Burgess himself has suggested that the basic issue of A Clockwork Orange deals with the idea of free will or choice. Critic Samuel Coale documents that Anthony Burgess declared: "Choice, choice is all that matters, and to impose the good is evil, to act evil is better than to have good imposed (92)." He adds, "I was merely trying to point out the very real danger, an imminent danger, that is, the State is taking on more and more control (92)." Finally he says that, "I lean toward anarchy; I hate the State (92)." This absolutist doctrine, which urges, "the defense of self, no matter how twisted it may be, and the c

Anthony Burgess sought to distinguish the pitfalls of a mechanized thought process when compared to free will. Through Alex's plight, it becomes clear that a man who cannot make his own choices ceases to be a real man. Instead, he is a "clockwork orange," nothing more than a mechanical toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or the State.

ondemnation of the state, no matter how benevolent it tends to be (92)," seems to be a main idea in A Clockwork Orange, and is greatly supported by the text.

When the effects of Alex's treatment are demonstrated for a large group of people, one audience member states, "He has no real choice... Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement... He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice (Burgess 126)."

The issue of free will versus a mechanized thought process is widely debated in the novel. All questions about it are neatly summed up by the prison chaplain, when he says,

"It is obviously impossible to resolve syllogistically which is the greater evil perpetrated in A Clockwork Orange: Alex's rape and murder or the state's conditioning of his mind and, as some would have it, soul (Morris 29)." Passive goodness and dynamic evil are choices that in themselves may or may not be acceptable or unacceptable, but that in terms of the novel are neither. Society in general has never troubled itself with the existential agony, and judging from the dominance of sentiment held today, it would undoubtedly support the conditioning process that emphasizes stability over freedom. Even before addressing these questions, though, Burgess takes on considerations that are even more immediate. What distinctions between good and evil are possible in the contemporary world? As absolutes, have such distinctions not been totally perverted or obliterated? And as relative terms, depending for definition on what each negates or excludes, have they not become purely subjective? In a technically perfect society that has sapped our vitality for constructive choice, "we are, whether choosing good or evil, zombies of one sort or another: each of us is a little clockwork orange making up the whole idea of one great clockwork orange (Morris 29)."

It may be nice to be good... It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who had the good imposed upon him (Burgess 95)?

Dr. Brodsky, on the other hand, rejects such arguments. However, what he says still supports the theory that Alex's free choice is bring taken away. In defending his use of Ludovico's Technique, which would transform hardened criminals into outstanding citizens, he declares to Alex, "What is happening to you now is what should happen to any normal health human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil, the workings of the principle of destruction. You are being made sane, you are being made healthy (Burgess 108)." He fails to realize that this is at the expense of being able to make your own decisions.

On the surface, Alex is less psychologically distorted and biologically frustrated in his career of violence than those he terrorizes and those who seek to condition him. And, in a more significant way, his small-scale brutalities reflect no deeper abnormality than those of larger scale perfected by the engineers of power politics (Morris 30). Engineers such as F. Alexander, who sought to both avenge the murder of his wife by murdering Alex, and at the same time proving that the government is wrong and the treatment Alex received is not m

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Approximate Word count = 2564
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)