Someone has just stolen your wallet, so you chase after them. You feel the urge to hit them, to kick them, to hurt them any way possible and not stop until you are satisfied. You, like any other person, repress this urge because it would be punished. There is no circumstance where that urge would be allowed, so you move on from it. What if you did not have to? If you could hurt anyone at anytime and not be punished, would you let it corrupt you? If any group of people was corrupted, you would most likely be influenced by them and have a heightened need for revenge and aggression, or try to stop people from having those needs by using aggressive tactics. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess analyzes how each group of people would react to this shift in ethics.
The story follows a teenager named Alex who is a psychopath that goes out every night with the gang he leads and executes acts of violence, feeling no remorse. The streets are filled with these gangs, and many people are scared to go out at night because they might be beaten. Alex’s gang fights with other gangs and abuses the older members of society. These acts are illegal, but Alex does not care about the law. Although he got arrested before, Alex always bribes an innocent bystander to vouch that he did not commit any crimes, and so does not get arrested again. He can even threaten the police. When he goes home, he bosses his parents around and lives with no consideration to their happiness. They cower in his presence, just like all other parents of teenagers in the book. This cycle continues until Alex’s gang starts rebelling against him, and he gets caught and sent to prison. The government is struggling with crime rates, but develops a new set of strategies to stop all violence, which they use to “cure” Alex, to make him disgusted by violence. The book is narrated in Nadsat, a language made up of English and Russian words that the youth speak, partly to be rebellious.
Nadsat’s imagined vocabulary forces the reader to pay attention throughout the book. This is relevant when the reader is not desensitized to Alex’s views, despite his violent nature. When he and his friends, or “droogies” in Nadsat, are breaking into someone’s home, he finds a book titled A Clockwork Orange and determines that it has a, “‘fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?’ Then [he] read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss” (27), a term along with others that are unfamiliar to the reader and therefore demand the reader to be thoughtful and process Alex’s view on the title. If it were written in English, I (the reader) would dismiss his opinion because I would look down upon unlawful people like him. Later, after the government prevents Alex from doing harm to anyone, he gets presented to the prison staff, and he, “creeched louder still, creeching: ‘Am I just to be a clockwork orange?’” (138). The reader is still attentive here, as more words are being used that need to be understood, and it is here that Alex reveals his comprehension of the meaning of the title, a person without any moral choice. Alex has a mastery of Nadsat that proves that he can develop epiphanies throughout his experiences. I believe that shatters a categorization of criminals such as himself as being eternally impulsive and not able to understand complex ideas. This eloquence of Alex’s exposes an uncommon perspective but one that is important to be aware of, and is possible only through the use of Nadsat. It captures the story of his radical adventures.
Alex and his fellow teenagers have almost unlimited freedom, which contrasts their young lives with adulthood, and explains how that freedom morphs as teenagers mature. At the start of his journey, Alex encounters police who are suspicious that he has just committed a crime, and asserts, “‘I don’t care much for these nasty insinuations. A very suspicious nature all this betokeneth” (18). His youth manifests itself in how he uses an opportunity to disrespect authority, and the policemens’ adulthood shows in how they do not confront Alex, rather they surrender with excuses about doing their routine job and how they are only asking. As a teenager, Alex does not have a job to think about and has the flexibility to do mostly whatever he wants. Towards the end of his journey, he meets with a long-time friend who has become a policeman and who Alex has not seen in a while. After Alex comments on how young his friend is to be a policeman, the friend replies, “‘Was young … That’s what we was, young droogie. And you it was that was always the youngest’” (160). I believe Alex’s friend associates youth with the desire to not be weighed down by morals or fears, as Alex wishes to cause more harm than the rest of the gang. Their desires switch, and as a result, their lifestyles switch to the normal life of an adult. This also contrasts to the elderly, who are vengeful toward people younger than them. They do not have the flexibility to change and I believe they assume others also do not have that flexibility. Alex does mature and relinquishes part of his freedom, and although he tries to stay in a gang, he moves on to think about the future and the son he will have. Once Alex realizes truths about thriving in society, like the worth of money, he cannot go back to his younger self. His interest in using his exemption from basic obligations highlights the natural progression from childhood to adulthood.
Burgess illustrates how effective transformation of a person can only be internal through Alex’s experience in prison and his growing up. His therapy is forced on him, and it does not last. Other people reverse the therapy’s effects, and he is back to normal again. When he matures, however, he stays that way. His therapy is a result of society pressuring him to be less violent, and its failure captures how a person never truly develops from these pressures because when they develop, they need the choice of how they will end up. I feel that this choice can only come from within someone, and so a person never stays changed as a result of external means.
Alex has a family dynamic where he is the head of the household to demonstrate how the freedom he has strains love and turns into oppressive leadership. Once Alex is in the hospital to be cured of the government’s conditioning, his father tries to scold him for talking disrespectfully to his mother, but Alex just replies, “‘Go away now. I’ll think about coming back. But things will have to be very different,’’’ to which his father answers before leaving, ‘‘‘Yes, son … Anything you say’” (188). This presents the reader with an uncommon sight. A child is commanding his parents because of the tolerance he is shown to be disrespectful to authority. This leads to him making demands of everyone and his parents follow these demands because of the ingrained love between parent and child. This love works to degrade itself, as the parental role in Alex’s family now resembles being a servant to Alex, putting up with his rudeness and still providing him with food and other necessities. Children like Alex with the ability to be a tyrannical leader in their family put the love in their family under tension.
In today’s world, there are families with tyrannical leader children. These families are documented by Nanny911, a television show where nannies visit families with this type of child and try to heal the families. This show supports the parents but also cares for the kids. In this show, the kids are disrespectful because they have past issues and were given the power to be rude by their parents not stopping them. One of these episodes is about the Dickson family. The Dickson children lost their father, the main disciplinarian in the house, and so have turned hostile toward their mom, even threatening her with violence. Nanny911 comes to her rescue, similar to how the government helped Alex’s parents by conditioning Alex. Here the nanny is portrayed as being caring toward the child, instead of acting harshly toward the child, as the government acts toward Alex. This episode contains some violence between a child and her mom. Here is a link to the first part of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-KprbdjV7M
I would recommend this book to anyone who ever feels maltreated by the sheer amount of others who do the morally correct thing and disagree with them. This book is also for people who are alright not knowing all of the words all of the time, or who are familiar with Russian. Someone would also enjoy this book if they have ever felt trapped in a set path for life or want to explore their inner psychopath.
0 Comments.