Summary

In London, fifteen-year-old Alex narrates from the Korova Milkbar, where he drinks drug-laced milk with his three friends, Pete, Georgie, and Dim. A drugged-out man down the bar catches Alex's attention. An old popular song on the stereo gains Alex's disfavour, and he hits the drugged-man before they leave the bar.
The boys see an elderly man outside, which is rare since gangs have made the streets unsafe.
They rip up the books he had, strip him and beat him up before letting him go. They also don’t hesitate to beat an old man who is singing songs.They beat him until he bleeds badly.

They come across a rival gang, led by Billybob, in the middle of raping a young girl. They fight with chains and razors, and win the battle despite being outnumbered six to four. The cops come, probably alerted by the raped girl, and both gangs scurry away.
Later in the night, they steal a car and go to a cottage named “HOME”. Alex convinces the woman inside, that he needs to call an ambulance for his sick friend, and she lets him enter.
It’s the house of a writer and his wife. Alex inspects his manuscript titled “A Clockwork Orange”, while the others beat up the man and rape the woman.
They return to the Korova Milkbar. There, a woman sings a piece of an opera Alex knows, and it affects him deeply. Dim mocks her and Alex hits him. Dim threatens to beat him up, and Georgie and Pete affirm Dim's right to be upset. They plan to meet up tomorrow. They go home separately.
Alex goes to his parents' flat in Municipal Flatblock 18A. He eats the dinner his mother has left out for him, then retires to his room. He listens to a violin concerto on his stereo, imagining himself raping young girls as he listens. He thinks more about the people at the “HOME” cottage and wishes he had beaten them harder.
Alex wakes up the next morning tired and not wanting to go to school. His parents go off to work. He wakes up to answer the door for P.R. Deltoid, his “Post-Corrective Adviser.” Deltoid warns him that next time he will get in trouble, he will be sent to jail. Alex placates him but privately justifies his actions.
Alex takes the bus to his favorite record store, where two young girls browse through the pop records. The clerk sells Alex the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony recording he has been waiting for, and Alex invites the two girls, Marty and Sonietta, back to his place to listen to music and have sex. Then, Alex goes to sleep.
When he wakes up, he leaves the flat and finds his gang waiting for him at the entrance. They say they were worried they had offended him, but they also says they don’t like to be ordered like that, they introduce a new way of running things.
On the way to the Korova bar , Alex hears some Beethoven and it inspires him to pull his razor on Georgie, there is a fight between the boys but Alex wins and he makes clear he is still the leader.
When they plan to rob another house, the rest of the gang betray Alex, and Dim hits his eyes with his chain. They leave him on the ground so the police can find him.

Alex is taken to an office with four policemen. He is taken to a cell where he fends off the other criminals. He finally falls asleep and dreams of being in a big field and listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He is woken and taken to the top policeman again, whose stern demeanor makes Alex realises the old woman he beat has died.
Alex is now in State Jail Number 84F, where he is identified as “6655321”. He was sentenced for 14 years. In prison, he has had to deal with brutal wardens, homosexual prisoners, and mindless labor. He has learned from his parents that Georgie was killed during a robbery.
Alex plays solemn music on the stereo for the chaplain in the Wing Chapel on Sunday morning. Alex relates that the chaplain took him under his wing when Alex got interested in the Bible. As part of his education, he is allowed to listen to classical music on the chapel stereo while he reads the Bible. The sex and violence in the Bible appeals to him most.
A day he asks to be given the new treatment he has heard about that quickly frees the prisoner and ensures he remains free. The chaplain says that the treatment - Ludovico's Technique - is still in the experimental stage, and he doubts whether a technique can make a man good, since goodness is chosen. Alex is sent back to his cramped cell with an assortment of despicable prisoners.
Later the Governor and the Minister of the Interior visit Alex. The Governor says “Common criminals” such as Alex need to be cured of their criminal reflexes, and the Minister of the Interior says the Governor can use Alex as a “trailblazer.” Tomorrow, he says, a man Brodsky will deal with him.This treatment will eliminate Alex's desire to “commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State’s Peace”. Alex claims it will be nice to be good, though he does not really believe this.
The next morning, Alex is sent to a new building nearby that resembles a hospital. Dr. Branom, assistant to Dr. Brodsky, signs Alex in, and sends him off to a clean bedroom, where he changes into new pajamas. As Dr. Branom examines Alex, he explains that they will show Alex “special films,” and that after every meal he will receive a shot in the arm. He finds himself weak afterward, and a male nurse pushes him off in a wheelchair.
Alex is wheeled to an unconventional movie theater. One of the doctors straps Alex's head to the chair to keep his head still and force him to watch the screen; Alex does not understand, since he wants to look at the films. The doctors also clip Alex's eyelids to keep them open. The doctors say the film will be “a real show of horrors” and will make him sick.
Dr. Brodsky enters, the lights go out and the film starts. The film graphically depicts two young men beating up an old man. As Alex watches this, he feels physically unwell. The next film displays a brutal gang rape. Alex feels much worse despite knowing the films cannot be real. Alex begs the doctors to stop the movie. They laugh and tell him they have hardly started.
Two weeks have past and the cure of Alex is almost complete. Any violent act makes him sick, so do thougts about violence or death. But he isn’t a good citizen until he has done the final test.
The demonstration begins. A spotlight shines on Alex as a big man comes over and insults him. The man flicks Alex with his fingers and causes pain in other ways as the audience laughs. Alex reaches for his razor, but the mental image of the man in pain makes him sick. The man continues insulting and flicking him, and Alex tries to give him the razor as a present. The man rejects it, and Alex licks the man's boots. He receives a kick for his efforts. The man falls accidentally and Alex helps him up. Before the man can hit him again, Dr. Brodsky stops the demonstration. He lauds the experiment, but the chaplain objects that it removes moral choice.

