Singing In The Rain

I really admire the character of Alex because he is very courageous and intelligent. At the beginning of the book, Alex wanted to find out if the story about his uncle getting in a car accident was true or not, so he went to the auto wreckage center nearest his house to search for the car. Once he had been searching a lot for the vehicle, he ended up finding it to see it in perfect condition except for bullet holes in the windshield (p. 19). He heard people coming, so he hid inside the car. Then a big crane picked the car up and starting smashing it in a machine, with Alex still inside! After all the struggling, he managed to get out of the car just before it went through the part of the machine that totally crushes the car into a cylinder (p. 24). I felt pretty bad for Alex. It must have been hard for him to have to go through a really brutal training camp for something he didn’t even want to do, especially since he had just lost his last family member. He had no idea what was going to happen to him

         What is interesting is how later in the novel, Alex happens upon Alexander's home again, forgetting exactly why it seems so familiar.  Alexander gets his revenge on the poor Alex, who opens up to the horrors he suffered in prison, unknowingly telling Alexander ways to harm him.  Alexander represents Burgess' desire for vengeance; Burgess is able to take out his anger on Alex, a murdering rapist.

He’s now finding alternative ways to do what he thinks will help these other people out and help himself understand why people do the things they do. Alex and Travis are on two ends of the spectrum Alex commits crime because he is already twisted and disturbed and goes on this journey to stop these thoughts. Where as Travis slowly goes down this disturbing path and even though he wants to stop these bad thoughts, he doesn’t because he he begins to think that what he’s thinking is the solution to all the problems he

Alex matures and grows through his experiences in China and is now aware of the human consequences that war has. Alex’s growth and maturity is shown when his dad is captured by PLA. Proof of this is when Alex and his dad are talking over the two way radio before Ted gets captured. He is very concerned for his Dad at this point in the book. This event is the beginning of Alex’s awakening. This event hits Alex hard and makes him realize the reality behind war. Another event that helps Alex articulate his new vision of war is when he sees Lau Xu die right in front of his eyes. He even describes the details of the shooting when he says “Crack! Lau Xu spun around, his arms flung skyward. Before he fell the AK 47 spit flame again and the burst blew Lao xu off his feet” (Bell 114). Another example of Alex’s growth leading up to his epiphany of hating war is when Xin-hua gets shot. This happens when Alex starts to beg the officer to let her go and says” Please let me talk to your commanding officer. I just want to-...CRACK. The sound of a single gunshot. I turned to look into the trees where they had taken Xin-Hua. Oh God no, I moaned. No, No ,Nooooooo!” (Bell 183). Alex is now fully aware of the horrible consequences of war after witnessing the death of his friends and his father getting

In part one of the novel, we witness the ability of free will that Alex possesses and his ability to choose between good and evil through contrast presented by darkness of night and lightness of day. At the beginning of the novel, Alex and his droogs (friends), Pete, Georgie, and Dim are at the Kovova Milkbar, roaming the streets and committing violent acts during night. Alex and his droogs encounter an old man who is drunk and is singing a sentimental song. Alex instantly chooses the path of evil with the free will that he encompasses, and along with his droogs they beat the old man while laughing at his misery. The old man complains about the “stinking world” and says, “It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there’s no law nor order no more.” (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 12) At night, Alex uses violence and chooses to beat, rape, and murder innocent people because it shows that he has freedom of choice and has authority and power in society. Alex’s interpretation of darkness and night is, “The night belonged to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats (teenagers), and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors…” (Part 1, Chapter 4, Page 33). In contrast,

The Ludovico technique that is used on Alex is an example of how immoral practices are used in this world. With this technique, he is injected with drugs to mess with his brain biologically. He is then forced to watch disturbing movies, which enhance the drugs previously injected into him to make him feel sick. The goal of this is to make him revolute at the sight of violence. After the first round of “treatment” Alex says: “ I do not wish to describe, brothers, what other horrible veshches I was forced to viddy that afternoon” (Burgess, 119). Alex, the ultra-violence loving teenager is so shook by what happened to him, he is unable to even explain what he saw. This shows that even the evilest of people can be affected by this practice. The background music that is in the films Alex is forced to watch is of his liking, which angers him because now he will associate the sick feeling with the music he loves. Dr. Branom, talking to Alex about this, says: “’Each man kills he thing he loves, as the poet-prisoner said. Here’s punishment element, perhaps. The Governor ought to be pleased.’” (Burgess,128). The doctors feel no remorse for taking away the pleasure of listening to the music alex likes, which show how other inhumane actions are done, not just in medical

Primarily, Alex is having trouble catching the Mastermind. He leaves no trace of evidence, and when they think they’re on to something, it disappears like a leaf in the wind. “’You’ve got the wrong man.’ Then he died” (Patterson 364). This describes the overall theme of the story. The Mastermind has created a complex and malevolent plan designed to trick the FBI into thinking they’ve caught him, only to realize that they’ve caught the wrong man later on.

