I had a friend who did a presentation on this book his Sophomore year. Not only did he disturb the entire class, but he also horrified the teacher. He thought their reactions were funny because, to him, it was the reaction of the typical person to something disgusting when they can’t look further.
There’s no doubt about it; A Clockwork Orange is disturbing. It passively dissects the psychology of a sociopath through descriptions of his conduct. Alex’s behavior is monstrous. He manipulates, beats, steals, kills, and rapes innocent people. He and the rest of his “droogs” partake in this activity nightly. Eventually, he is sold out by his friends and becomes the government’s problem.
Burgess never condones Alex’s behavior, and he has Alex grow out of it to show that his behavior was immature. However much Burgess may disapprove of Alex’s behavior, he disapproves of the government’s actions even more. By taking away Alex’s free-will, he is not rehabilitated, he is controlled. That is not the right of the government and is very much an abuse of power. Alex did agree to try it, but he was not informed of everything the treatment would entail. Many would consider what they did to Alex torture.
When Alex meets up with the people that want to use him to demonstrate the immorality of the government’s actions against him, they also misuse Alex. Albeit, they had ample reason to. Alex had brutally raped and caused the death of one of the men’s wife. They drove Alex to a suicide attempt, in the process of protesting the government, and, in turn, became just as bad as the oppressive and immoral force they were facing.
The government proved themselves better than these people by balking. Whilst Alex was in the hospital for his injuries they reversed the treatment that made him unbearably ill every time he thought about violence. He wakes up the normal, garden-variety sociopath he had always been.
One of the points of the book is that when people push things and achieve them through corruption, things fall apart. The government forced Alex into behaving, then people forced him into jumping out of a window to prove a point. At the end of chapter 20, the government conceded, and Alex was just the way he had always been. The government failed, and the people who wanted to demonstrate against them got a criminal. It’s only at the end of chapter 21 that Alex moves on from who he was on his own, through gradual maturity and growing up. These things can’t be forced or rushed. Alex’s plight is the result of too many conflicting forces pushing for things that shouldn’t be done to be done.