Dr. Brodsky asks attention for the next demonstration. A beautiful young lady accompanies Alex on stage. Alex's first thought is of having violent sex with her, and he immediately gets sick. To remedy the sickness, he throws himself at her feet and makes a worshipful speech. Dr. Brodsky and the Minister of the Interior proclaim the experiment an unqualified success. The chaplain says “it works all right, God help the lot of us.”
After interviews and more demonstrations and a night of sleep, Alex is a free man.
He plans to go home, listen to music, and to plan what to do with his life.
He is surprised to find the flat is cleaned up. He unlocks his door and finds his parents eating breakfast with a burly man. The man tells Alex to leave, while his mother cries and fears Alex has escaped from jail. The man is introduced as Joe, a lodger, but he claims he is more of a son to Alex's parents than Alex is.
His father explains that they have a contract with Joe for two years and they cannot kick him out. Alex cries, but Joe urges the parents to remain tough. Alex says no one loves him and that they all want him to keep on suffering; Joe says Alex has made others suffer and deserves to suffer himself. Alex leaves, making them feel guilty and claiming they will never see him again.
Alex returns to the Korova Milkbar. There he hears some classical music that makes him sick. He try to kill himself but the thought of it is enough to make him more sick. After all he decides to go to the library where he hopes to find other ways to commit suicide.
At the library, Alex finds a medical book full of drawings of diseases makes him sick. The Bible, with its stories of violence, also makes him sick. He tells a man nearby that he wants to end his life. The man comforts him at first until he realizes who Alex is, and Alex realizes who he is: the man with the science books his gang beat up more than two years ago a day before he was send to jail. The man tells the other old people in the library that Alex is the one who ruined the rare Crystallography books and beat him up. Alex says he has been punished and cured, but before he can go, several old men grab him. Alex gets sick as they hit him. An attendant tries to stop them but cannot, so he goes to call the police, a measure Alex never thought he would support. After more thrashing, the police finally arrive and break up the fight.
The police beat the old people, then address Alex. They turn out to be his old enemy, Billybob, and his old friend, Dim. They accuse Alex of starting trouble with the old people and put him in their car. Dim refuses to acknowledge his past with Alex. They drive him off into the country, pound him mercilessly, and leave him on the ground. Alex has little money and nowhere to go. He cries and begins walking.
Alex walks through the rain to the “HOME” cottage. He knocks on the door and asks the man inside to help him, as the police have beaten him and left him to die. The kindly man takes Alex in, and Alex remembers he is the writer of the manuscript for “A Clockwork Orange.” He feels safe knowing the man will not know him, since Alex used to wear a mask during his crimes. The man, F. Alexander, lets Alex take a hot bath and gives him food. F. Alexander says he read about Alex in the newspaper, and he feels it was providential that he came to him.

