“A Clockwork Orange“ takes place in the future in a city governed by totalitarian policies and an all-powerful State. Most citizens are passive and unwilling to work to create change. Others use that passivity to run almost unchecked through the streets, committing crimes.
The narrator and protagonist, Alex, is one of these criminals. He speaks in contemporary slang known as Nadsat and rarely goes to school. This forms the book’s central conflict: Alex’s antisocial and criminal nature and the totalitarian state’s extreme measures to check him.
Alex is fifteen years old at the book’s introduction. He is a delinquent and runs with a gang of teenage boys—Dim, Georgie, and Pete—who rob individuals and rape women. His meek and passive parents are terrified of their son and, therefore, unable to do anything to stop him.
“A Clockwork Orange” has been banned in many instances, and I can understand why: the novel features many cases of extreme and disturbing violence. I don’t think many people have the stomach for it.
The criminal activities of Alex and his gang set up the novel’s rising action. Towards the beginning of the book, Alex and his gang attack a writer, Mr. F. Alexander, and rape his wife. The latter later dies, and her husband blames the boys. Alex and his gang destroy Mr. Alexander’s manuscript, “A Clockwork Orange,” during the attack.
The group returns to Korova, their favorite bar. Alex’s gang members, Dim and Georgie, express their resentment and annoyance at Alex’s arrogance and overbearing nature. Alex fights with Dim when the latter mocks an opera he likes. The following day, Alex rapes two ten-year-olds and stays home from school.
Alex’s fallout with his friends marks the novel’s turning point. His gang members betray Alex, and they abandon him when they break into an old woman’s mansion in an attempt to rob her. Dim assaults Alex with a chain, blinding him. The old woman calls the police, who arrive and arrest Alex.
Alex is sentenced to fourteen years in prison. His first year is challenging, but things get easier as time passes. He becomes friends with the prison chaplain and starts studying the Bible. He is not particularly drawn to religion; he only takes pleasure in the violent parts of the Bible. He also listens to classical music, his favorite pastime activity.
Beyond the novel’s treatment of a character caught between the drive of their free will and society’s need to condition and control them, I believe Alex is a disturbed character who would need psychological attention in a normal society.
In the novel’s climax, Alex and his cellmates take a turn for the worse when they beat a new prisoner to death. Alex takes the fall for the murder and is chosen for the Ludovico Technique. This technique is an aversion technique used by the government as a means of rehabilitating criminals by conditioning them to become physically ill whenever they experience violent or antisocial thoughts.
The process includes brainwashing and associative learning. By the end of the sessions, Alex should, in theory, be completely unable to even think about committing a crime. He’s injected with a drug that makes him feel sick while watching images of violence with classical music in the background. The latter is incredibly offensive to Alex. Finally, physical sickness and pain are connected to the idea of violence.
At the end of the process, the government judges Alex to be cured. After serving only two years of his fourteen-year sentence, he is released back into the society. Even though Alex cannot enjoy his favorite music without feeling ill and is unable to defend himself from violence, the government counts the experiment as a success. They plan to roll out the program on a massive scale.
Alex is utterly incapable of committing any act of violence. He also can’t think for himself. He is stripped of his free will. He tries to go home, but his parents have a lodger who has taken Alex’s place in the home and stands up to him. It is not long before men from his past life find him and beat him up. During this period, he again sees Dim and an old rival, Billyboy. They are now policemen, and they abuse Alex. They drive him out to an isolated field and beat him up badly. Due to his brainwashing, he is unable to defend himself. They leave him to die in the snow. Alex makes his way to a cottage that is belonging to F. Alexander. F. Alexander is initially unaware Alex is the same boy who, with his gang, raped his wife at the beginning of the novel.
One wonders about moral ideals and society’s concern for the behavior of the individuals within it. Although Alex receives extreme psychological treatment to cure him and make society safe, the same government does not hesitate to turn him back to his “normal” to score political points against dissident elements.
The book’s falling action begins here, and the story turns to the attempts to use Alex as a piece in the power play between the state and dissidents. F. Alexander is a political revolutionary who is set on overthrowing the totalitarian regime. He knows Alex from the news and plans to use him to show the government’s cruelty. Alex is reluctant to be used as a pawn in the revolutionaries’ conflict with the government. He tells F. Alexander off in Nasdat, a language the revolutionary recognizes from when he was attacked and his wife killed.
When F. Alexander finally realizes who Alex is, the kid who brought about his wife’s death, Alexander’s rage gets the best of him. With the help of his comrades, he locks Alex up and blasts classical music, hoping he will kill himself. Instead, Alex jumps out of the window but doesn’t die.
When he becomes conscious, Alex is in hospital and is told he’s been “cured” of the treatment by the Ministry of the Interior. He also learns that F. Alexander is under arrest. The state hopes that in turning Alexander back to normal, he can be enlisted to denounce the revolutionaries. In any case, Alex can think of violent thoughts once again. In some versions, this is the novel’s resolution. But, in others, there is another final chapter.
Alex gets a new gang composed of Len, Rick, and Bully, and they engage in some of the same violent behavior. But Alex doesn’t take the pleasure from it that he used to. He sees his former friend Pete, who has a new life with his wife Georgina, and decides that he wants the same dream for himself. In the book’s revised denouement, he resolves to live a normal life.
While there are important lessons about society and totalitarian governments to be found in this novel, I think Burgess might have gone overboard with his depiction of violence and rape in the story. It makes parts of the book seem in poor taste and is an unnecessary barrier to enjoying an imaginative and timely relevant narrative.
