A Clockwork Orange

1136 Words5 Pages
“A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess Exemplar Essay on Theme of Free Will The question of free will, and the role it plays in being human, is the central theme of “A Clockwork Orange”. Free will is the freedom to make a choice and, even if what is chosen is bad, the principle of free will is not something to be compromised. The idea that exercising free will is essential to being a person underlies the novel’s philosophical nature. The centrality of the theme is reflected in the novel’s title. In Chapter 2, when Alex reads from the manuscript in the cottage that he has broken into, he discovers that the man is writing a book called “A Clockwork Orange”. The writer of the manuscript, F. Alexander, argues that a person is a living, developing being, a “creature of growth and capable of sweetness, like an orange”. An attempt to control and direct the behaviour of such a being is ethically wrong because it reduces the person to the level of a machine; hence the image of a clockwork orange. We find out later that F. Alexander has a political agenda of his own, but the point he is making here remains valid. Burgess then shows the consequences of treating a person like a machine, as Alex gradually loses his free will and is turned into a clockwork orange. Alex feels intuitively the importance of free will when he observes a drugged customer in the milkbar in the first chapter. Alex takes certain drugs as a stimulant, and he shows contempt for the customer who loses his identity under the influence of other drugs. “You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care,” he says. Alex, on the other hand, is very aware of himself and what he wants, and in the following chapter we see him freely choosing to beat and rape. It is significant that the image of a person as a growing, developing being, the image of a clockwork orange, occurs in a situation
Open Document