Clockwork Orange
In A Clockwork Orange, author Anthony Burgess deals with the matter of depriving a criminal the ability to make a moral choice. This topic of behavioral conditioning was presented by the psychologist B.F. Skinner in the 1950's and caused uproar in society, striking a chord with Burgess. In Skinner's essay "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" he shows his solutions for changing a criminal's behavior with positive reinforcement. Professor Gerald Smith of the University of Utah took it a step further than Skinner. Smith proposed an implanted device that measured the adrenaline level in convicts. His assumption was that the adrenaline level would rise from the excitement received while committing a crime. If the adrenaline levels became high, an electrical pulse would send signals to a receiver, which the parole officer could read. Inadvertently, the device failed to distinguish the difference between committing a crime, and the adrenaline rush involved with lovemaking. Smith's r!easoning was that the convict loses nothing, since he is a prisoner, already without freedom. Burgess explains, "I began to see red, and felt I had to write the book" (Alleger 172). The absurdity of this behavioral co
Petix, Esther. "Linguistics, Mechanics, and metaphysics : Anthony Burgess A Clock work Something that the reader cannot miss in the novel is Burgess' vivid use of symbolism with color contrast. He uses this imagery to display his message throughout. There were frequent hints in the book that night was the time of evil. He always attached a symbolic significance to the night, "The day was very different from the night...millicents about during the day..." (Burgess 45). That quote from "A Clockwork Orange" shows how the millicents (the police) ruled during the day, but night was the time when the thugs and lowlifes emerged. nditioning process was one of the main reasons for Burgess to write his novel. His visit to Russia only confirmed his mission. He witnessed Russian gangs called "stilyagi," which were a major nuisance for Russian cities. Even in Burgess' hometown in England, the streets were overrun with young hoodlums, which referred to themselves "teddy boys". Burgess decided to set his story in the future, when gangs have complete rule of the night. On one of Alex's most gruesome raids earlier in the book, he breaks into a rich cottage with a sign that says HOME on the outside. He and his faithful droogs rape a woman with her husband forced to watch. They paralyze the man and the wife dies soon after the brutal incident. Much later in the story, when Alex is released from the StaJa, he is outcast from society, and pitifully crawls to the doorstep of this place called HOME. The writer, whom Alex and his droogs paralyzed, and whose wife had killed, does not recognize the brutal rapist, since he was wearing a mask at the time of the savage attack, and welcomes the boy into his home. Alex, on the other hand remembers the man, so he tries to not give off any signs of his former thuggish lifestyle. After being paralyzed, the old man had "remained in the cottage devoting all his energies to combating the evils of the 'modern age'" (Alleger 171). Alex, curious of this man's name, looks at his manuscript titled "A Clockwor! Ray, Phillip E. "Alex before and after : A new approach to Burgess' A Clockwork Orange." Alex tells of a raid one night, with the use of expansive colorful imagery; "So we came nice and quiet to this domy called the manse, and there were globe lights outside on iron stalks...and there was a light like dim on in on of the rooms on the ground level, and we went to a nice patch of street dark...they [the droogs] nodded in the dark...then we waited again in the darkness" (Burgess 60-61). His imagery continues describing the black of the evening, the light from the windows the white old woman, the pouring of white milk, the white Beethoven statue. One of Alex's droogs is even named "Dim", symbolizing a creature of the night, and also his dim-wittedness. When Alex is finally caught by the police he is brought through the black night into the white police station. "They dragged me into this very bright-lit whitewashed cantora" (Burgess 68). Later in the novel, while Alex is undergoing his behavioral conditioning, the white-jacketed doctors are perceived as evil. The onl! k Orange", and the name on the binding was F. Alexander. y one who questions the morals of the treatment is the prison chaplain, ironically dressed in black. This helps blur the lines between good and evil, leaving the reader puzzled on what side to support. Something cannot be just "good" for Alex and the other creatures of the night. "Something that is good in the view of these young savages is something that thrills or shocks" (Alleger 171). For the desired effect, Burgess chose the word "horrorshow" to represent something that is "good," "well," or "fine" in the eyes of Alex and his droogs. The word horrorshow is derived from it's Russian equivalent, kharosho. Burgess phonetically changed the word into horrorshow, which has a more negative connotation. A "Horror Show" is something that frighten
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3071
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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