Careful not to reveal his past identity, Alex allows that he has heard of “A Clockwork Orange,” though he has not read it. He relates his story, starting from the murder through his treatment. F. Alexander is sympathetic to Alex. He wants to use Alex to dislodge the “overbearing Government.” He also mentions that his wife died from a brutal rape and beating. Alex gets sick thinking about the episode, and F. Alexander sends him to bed.
He stays there for a while but he makes some suspicious remarks and those are enough for F. Alexander to remember who he really is. He sends him to bed and the following morning he wakes up by classical music that is extremely loud. His room is locked so he is obliged to listen to the music. He yells for them to turn it off and bangs against the wall in agony, but the music stays on. Running around the apartment, he sees the word “DEATH” on the cover of an anti-government pamphlet. Another pamphlet has a picture of an open window on it, and both inspire Alex to commit suicide by jumping out of the window. He climbs out the open window in his room and jumps.
Alex hits the sidewalk from his jump and, before he passes out, realizes that F. Alexander's friends had set it up for him to commit suicide so they could blame it on the Government. He wakes up in a hospital. Bandaged considerably, he does not feel any sensation. A pretty nurse is standing by his bed. Alex tries to tell her to sleep with him, but he cannot speak correctly because some teeth are missing. She leaves and Alex quickly falls asleep again, though he is sure the nurse has brought back doctors to look at him.
Alex falls asleep and has several dreams about violence and sex, but he does not feel sick. He asks the nurse if the doctors have been tinkering with his head, but she doesn’t answer.
A few days later, doctors test Alex by showing him pictures and asking him what he thinks. He has violent and sexual reactions, and the doctors tell him he is cured. It appears that they have reconditioned him and reversed the effects of Ludovico's Technique while he was unconscious.
He recuperates for a while. One day, the Minister of the Interior visits, accompanied by the press. He shakes Alex's hand. The Minister encourages Alex to call F. Alexander's group his enemies. The Minister informs Alex that after F. Alexander “formed this idea” that Alex had raped and killed his wife, he became a menace and was put away for his and Alex's protection. He says Alex will be rewarded for “helping us.” The reporters take pictures of the two smiling, and the Minister gives Alex a stereo as a present. Alex asks for them to play Beethoven's Ninth, and everyone clears out while he listens. He signs something without knowing or caring what it is, and imagines cutting the face of the whole world with his razor while he listens. “I was cured all right,” he thinks.

The Author

Anthony Burgess was a diversely talented Englishman whose reputation, rests almost exclusively on his best-known (and his least favourite) work, the novel A Clockwork Orange. The 1962 futuristic novel, an impassioned yet even-handed plea for the necessity of human free will, stirred up controversy with its ultra-violent content narrated largely through a Russian-influenced slang of Burgess's invention, “nadsat.” The 1971 film version by Stanley Kubrick provoked enough “copycat” crimes (a great irony, considering both the book and film decry unconscious, deterministic acts, yet tolerate evil so long as it is willfully chosen) that Kubrick banned the showing of it in the United Kingdom in 1973 (only recently was the ban repealed).
But Burgess was a far more complete artist than A Clockwork Orange suggests. Born John Anthony Burgess Wilson on Feb. 25, 1917, in Manchester, England, to Catholic parents, his mother died when he was two, and he was brought up by his aunt and later his stepmother. He studied English at Xaverian College and Manchester University and, after graduation in 1940, served in the British Army Education Corps during World War II as the musical director of a special services unit, entertaining troops in Europe. He was an education officer in Malaya and Brunei from 1954 to 1959, adding to the eventual total of nine languages in which he was fluent.

By the time he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 1959, Burgess had already published his Malayan trilogy of Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959). Burgess returned to England and, with the prospect of only one year left of life, industriously rattled off five books in 1960 and eleven between 1960 and 1964. He outlived the doctors' prognosis by 33 years but continued his prolific pace. A lapsed Catholic whose early religious views maintained some influence over him, Burgess wrote over fifty books, numerous critical studies (notably of Shakespeare and James Joyce) and journal articles, and screenplays and teleplays (he was even called upon to devise a prehistoric language for the film “Quest for Fire”). But his preferred field was classical music, and he wrote several accomplished symphonies (Burgess also integrated music with his prose writing; his 1974 novel The Napoleon Symphony structurally mirrors Beethoven's Eroica Symphony). Burgess held distinguished academic posts and lived in places as far-flung as Malta throughout the 1970s, and he maintained a steady literary output until his death from lung cancer in London on Nov. 26, 1993.

