Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange

The essential conflict in Anthony Burgesss A Clockwork chromatic exists between the one-on-one and the affable order. Philip E. Ray, cites early critics of A Clockwork Orange such(prenominal) as A.A. DeVitis, Carol M. Dix, and Robert K. Morris who suggest that the musical theme of the wise is the conflict between the earthy and untainted Individual and the artificial and corrupt State (479).More importantly, A Clockwork Orange seems to prognosticate the individuals readiness to express his or her informal go out within the context of the corporal connection, and, particularly, poses the interesting move of whether the individuals primary facial demonstration of pardon volition is done runs of strength. through and through the depiction of a dystopian future, the novel interrogates the interrelationships and conflicts among the individual, society, personnel, and drop by the wayside will, thus requiring the reader to do the same.The novel opens with Alex, the narrator and briny character, seance at a bar with his cabal of droogs posing the question, Whats it going to be thence, eh? (Burgess 1). Alex poses this question eleven times throughout the novel. In fact, the novel is book-ended by this question, as it is the offshoot describe of the eldest chapter and the first line of the last.This question seems to present the reader with a declaration of abandon will. Essentially, Alex seems to be announcing his ability to guide any action he wishes. According to Veronica Hollinger, the question itself implies the force play of the individual to study choices (Hollinger 86). The power to choose is the power of plain will, and for Alex, choice and free will must be verbalized through personnel. Even Burgess writes of a free and idle will (Burgess xii) in his introduction to A Clockwork Orange.The first act of violence perpetrated by Alex occurs within the first chapter when the narrator and his group of droogs attack a man in the s treets. They proceed to make the man and destroy his property. The group of youngs revels in their risky outburst against the tender machine, which is collective for them in this adult. Within the first thirty pages, Alex and his gang are responsible for quatern different instances of extreme violence, while the powers-that-be altogether make a brief show and are easily outwitted.The futuristic society of A Clockwork Orange is an extension of our society of commoditization. From clothing to drugs, every potential tone ending for the expression of individual free will has been turned into a commodity of the society. The youth seems to be left without any possible expression of individual will. Alex seems to see violence as the last non-commercialized expression of individualistic free will available to him thus, it appears the individual must be in violent conflict with the societal order in order to express free will. subsequently the sign scenes of what Alex refers to as ultra-violence, the novel proceeds towards a serial of collisions between the two main players of the novel Alex and his society. The social order, embodied in several select social institutions, uses a variety of methods to control Alexs violence in order to maintain its own stability.Alex is concludingly captured after he invades the home of a young woman and beats her to death, and the social order, in the form of governmentally funded scientists, begins the service of reforming Alex. The scientists remove Alex from prison and attempt to conquer his ability to act violently through a chemically induced Pavlovian conditioning designed to make him regurgitate at the very thought of violence. After the experiment is concluded, Alex is completely reformed and can non alkali to enact violence or be witness to violence.When Alex loses his ability to choose violence, he also seems to lose any expression of will. The relationship between free will and violence is expressed throu gh the musings of the prison chaplain who eventually poses the question, Is a man who chooses the bounteous perhaps in some management better than a man who has the hot imposed on him? (Burgess 106).Essentially, the chaplain worries that Alex cannot be rattling human and good if he cannot make a choice to be, or not be, violent. After Alex is conditioned and his violent free will is removed, he undergoes a series of hardships, ending in his near suicide.From the bite Alex loses his violent will, the reader must match him undergo torments in the form of rejection by his parents, beatings by his previous friends, and torture at the hands of a radical anti-government writer. Further, Alex is pushed almost from place to place and seems to have no will of his own. The loss of a violent will seems to be the loss of free will and individuality. strength in A Clockwork Orange appears to function as synecdoche for all individual expression. If the only way for Alex to express himself efficaciously is to engage in violent acts, then the violence-less Alex is a tragic creature because he lacks any expression at all. The expiry of violence by society is the decease of the individual and expressions of free will.Despite the evidence that violence is only an expression of the individual and free will, the text is also full of examples that gunpoint towards violence as a weapon of society. In fact, the society seems to need violence just as much as Alex, as a representation of the individual, does. Violence is exhibited as a tool of the social order in several make out scenesnotably a police atrociousness scene after Alex is released from prison and the novels original, final chapter.