The themes in 'A Clockwork Orange' Part 2

Here is a detailed analysis of 'A Clockwork Orange.'

The 2 things I take from this film are 1) that it is in our nature to take advantage of those who are weaker and 2) that without free will we are vulnerable to those who have free will.

This film is based on the 1962 book of the same title by Anthony Burgess set in a dystopian future somewhere in the United Kingdom. The film is told in 2 parts focused on a delinquent dropout named Alex DeLarge who’s obsessed with Beethoven and terrorizing the weak. The 1st half of the film shows Alex in a position of power as the leader of a gang, terrorizing a homeless man, and later, inadvertently saving a woman from being raped by a rival gang. Following this, Alex and his gang invade the home of a couple pretending to need help. Here, he and his gang brutally beat the man and make him watch them rape his wife. 

Dim, backed up by fellow members Georgie and Pete, attempts a coup but Alex, inspired by Beethoven’s 5th, gets the upper hand on them and makes an example of Dim who is also the weakest member of the group.  Alex remains the leader but Dim and the others are resentful and plot revenge. Later, they break into a health retreat where Alex murders a woman. His friends ambush him and leave him at the scene for the police. Alex is arrested, charged, convicted and thrown in prison that’s completely totalitarian with men much older than him. But prisons have become criminal factories and are quickly running out of space. Alex asks the prison chaplain about the Ludovico technique, an experimental treatment that can make him ‘good’ and get him released from prison. Alex gets the attention of the new Minister of the Interior who selects him as a candidate for the new technique which will, in effect, take away his free will and force him to be good. This raises the Biblical question as to why God gave man a choice to sin when He could have easily prevented him from eating off the tree of disobedience. It also raises the question of what is good and what is evil. Is evil the thought or the deed when the thought is forcibly prevented from being acted out? Reforming bad prisoners to be good also sets the doctrines of reformation and punishment against each other. Here, the justification for the technique is the growing prison population. From the Paramoore prison, Alex is transferred to the Ludovico Medical Facility to undergo treatments. 

Each treatment follows the same routine. They first inject him with a drug. They secure him in a straight-jacket in a theater. They fit a contraption with wires on his head. They clamp ‘lid-locks’ on his eyelids to keep him from shutting them. Finally, they fire up the film projector and show clips of various crimes including stock footage of Nazi atrocities. A doctor beside Alex administers drops on his eyeballs to keep them moist. At first, the violence on the screen feels pleasant but this sensation soon gives way to pain as the drugs take effect. The experiments begin to reprogram Alex’s reaction to evil because normal people are supposed to find evil unpleasant. This is important to remember because later in the film, all of the people Alex victimized earlier take their revenge on him and this philosophical question of pleasure being an “abnormal” reaction to evil will have to also apply to those who victimize Alex. This also makes me think of our culture’s obsession with violence and sex in films, books, sports, television news, etc. If pleasure derived from evil is abnormal then Alex is a commentary on society. And this is what I think Kubrick and Burgess (I haven’t read the book) are saying here: that our fixation with violence in the media is abnormal. But is this what it means human? Is violence inseparable from being human?

After completing the Ludovico treatments, the doctors give a private demonstration to show the results of their experiments with Alex. They place him on a stage with a man who attacks Alex. Alex cannot defend himself and suffers pain in trying to do so. Next, a beautiful naked woman appears on the stage but Alex is unable to bring himself to touch her and suffers pain in trying to do so. Representatives from the prison are disappointed with the demonstration and Alex is released back into society as a eunuch. 

He returns home to find that his parents have sold all of his possessions and rented out his room. Next, he’s assaulted on the streets by the wino he attacked early in the film. Unable to defend himself because of the experiments, he crumples to the ground helplessly but is rescued by the police, one of whom happens to be Dim, his former subordinate now in a position of power and authority. Dim and Georgie, also a cop, take Alex to a wooded area where they beat him and dunk his head in a trough of water. That night, Alex finds his way to the home of Mr. Alexander, the man they beat and whose wife they raped earlier in the film. Mr. Alexander (whose wife died from the assault) now lives with a male partner who brings Alex into the house. Since being assaulted by Alex and his droogs, Mr. Alexander has become an outspoken critic of the Ludovico treatments and instantly recognizes Alex from the newspapers. Alex wore a mask during the home invasion and Mr. Alexander doesn’t recognize him right away. He cares for Alex but he plans to use him against the Minister of the Interior who won the election on the success of the technique. Later Alex takes a bath and he whistles the tune ‘Singing in the Rain,’ the same tune he had whistled when he and his droogs assaulted Mr. Alexander and raped his wife. Mr. Alexander overhears the tune and realizes that it was Alex who had assaulted him and raped his wife. Alexander drugs Alex, locks him in a room and cranks up Beethoven’s 5th as loud as it can go. Alexander jumps out of the 2nd story window to escape the pain the experiments connected with hearing the symphony. Here, there’s a parallel between Alexander hearing ‘Singing in the Rain’ and Alex hearing Beethoven’s 5th. The message here is that music can draw painful or pleasant experiences out of our subconsciousness. Mr. Alexander’s experiences are real but Alex’s reaction to hearing Beethoven’s 5 is manufactured by the experiments he went through. Before the experiments, Beethoven’s 5th was a source of pleasure to him. This seems to suggest that the films he associates with violence are more real than the actual violence he commits first-hand. 

After jumping out the window, Alex winds up in the hospital with numerous broken bones. The Minister of the Interior and the doctors are accused of altering Alex’s nature and causing him to attempt suicide by jumping out of the window. While Alex is unconscious, doctors go inside his head and reprogram him back to the way he was originally before the experiments. The Minister of Interior visits Alex and apologizes for subjecting him to the experiments. They strike a deal to change public opinion and the Minister gives Alex a gift of giant speakers blaring classical music. Alex imagines himself having sex in public and proclaims being cured!

The minister seems to believe that making Alex more violent will sway public sentiment against his political foes who are against tampering with free will.