Main Ideas

Choice: The primary and most controversial idea in A Clockwork Orange is voiced repeatedly by F. Alexander and the prison chaplain: without choice and free will, man is no longer human but a “clockwork orange”, a deterministic mechanism. Free will, Burgess and his liberal mouthpieces argue, is necessary to maintain our humanity, both individually and communally; revolutions are built on free will.
However, free will becomes problematic in other ways when we extend it to the community. Alex's unhindered free will violates what philosopher John Stuart Mill termed the “harm principle,” that any action is permissible so long as it does not harm anyone else. Burgess presents unequivocal evidence that Alex's immoral acts do harm others, so the question for A Clockwork Orange is whether it is better to allow harmful free will, or safely curb it. Burgess still maintains we should permit harmful free will, since goodness is authentic only if it is chosen; if goodness is forced, as is done to Alex through Ludovico's Technique, it is inhuman and mechanical.
Burgess also refutes the argument that ethical goodness has any relationship to aesthetic goodness. Alex comments on a newspaper article that proposes moralizing London's youth through the fine arts. Alex has refined taste in classical music, especially when compared to his pop song-loving teenage counterparts, but the gorgeous, sophisticated music only riles him up for violence and sex. When music becomes associated with immorality for Alex through Ludovico's Technique, Burgess demonstrates the utter malleability of aesthetics and ethics.
Burgess complicates matters more by suggesting that Alex's inclination toward evil is somewhat mechanistic as well. While Alex does gain satisfaction from committing violent acts, he does so in as reflexive a manner as he avoids violence after Ludovico's Technique. Burgess subscribes to the Biblical idea that man has Original Sin (see Original Sin over environmental behaviorism, below), and that condition implies a lack of choice. We see the mark of Original Sin everywhere in A Clockwork Orange, notably in the form of the Government - the doctors and other state officials have just as much sadism and evil intentions as Alex's gang of thugs. Nevertheless, a person with Original Sin certainly retains more free will than a subject of Ludovico's Technique, and Burgess also believes in redemption; Alex can choose goodness in Part Three, Chapter 7 on his own, once he has matured beyond the impetuosity of youth.
Original Sin over environmental behaviorism: P.R. Deltoid and the rest of society believe that the environment is somehow responsible for the immorality of London's youth. They believe that with proper parental and academic discipline, not to mention a bulked-up police force, youth will comport itself more appropriately.

This form of deterministic thinking ignores the Christian idea, embraced particularly by Catholicism (Burgess was a lapsed Catholic), that Adam and Eve's fall has blemished man with Original Sin. Just as there exists an impulse to do good, there exists an equally powerful impulse to do bad that cannot be reasoned away; as Alex says, “what I do I do because I like to do.” He does not blame his evil-doing on the environment; rather, evil-doing like his has created London's quasi-apocalyptic environment.

At the end of the novel, Alex states his opinion in more overtly religious terms: as long as God keeps spinning the earth around, young men will continue to act immorally. By equating Original Sin with God's control over the earth, Burgess points out that Original Sin implies a certain lack of free will: we do not choose to act immorally, it has chosen us. However, Alex's maturation in Part Three, Chapter 7 provides hope for Christian redemption: over time, we can erase the effects of Original Sin by choosing goodness.


The oppression of Socialism: The government in A Clockwork Orange, or “Government,” as it is called, is socialistic in many forms. While Burgess critiques capitalism at times, overall he seems to value the ostensible abundance of free will in an ostensibly free market; conversely, he abhors the lack of freedom in government-controlled societies. The Government owns all property; every able-bodied citizen is forced to work; jails are brutal and expanding; and the Government controls the media.
Burgess focuses most on this last element. Alex mentions “Statefilm”, the Government-produced cinema, and briefly describes his disdain for television and its numbing effect on the masses. The Government uses mass media as propaganda and to sedate the populace, and Burgess draws analogies between mass media and Ludovico's Technique. Both exercise a form of mind-control over their helpless victims, either outright (in Alex's case) or subliminally forced (as with the populace) to watch Government-produced films that make them obey the state (again, much more obviously in Alex's case).
The novel ends pessimistically when we learn that F. Alexander and his group has been shut down and that the increasingly totalitarian Government will win re-election. However, Alex's newfound desire to join the middle-class suggests that perhaps his generation will come to understand how oppressive the Government is and overthrow it.

