State, the police, the doctors—who sanction violence to serve their own ends.
The Limits of Authority
Alongside violence, the issues of State control and the authoritarian exercise of power impact Alex’s story most specifically. In the wake of a world war that precipitated vast social change and rapidly advancing technology, the State—always ominously capitalized within the novel—struggles in its transition to humane and just authority during peacetime. While the disaffected youth find outlets for expression in drugs, sex, and violence, those in positions of power try ever harder to maintain control, stave off change, and conserve the old ways. Alex harbors a special contempt for older veterans who imbibe too much alcohol and pronounce their patriotic and nostalgic views of town and country. Alex has no loyalty to a State that has nothing but derision and condescension for him—not to mention cowardly fear of his propensity toward violence. In fact, Alex becomes the victim of collusion between a burgeoning fascist State and its partners in pseudoscience, capitalist imperatives, and weakened, outmoded forms of organized religion. The limits of authority are everywhere visible: Alex’s parents seem oddly passive, the school carries no weight with the likes of Alex and his droogs, and the State can only exercise control through cruel and unusual punishments. With this, Alex must change from within if he is to change at all.
Notably, the reader first encounters Alex in all his free and feral glory with no consequences for his actions and no authorities to exercise control. The next morning, when Alex decides not to go to school—this is solely his decision, not one that can be vetoed by his passive parents—he is visited by P.R. Deltoid, his “Post-Corrective Advisor” (43), something akin to a parole officer and truant official rolled into one. Deltoid’s voice drips with contempt when he speaks with “little Alex,” as he calls him several times. He threatens him specifically: “Just watch it, that’s all, yes. We know more than you think, little Alex” (45). Deltoid’s frustration with Alex’s unreformed ways boils over, and he complains about young people’s behavior in general, using Alex as their representative. Their refusal to bow to his authority enrages him. Later, Deltoid expresses the highest form of contempt he can muster after Alex is finally captured by the police authorities: “He came nearer and he spat. He spat. He spat full in my litso and then wiped his wet spitty rot with the back of his rooker” (80). This is the man who is tasked with helping rehabilitate Alex. His tenure earns another failing grade for the State.
Next, Alex is in the hands of the State as represented by Staja (or State Jail). He has been sentenced to 14 years in Staja, a jail with overcrowded and inhumane conditions. He is no longer Alex; rather, he is a mere number: 6655321. This is reminiscent of World War II when numbers were tattooed on the arms of the Jews interned (and slaughtered) in concentration camps run by Nazis. Thus, the author associates the British State with Nazi rule, drawing a specific link to fascist control. The prison itself simmers with barely contained violence, and its wards are subject to appalling conditions: “Now what I want you to know is that this cell was intended for only three when it was built, but there were six of us there, all jammed together sweaty and tight,” Alex informs his audience (97). Shortly thereafter, the authorities crowd in another man, who is clearly distressed. In addition, the cells are “a dirty, cally disgrace” and the food is “horrible” (97). The warden expresses no concern about any of this, as he believes this kind of treatment is justified: “it’s going to get worse, not better. A right dirty criminal world you lot are trying to build” (98). Still, the warden cannot prevent Alex from beating the new prisoner to death, nor can he thwart the collusion between the criminals held in the Staja. Indeed, the jail itself is a breeding ground for new criminals and the execution of new criminal acts.
Alex is then sent to Dr. Brodsky, who performs State-sponsored experimental treatment. The horrors to which Alex is subjected—scenes of rape, torture, concentration camps, and war—are so “very real” that he cannot quite believe that the State has sanctioned the making of these films (119). But the real horror, at least from Alex’s perspective, is the lasting effects of Ludovico’s Technique: Alex is no longer capable of exercising free will, making his own choices, or defending himself against attack. In the eyes of the State, he is reformed because he was neutered of the ability to commit violence, but there again lies the limits of their authority: Alex has not changed at all. He is merely (and, it turns out, temporarily) chemically altered; his mind has not been conquered. Alex is being used as a sacrificial symbol of the State’s success, as he reads in a newspaper after his release: “But what the Government was really the most boastful about was the way in which they reckoned the streets had been made safer for all peace-loving nightwalking lewdies in the last six months” (153). Shortly thereafter, however, Alex is restored to his former self and once again prowls the streets with his violent droogs.
Before his suicide attempt and restoration, Alex is taken in and victimized again by a group of anti-Government protestors, who peg the State for what it is: an authoritarian entity. “‘We’ve seen it all before,’” one of them says, “‘in other countries. The thin edge of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism’” (184). Yet, the novel makes clear that the more the State tries to exercise total control, the more its charges slip through its tightened fists. Alex will be avenged—“‘All who do me wrong [. . .] are my enemies’” (203)—and continue to commit acts of violence and crime until he finally decides to change. It does not come top-down from the authoritarian State; rather, that impulse comes from within, from the heart and soul of an autonomous human being.