The reader receives a lot more knowledge about Sasha’s character and is left thinking Alex is just a minor character at the end of this chapter. He is seen as one of her outsources to gain power. She seems to have a routine down where she finds a younger man online, goes out to dinner with him, and then brings him back to her place for a meaningless hookup. In this case Alex makes Sasha think about who she has become by eyeing through her collection of “found objects”, which gives her “a tremor of excitement” (16). Her two ways of gaining control are coming together and making her acknowledge her behavior, which could be the reason we see her later on with a family and living a more normal and controlled life.

One might contenplate why would someone want to kill Alex. There are two main reasons that one would try to kill him. First, he was a spy and stopped a lot of gangs and acts of terroisum. He has killed some gang leaders and some of Scorpias’ assassins. Next, he has stopped Scorpia two times and they are not very happy about that. One of the times he stopped Scorpia was off the coast of Austrailia. Alex stopped them from setting off a bomb that would have started a chain reaction that would have made a tsunami. This is just one of the reasons Scorpia would want to kill Alex.

Both novels illustrate the theme of maturity by starting out the story through the eyes of a young child and then having that same child reflect on his/her growth through the progression of the story. Before spending time in jail and undergoing treatment using the Ludovico Technique, all Alex was concerned of was getting into trouble with his gang throughout the

The film, Singing In The Rain, directed by Stanely Donen and Gene Kelly, uses many themes, camera angles, and overall simple techniques to engage its audience within the movie and yet still manage to symbolize plentiful acts. The movie mainly focuses on the new era of ‘talking pictures’ and how it affected Cosmo’s career and film, The Dueling Cavalier. Within the many scenes, I chose to focus upon the famous, “ Good Morning,” scene/melody.

However, youth like Alex cannot be caught in the expected rubric of life and hence, they retaliate. Nevertheless, one cannot justify Alex’s actions worth applauding but Burgess seems to favour their actions as the only possible outlet for suppressed angst. In the first act, fourth chapter, Alex says,

The use of music as a motif in (Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange 1962)] creates a lens so that the viewer is able to recognize the trend that violence has to destroy an individual’s identity. Although Alex (Malcolm McDowell) clearly associates violence with his own individual identity and sense of self, he consistently reveals the impossibility of remaining an individual in the face of group-oriented violence. The images that music create coincide the destruction of Alex’s identity, either through compliance to a group’s style of violence or through failure to embrace the similarity of group actions associated with violence. As the movie progresses, musical imagery follows the exit and return of his personal identity as a role of his

In his environment Alex does not represent a stereotype of Modern Youth. Unlike his droogs he has significant intellectual and artistic potential. He is smart and calculating and indulges himself with vivid poetic visions through classical music, the height of which is represented by Ludwig van Beethoven. He is an artistic self confined in an environment that severs him from self-expression and self-definition. His artforms and mediums of expression become vandalism, rape, and ultra-violence. In his unrestricted state Alex is truly a-lex, outside the law.

Similarly, the character of Alex McDowell and his actions are presented with methods comparable to that of Bonnie and Clyde. Stanley Kubrick stresses the violence in A Clockwork Orange as a way to show the full extent of his harmful maniacal ways. Narration alone can only tell us so much about his personality and isn't able to comprehensively encompass the significance of the violence attributed to Alex. It isn't until we see the crimes being committed in vivid detail that we are able to recognize the true nature of Alex’s moral extent. This illustrates him as the character he is meant to be as per the novella written by Anthony Burgess. We learn through wide angle shots of the moments leading up to the raping of a helpless woman, that Alex is entirely comfortable with the sadistic action and even finds it amusing. Upward facing camera angles that specifically place his face as the focal point are used during this scene and many others like it to enunciate his sinister appearance. They are used to show that as a person, Alex enjoys these all to pernicious behaviors. The excessive realness of the scenes only supports our understanding of his lack of humanity. Alex’s aggressiveness is magnified by the way he senselessly beats the old man under the bridge and the husband of the raped woman. Incorporating an undisturbed shot of him doing so allows it make a greater impact on the audience's perception of the character. Just as in Bonnie and Clyde, violence is shown with no