Immaturity of youth culture: Burgess parodies his contemporary British youth culture of the 1950s and 60s through a terrifying projection of them. In lieu of conventional youth slang, the teens have adapted an almost entirely new language with which Alex narrates the novel, nadsat. While influenced by Russian, which complements the socialistic world of A Clockwork Orange (see The oppression of Socialism, above), nadsat is also at times infantile; the words “appy polly loggy” (for “apology”), “eggiweg” (for “egg”), and “moloko” (for “milk”) sound like they issued from the mouths of babes.
Burgess's decisions for which words become nadsat words are rarely incidental. These three examples, for instance, pertain directly to youth and free will. Eggs and milk are symbolic of birth and infancy (note, too, that the teenage hoodlums drink milk laced with drugs, and Alex, especially, seems fascinated by breasts). Moreover, Alex never delivers a heartfelt, willful apology throughout the novel; since he never fully chooses his actions, but immaturely and rashly heads into them, he does not have the adult capacity for remorse.
Alex matures in Part Three, Chapter 7, the 21st chapter of the novel and one symbolic of maturity (at the time, the voting age in England was 21, and is considered a rite of passage into adulthood). He also overcomes the Oedipal tensions in the novel: F. Alexander temporarily becomes Alex's father figure, and since Alex raped (and killed) F. Alexander's wife, it is as though he had sex with his own mother. In the 21st chapter, Alex decides he wants to have his own son, a sign that he is through with his Oedipal fascination with violence, breasts, and milk.
Structural symmetry: Burgess was a great lover of classical music and a composer. He sought to integrate more completely musical techniques into literature, and his main contribution to musical literature in A Clockwork Orange, aside from Alex's great love for Beethoven and other composers, is the symmetrical arrangement of chapters. The three parts of the novel each contain seven chapters, and the descending chapters of the third part usually reverse the ascending chapters of the first part. The effect of these reversals is highly musical and discordant, and follows a symphonic rise and fall. For instance, Alex delights in a beautiful opera piece about suicide in the Korova Milkbar in Part One, Chapter 3, while he is so tortured by classical music in Part Three, Chapter 5 that he tries to commit suicide. Burgess uses other musical techniques, such as peppering the novel with verbal leitmotifs (i.e. “What's it going to be then, eh?”), to complement his musical, nadsat-based prose. The philosophical point of the symmetry is to underscore the change Ludovico's Technique, comprising the middle Part Two, has wrought in Alex's life. He goes from being the victimizer to victim, willful agent of evil to deterministic subject of good

Personal Appreciation

I found it a very hard book to read. Alex, who narrates his story, speaks in a teenage language called “nadsat”. This language is a mix of English and Russian. Some words are easy to understand thanks to the context, but most aren’t. For instance: krovvy (means “blood”), baboochka (means “an old woman”), cutter (“money”).
In the beginning this language is quite boring, you don’t really want to read further. But after a while you get accustomed and it gives a new dimension to the story. It’s like you were a part of Alex’s gang. I don’t complain about the use of this language because it really helps you to identify yourself with Alex. I think it would be more difficult with a normal language, because the way Alex is thinking or acting is not really the way I should do.
I found the book very interesting. This is a fiction roman but it could be a real story. It shows how young people are thinking and how they grow up and become mature.

This book treats of teenagers but I don’t think it would be a good book for young people.
Some scenes are extremely violent and maybe they could take example on it. I think Burgess also thought about it. Maybe that’s the reason why he wrote in a such difficult way ( to prevent too young people to read it).
Some moments I was really astonished by Alex, he seems to have a great intelligence. He always finds a way to get out of not wanted situations. I think Alex has become a paranoid because of his education, it’s indirectly the fault of his parents. He his a young boy who wants to act rebel but nobody shows him the right way to behave, nobody explains him that acting violently is bad. In fact he has no frontiers.
My opinion about the treatment is that they search for a solution when there is no solution. Instead of a remedy against criminality they should prevent it.
Burgess gives much details, what makes it difficult to summarize the story in only 3 pages. Everything is important. When something insignificant happens in the beginning of the story, it seems to have big consequences at the end. For instance when they beat a scientific, or when Alex sings a song.
This book was also filmed in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. In fact that’s the reason why I chose this book. I thought the film was amazing. I usually don’t like films from books, but this is a rare case where the film is as good as the book. There are very few differences, some dialogues are literaly taken from the book. In the film the last chapter is missing.
The story shows how vindictive people are. Alex is hated by everyone, while he has cured. There is a beatiful sentence that proves this: Joe says: “You made others suffer, It’s only right that you should suffers proper”
The book also gives a view of how politicians really think. They always try to be popular.
In every phase of Alex’s treatment they try to get advantage of the situation. When Alex was a criminal they tried to arrest him ( people approve this and it gives them a good reputation ), when he is in jail they try to make a good man of him ( people approve this too) and when he is free again, they don’t hesitate to inverse the treatment. It will makes him violent again but also make the reputation of other politician worse.
It was a very instructive book and I surely would advise it.