Good and Evil in A Clockwork Orange
Do the ends justify the means? What is the price people are willing to pay to achieve civil order? Anthony Burgess gives the reader a shocking look at a world where the government is willing to destroy a person’s humanity to find the order they desire in A Clockwork Orange. This stunning novel provides a view of a society’s open acceptance to a totalitarian regime, and the evil that exists inside every human being. The book presents it’s ideas through a strong cohesive storyline and plot, a unique system of organization that shows the cause and effect of the government’s actions, and finally a clearly stated idea about the need for free choice. A Clockwork Orange presents a dismal world to show that good is only truly achieved through free choice, not through social control.
Anthony Burgess slowly presents a complex storyline that causes the reader to hate Alex, the narrator, for his violent actions, but eventually sympathize with the devastation that the Ludovico Technique causes in Alex. Alex is writing this story in the past tense. He has already lived through the events and is currently reflecting on the events of his life. The world he grows up in is a world different than ours. Violence rules the streets at night, and few innocents dare to venture out after the sun sets. In this world, Alex and his 3 friends, Dim, Pete, and George, are one of the many gangs that rule the streets. They commit random acts of violence for the sheer pleasure of doing harm. Alex actually uses very little of the money for his own pleasure. Most of it is spent on acquiring an alibi from two older women who would gladly lie if given a few rounds of their favorite drink. The violent acts the group commits include: muggings, rapes, robberies, and ultimately murder. There are a few acts that stand out as particularly brutal and savage. The group mobs an older man as he leaves the library. He is beaten and kicked, and stripped of his pants, forcing him to stumble home bleeding and half-naked. To finish the insult, the group rips up a few of the library’s precious books and scatters the pieces in the streets. The 4 men also storm a home on the outskirts of the city. Once inside, they beat the husband and then restrain him. The man is forced to watch his wife be raped by Alex and his friends, “Plunging, I could slooshy cries of agony and this writer bleeding veck that Georgie and Pete held on to nearly got loose howling bezoomy with the filthiest of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up” (23). The man is a writer, F. Alexander, who will resurface near the end of the story. Alex discovers and mocks the man’s fictional book, A Clockwork Orange, which discussed the attempts of society to mechanize human emotion and the necessity for free choice to exist, foreshadowing the undeveloped theme of the story. The despicable acts continue even when Alex is alone. A simple trip to the music store the next day turns into a disgusting plan, in which Alex lured 2 young girls who “couldn’t have been more than ten” to his room and proceeded to get them drunk and rape them. He took great joy in teaching them a lesson about life. Alex ultimately sews seeds of unrest in his gang through constant commands and abuse. George and Dim attempt to gain control of the group, partially because they have grown tired of committing profitless violence instead of lucrative burglaries. After defeating them in a fight, Alex believes to have re-established control, but he is wrong. He attempts to follow through with a plan to rob a rich woman who lives only with her cats. Alex planned to do the majority of it alone, to cement his dominance of the gang, but he takes to long to disable the old woman and the police are called. In a final act of treachery, Dim wounds Alex and leaves him as bait for the police. Alex is arrested, beaten, and ultimately sentence by the police. The old woman died from her injuries, so Alex is sentenced to 14 years in jail. The two years he spent in jail in part two were uneventful for Alex, he mainly suffered through them. The chaplain for his cell block took an interest in him and worked to reform Alex’s morals, but ultimately Alex is simply lying to try and advance his release. It all changes one day when a new man is added to his crowded cell. The man crawls into bed with him at night and tries to molest Alex, but Alex begins a sequence of violence that ends in the man’s death. Viewed as a hopeless cause, the Minister of the Interior chooses Alex to be the first in the new Ludovico Program, which Alex readily agrees to due to its promise of a release after 14 days of training. The training is brainwashing, where Alex is injected with a substance that causes him to feel nauseous and weak at the thought of violence. He is forced to watch movies depicting violent torture, murder, and rape in order to program his brain to have an immediate reaction to these thoughts, even without the presence of the drug. At the end of the 2 week period, Alex is unable to even defend himself or have lustful thoughts. He is a “true Christian” who is “ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought of even killing a fly.” Alex is released to the world after this at the beginning of part three. Alex is used as a poster boy for the government’s efforts to stop crime. The elections upcoming elections encourage them to use Alex as a way to reach voters. This is part of a larger attempt to create order in society. The government hires rough policemen who make people to afraid to risk committing a crime and they repair the city so that it appears to be in full working order. The world is not so receptive of him though. His mother and father refuse to allow him to live in their home, he is unable to defend himself from the old men at the library who attack him for destroying the library property two years ago, and he is ultimately beaten by the police officers who save him. These men were ironically Dim and Billyboy, another gangster who was a major rival two years ago. He is taken to the wood and almost beaten to death, leaving him to wander to the home of F. Alexander. Alexander doesn’t recognize Alex due to the disguised worn during the home invasion, and he offers Alex to spend the night. Alexander informs Alex that he will be a great tool for the opposition party in the next election. The party leaders take Alex to an apartment and allow him to go to sleep, but soon awaken him with classical music that they play loudly outside. Music also caused Alex to feel sick due to its use in the background of the brainwashing films. He feels so terrible over the loss of his once loved pastime that he jumps out the window in a suicide attempt. During his recovery, he realizes that the incident was set up by them men in the opposition party. He yells at the leaders, “If I had died it would have been even better for you political bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are” (171). The Minister of the Interior also orders the doctors to reverse the brainwashing surgically in order to end the scandal of their reformation’s failure. Alex ends the novel by returning to his old ways, but he finds them dull and childish. After seeing that his friend Pete went on to live a normal life and get married, he decided that it was time to move on and grow up. This ends a long series of events that present a timeline of government intervention and the lackluster effect it has on Alex.
