Clockwork Orange

by Ante urlin

The first word that comes to my mind when somebody mentions this book is violence. A lot of violence, to be precise. In this book we follow Alex and his droogs, dressed in white, in their immoral quest as they beat up old people and rape women. They are so into violence that they find it funny. Alex likes classical music as well and he says that violence and classical music go together.

Both the book and the movie are full of violence. There are two kinds of violence present here, physical and mental. Alex is a sociopath and a juvenile delinquent1, violence does not worry him that much. He loves that physical sort of violence, beating up old people and doing the o ld in and out with women. Like I said, this kind of violence does not bother him. Violence has overtaken him in such measure that he smiles even when he gets beaten. Now, the other kind of violence, unknown to Alex, is mental violence. Poor lad did not know what was waiting for him when he voluntarily agreed to participate in a curing process called Ludovico treatment. This kind of violence is much worser than physical although it doesn't inflict visual damage, but affects the judgment and more important creates fear, which Alex lacked in.

This process called Ludovico treatment is a process in which your mind comes to question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange

Bound up in a straight jacket, tied to a chair and with his eyes all spread up forced to watch all kinds of criminal, how some guys beat the hell out of one guy, how several men rape a girl in the field. Alex finds it all well-taped and funny and says It's funny how the colors of the real world
only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. 2, but starts to feel sick after, as he says,

the sixth or seventh malchik. This process has created a new Alex, an Alex without free will or choice. That is another kind of violence, as Alex is forced to do just good. It is better to be evil than to be good and without free will. Alex is being brainwashed, they fill him with fear and disgust. In this case, he is the victim, acting like a good-doing pawn.

The book consists of three parts and each part consists of seven chapters which gives us 21 chapters at the end. However, the 21st chapter has been omitted because American publishers did not want to publish a story full of violence with a happy ending, so Burgess was forced to edit his masterpiece. That 21st chapter has a symbolic meaning, 21 means you are old enough, it is the symbol of human maturity.3 The omitted chapter tells us that Alex has changed and has moral values. The 21st chapter goes beyond the film. It changes the whole concept and the understanding of the book. The first 20 chapters are glorifying violence and everything that is bad. In the final scene of the movie, we see that Alex has been cured. He finally grew up, came to his senses, got tired of violence. The system tried to turn Alex into a senseless immoral being without any free will and failed in doing so. Alex experiences personal transformation.

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/quotes http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0062.html