A Clockwork Orange
Uploaded by khalan_99 on Feb 19, 2002
Moral freedom is one of the most if not the most important of any freedoms available to humans. Moral freedom is the ability to either choose to perform good or bad deeds or both. Totalitarian governments take away one’s individual choice and thus, suppress and suffocate the soul. The setting in A Clockwork Orange is a general parallax to a totalitarian and oppressive government. Alex, the main character, is the representative of the common man, and his struggle in this type of government. In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess suggests that the importance of moral freedom be stressed even for criminals condemned by society.
“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim….and we sat in the Korova milk bar making up our rassadooks what do with the evening”(1.1; ch. 1), this was a typical night of a “nadsat” or teenager. A bunch of hoodlums, going around committing acts of violence and crime, for they have moral freedom; which they choose to do bad. First they assault a young man in an alley, and then they go to this author’s house, and vandalize it and rape his wife. But while at this house, they come across a book called A Clockwork Orange, and Alex reads about it: “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”(1.21; ch. 2), at which he ironically laughs and tears up.
After an eventful night like that, Alex goes home, “Where I lived was with my dadda and mum in the flats of Municipal Flatblock 18A, between Kingsley Avenue and Wilsonway”(1.31; ch. 3). There he goes to his room, and turns on his stereo and his good side comes alive. His deep love for classical music like Mozart, Beethoven, and G.F. Handel, can be seen clearly. In the morning he decides not to go to school, and he ends up violently raping two “devotchkas”, again displaying his moral freedom to be bad. That same night, they try to rob an old “psitsa” that has a hundred cats living with her. Alex ends up killing the old lady, but he gets caught by the “millicents” and will be tried as an adult.
While in court, Alex promotes his...