In Anthony Burgess’ 1962 dystopian novella, A Clockwork Orange, teenage gangs and hoodlums run rampid in a futuristic society, inflicting mayhem and brutality among its totalitarian governed state. Alex, our protagonist/anti-hero, is among the most infamous in this violent youth culture. A psychotic, yet devilishly intelligent boy of fifteen, our “humble narrator” beats up on old folk, rapes underaged girls, pillages, and leads his group of “droogs” (friends) on a chaotic path of “ultra-violence
Free Will in A Clockwork Orange and Skinner's Freedom and the Control of Man Socrates once said, "Know thyself," and over two thousand years later we're still perplexed with the complexities of human behavior. The concept of free will has been debated and challenged by science, religion, and philosophy throughout history. By free will, I mean our ability to choose and behave as we wish, without our choices being determined by outside sources. Such a notion has been discussed and disputed
Plato creates a new argument within the borders of egoism and the Guardians. He questions how we know the motives of other people. The guardians must be completely selfless. So the answer to this to create the Guardians from birth to have this selfless attitude. People would take children at birth and control their conditions carefully in order to control and develop their wants and desires. It is like taking a clean slate and drawing whatever you want. Paul Hodapp proposes as simple recipe using
It is what prevents us from being mere statistics, faceless members of a gray human mass. Without soul a human being is open to assault from the outside, can be enslaved, use, co-opted, made into a mindless appendix of technology. Soul is free will (1993b; 20). From this perspective, it is not difficult to perceive the pilgrimage towards humanity that many “science-fiction monsters” inevitably make. Possessing the most human quality, a soul, is the key to freedom and connection to God that
In both Nineteen Eighty-four and A Clockwork Orange, free will and the misuse of power are two intrinsically linked themes which are woven throughout and that govern everything that happens within both novels. The different reactions of different characters are an area that both George Orwell and Anthony Burgess focus on with interesting parallels between the two main protagonists, Alex and Winston. Winston and Alex, although very different, react in quite a similar fashion to events surrounding
Analysis of George Orwell's 1984 War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. The party slogan of Ingsoc illustrates the sense of contradiction which characterizes the novel 1984. That the book was taken by many as a condemnation of socialism would have troubled Orwell greatly, had he lived to see the aftermath of his work. 1984 was a warning against totalitarianism and state sponsored brutality driven by excess technology. Socialist idealism in 1984 had turned to a total loss of