A Clockwork Orange By: Anthony Burgess

A detailed Summary of A Clockwork Orange By: Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange"

The human spirit can take two forms, that of evil or that of good. The novella, A Clockwork Orange, is a look into the depths of the human soul and analyzes how these different types of spirits react in society. While the novel was written as a satire, thus making it completely overblown in a certain matter, it, at the same time, does a great job of making the reader think. A question that arises during the novel is can you force the evil to be good and vice-versa? Burgess once again does a great job looking right into the heart of the question. The analysis of good versus evil and its transformation from one form to another and the immense imagery created by the presence of descriptions of the music being played in certain scenes in all of Anthony Burgess' novels greatly parallels other books, such as The Straw Dogs.

Burgess defines moral freedom as the ability to perform both good and evil (Burgess VI). In his introduction, he states that if one "can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with color and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is

sings and dances around his victims. Following the musical number, Alex leans over Mr. Alexander who is restrained on the floor, his eyes bulging from their sockets in horror at Alex's violence toward his wife. The book focuses in on only Alex and Mr. Alexander as Alex's masked face states, "Viddy well, little brother, viddy well." This statement commands Mr. Alexander (and the reader) to watch the rape, much like Alex will later be forced to watch violence toward the end of the novel. Ironically, during his first Ludivico session, Alex comments that "the colors of the real world [the red blood] only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen." In the rape scene, we are not allowed to "viddy" the real world. Action almost seems to slow down in this scene, but the rape itself remains stylized like the musical act that precedes it. In contrast, the rape in Straw Dogs illicts a different response. Stephen Prince suggests that Amy's rape visualizes the inner suffering of the individual in response to violence through the use of psychological montage (Prince 75). Up until this point, tensions between Amy and David, Amy and the townspeople, and David and the townspeople had been alluded to through facial expressions, actions, and words. For example, when David finds their cat dead and hanging in their closet, Amy states that it must have been one of the workmen (Scrutt or Cawsey) "to prove to you [David] that they could get into your bedroom." This is exactly what happens as they trick David into believing that they would go hunting, and then abandon him to "make mischief" at his home. Charlie Venner is the first one to rape Amy. When she initially resists his attempts, he slaps her and drags her by the hair to the couch. Charlie's expressions and violent actions will be paralleled by

David toward the novel's end, but during the rape, he and Charlie are connected through psychological associations. In summary, A Clockwork

Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971) and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1967) are both referred to as being examples of "ultraviolent" texts. Both books however construct their scenes quite differently: A Clockwork Orange operates on a kind of musical-esque ideal as the acts of violence are choreographed and set to a soundtrack, while Straw Dogs constructs violence as being bloody and brutal with psychological consequences. There is, however, one important difference that operates in these two novels; that is, in A Clockwork Orange, the predominance of I and my references encourages a Lacainan mirror image in which the viewer sees him/herself and relates to Alex. As a result, we wind up empathizing with him and symbolically join his gang. In Straw Dogs, however, the violence alternately seduces and repels the audience. We are invited to look at Amy (for example), yet we are repelled by David's savagery and the psychologic

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Approximate Word count = 1935
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English