The Edges Of Empathy By Anthony Burgess

One of the themes that was pointed out through the book is, family is worth dying for. Alex proves this over and over again when he chooses to walk to Warren where his family is. He could have easily stayed and found a safer way out but he needed his family so much that he risked his life to walk through ash and snow just to

         Burgess does not characterize Alex as just a murderous rapist.  To come to terms with his wife's death, he had to believe that it is inhuman to be totally good or totally evil (Burgess ix).  In the final chapter, Alex undergoes a moral transformation; "he grows bored with violence and recognizes that human energy is better expended on creation than destruction" (vii).  Burgess could not believe that the men who raped his wife were totally evil, so Alex had to redeem himself by living a normal life.

Everybody lives their lives differently. In the novel Every Day by David Levithan the main character, who goes by A, takes spending a day in somebody else’s shoes literally. Every day, A is someone else. He sees almost every situation people are put into including how they react to it. All of the things A sees impacts him as a person. A tries to help anyone he encounters for the better. People in general learn from what they experience or see and knowing what others around you go through can make you feel sympathy for them. The way different people act to different things is normally about what they have been through. A having seen what people have been though, tries to help the people he becomes, even if it is only for a day. If we could

Linking the fundamental conflict between individual identity and societal identity with musical imagery in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange creates a lens through which one can recognize the tendency that violence has to destroy an individual’s identity. Although Alex 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. Images drawn from the realm of music parallel the destruction of Alex’s identity, either through conformity to a group’s style of violence or through failure to embrace the homogeneity of group actions

Finally, at the end of the novel in Part Three, Alex is “cured” and has reverted back to his previous state of having a choice between being good or evil, thus acquiring that sense of free will once more.

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

Previous research suggests that Alex DeLarge, a fictional character created by Anthony Burgess, was the epitome of evil. However, previous research has not considered the environmental, socio-economical, and physiological dispositions that molded him into the person he became. Hence, in this paper, it is argued that Alex DeLarge is at a greater risk for Antisocial Personality Disorder than most members of the general population. This is important because it allows us to view beyond the theatrics and the metaphors into a character that is mentally unstable not a villainous caricature in the eyes of the audience.

The government controls Alex’s free will by means of the Ludovico Technique, which makes Alex physically ill at the mere consideration of violent thoughts. When Alex is in the “staja” the Governor states that criminals “can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex…”. The Governor does not understand that criminal intent is not an unrestrained reaction, but the result of autonomy. The voice of reason in the prison is the prison Chaplin who questions the ethics of interfering with God’s gift of moral choice, “goodness comes from within….goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man”. Again through one of his characters, Burgess is stating that inhibiting a person’s free will is more evil than a person’s ability to choose evil over good. If one cannot choose, one ceases to be human and is exactly like a machine controlled by the government.

Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, a critically acclaimed masterstroke on the horrors of conditioning, is unfairly attacked for apparently gratuitous violence while it merely uses brutality, as well as linguistics and a contentious dénouement, as a vehicle for deeper themes.

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,

As time progresses and social environments change, the standards of proper moral conscience and mental health begin to change. Alex, the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, is a person who by modern ethical standards is a psychopath with no moral conscience. The lack of proper authority in the future version of England presented in A Clockwork Orange allows for the prevalence of pseudo-families that act as the main influences on the lifestyles of teenagers such as Alex. Alex explains within the first page of the novel how he and his “three droogs” spent a lot of time “making up [their minds] what to do with” their almost unlimited free time (A Clockwork Orange 3). During their escapades, they commit crimes such as robbery, assault, rape, and eventually,

In the novel A Clockwork Orange Alex the protagonist comes in contact with a lot of people who try to change who he is. On one hand we have P.R. Deltoid who tries to talk reason to him trying to change him by talking to him, on the other hand we have Dr. Brodsky who attempts to change him through a more primitive more violent way. It is ironic that the new way how to “cure” Alex’s urges is to show him violence. Even in the time in which A Clockwork Orange is set it is controversial. The so called Ludovico technique is controversial as it takes away the choice of being “good” and instead forces Alex to submit to the pain and to surrender to what is happening to him. Before Alex is given off to be cured, he talks to the Prison Charlie who tells him: “Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” (pg.67). With this the Prison Charlie tells Alex that with giving in to this treatment he will lose the choice of being bad and will be forced to be what the government wants him to be.

. . there's no law nor order no more" pg 14. He takes on a role of authority in a society of anarchy. Although he is impervious to the choice of good, Alex does not remain ignorant to this choice throughout the entire novel. In the beginning, he believes that violence is the only way to prove his control. This then leads to his loss of control through the loss of his ability of choice. Only in the very end Alex finally become a well-rounded character. He realizes that he does not have to choose evil and abuse his position to prove his right of choice. "But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers? pg 148. Alex now knows that his future is open for his choices to lead him. For good or for evil, it is his right to decide, and this is what truly proves his freedom of choice.

  In 1962, Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange was published for the first time. This novel was an anti-utopian fable about the near future, where teenage gangs habitually terrorize the inhabitants of a shabby metropolis. The novel deals with the main focus that man is a sinner but not sufficiently a sinner to deserve the calamities that are heaped upon him. It is a comic novel about a man's tragic lot. (Bergonzi 152).

The technique is a scientific experiment designed to take away moral choice from criminals. The technique conditions a person to feel intense pain and nausea whenever they have a violent thought. The key moral theme of A Clockwork Orange is articulated during a chat between the alcoholic prison chaplain and Alex two weeks before he enters treatment. He reflects on the moral questions raised by the treatment that will force Alex to be good. “Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed on him?” The government experiment fails to realize that good and evil come from within the self. The Ludovico Technique messes with Alex’s internal clockwork. He transforms into a being that is unable to distinguish good from evil. The altering of his personality makes him, “as decent a lad as you would meet on a May morning, unvicious, unviolent…inclined to the kindly word and helpful act,” but his actions are dictated only by self-interest to avoid the horrible sickness that comes along with evil thoughts. He has no real choice, “he ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature of moral choice.” Being stripped of his free will, Alex is no longer a human he is the government’s toy. “Choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice [does not mean] you have in a sense really chosen the good.”