The plotline showcases the attempts of the government to reform society through the mirror effect that occurs between part one and part three. Specifically, the majority of the events before Alex goes to jail are shown in a reversed manner after he is re-admitted to society. The older man he mugged leaving the library mobs Alex with his friends and proceeds to attack him. Dim and Billyboy, who he once used to abuse with impunity, are now police officers who nearly kill him. He enters the home of F. Alexander seeking true help, and receives it. The last chapter features an almost identical setup to the first chapter. This setup was done to clearly the illustrate the changes that Alex and the world underwent. The world is now in a clean and orderly fashion. The mural outside of Alex’s apartment complex was cleaned and kept clean. The mural didn’t have “any dirty parts of the body added to their naked plots by dirty-minded penciling malchicks” or “any dirty ballooning slovos from the rots of the Dignified Labourers.” The elevator was also in perfect working condition, as opposed to its nearly destroyed state at the beginning of the novel. The government has now taken complete control of the world and while they are working to better it, they are also smothering public expression. The impression of order and justice is only a façade though. Billyboy explains that, “It is not right, not always, for lewdies in the town to viddy too much of our summary punishment. Streets must be kept clean in more than one way.” These rise of oppression seems to have restored justice on the streets, but it is only through a lie that this image is maintained. The most drastic change was the effects on Alex. He is not only not able to attack anyone, but he cannot even defend himself against the abusive police or even the old men at the library. His training has removed his option to fight back, his free choice. Worst of all, it destroyed what was once a temporary heaven for him, music. Alex is no longer able to listen to music, and it is ironically what drives him to attempt suicide. Alex is a complete opposite of what he once was. There is no more joy left for him in life, because he had his right to free will taken away. He is forced to avoid music and violence if he wants to survive. This all changes after his suicide attempt though. Alex returns to having violent thoughts and fantasies and his operation. The final chapter begins in a similar way to the first chapter. Alex is standing in a bar, asking his new gang what they should do that night. The description changes though, because Alex comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t feel like doing anything violent. He leaves his gang and goes instead, to a coffee shop. The mirror occurs when he meets Pete, one of the old gang members, at this coffee shop. The last independent members of the gang discuss their lives in a slightly more mature fashion, and Pete explains that he is now married. This brings about the final change in Alex, where he realizes that he has grown out of his desire to destroy, and that he now wishes to create a family of his own, “I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.” The mirror of the parts works to help clearly fulfill the cycle of Alex’s progress and his ultimate decision to leave his life of violence behind.
Alex’s decision to end his life of destruction illustrates the central theme of A Clockwork Orange, by showing the value of free choice. It warns against the attempts of society to create a clockwork orange, described by F. Alexander as, “The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation” (21-22). This clockwork orange referred to the attempts of society and the government to mechanize human emotion in an attempt to establish order. Humans are full of potential, and that potential can only be reached when they are given the freedom to reach it. Limiting them removes their options of free choice and in that, their humanity. The government attempts to create a clockwork orange through Alex and the Ludovico Technique. The scientists clearly demonstrate their dreams of mechanizing human emotions and reactions through understandable laws and math through their statements. Dr. Branom tells Alex, “Well, by my calculations you should be starting to feel all right again. Yes?” (107). Everything was mathematical to him. It wasn’t a matter of Alex managing to overcome his nausea, it was a matter of mathematics to understand when the effect would wear off. The worst part of creating a clockwork orange, was that it destroyed the ability of a human to think for themselves and actually decide on moral questions for themselves. The heartlessness of the doctors clearly shows the ideas of the state towards this disadvantage. Dr Brodsky stated to Minister of the Interior that, “We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime.” This ideology destroys any concept of true morality. Doing good acts because one has to does not equate to morality and goodness. As the prison chaplain states, “He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.” (126). Alex is barely even a human being. He is just a machine that will perform as it was instructed, or it will face severe consequences. The system wasn’t one of reform, it only created a system of thought police that would serve to constantly watch ex-criminals and prevent them from committing future crimes. Alex describes the system the best, it was “like a like detective that had been watching round a corner and now followed to make his grahzny arrest” (128). There can be no reform without a genuine decision to be good. The government took this decision away from them. Alex is only able to redeem himself after he is returned to normal. The decision to grow up and end the destruction was only able to be made when he had free will. True growth can only occur when one has the ability to face a decision and have the freedom to choose between good and evil. Only through these challenges and decisions can one become or remain a good person.
A Clockwork Orange is a chilling story that shows the rise of a totalitarian government and its attempts to remove the free will of social dissidents. Alex is in no way a hero or a saint who can be cheered throughout the story. He committed terrible offences and deserved to be punished. The storyline works to properly introduce a real moral question to its readers. Alex committed great atrocities, but did he deserve the full punishment that he received? The reader can view what the Ludovico Technique did to Alex, and the way that the government changed his life. Ultimately, the book makes a stand and states that no one deserves to have their freedom of choice taken away, because that removes any chance to learn from their past decisions and actually grow as a person. The creation of a clockwork orange is the ultimate atrocity that is unequaled in the world, because it means the mechanization and programming of something that is supposed to grow and develop into a real person with a real moral code.