10) Quotes on Some of the Themes in the Book

All quotes from the website shmoop.com

Firstly the perennial theme of Good versus Evil. This is possibly the strongest link to Brighton Rock. Consider the quotes and the thoughts afterwards. Have a think about them and bring your ideas into class!
http://www.shmoop.com/clockwork-orange/good-vs-evil-quotes.html


Next, and following on from and overlapping with Good v Evil is the idea of morality.
http://www.shmoop.com/clockwork-orange/morality-ethics-quotes.html

Fate and free will is another issue that ties in with the previous two. Try to consider them all together.
http://www.shmoop.com/clockwork-orange/fate-free-will-quotes.html

Alex's transformation or 'cure' is the core of the book, the Ludovico technqiue being the central part (part 2). These quotes focus on this and of course, raise questions about free will.
http://www.shmoop.com/clockwork-orange/transformation-quotes.html

9) Mini Essay Questions (Class and home work)

Once you have read up to the end of part two...

1) Make notes on arguments for and against the Ludovico Technique.

2) In your opinion, how are we supposed to react to the character of Alex? Refer to the plot, the language, and the wider issues such as the Ludovico Technique.

8) More sites with info and resources on 'Clockwork...'

Other sites to explore as you read...

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-clockworkorange/

(limited access)

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/clockworkorange/

Including a Nadsat glossary.

7) Part 2 Chapters 5-7

Read part 2 of the book, chapter 5-7.
Then study the follwing page and make notes on summary and analysis:
http://www.gradesaver.com/a-clockwork-orange/study-guide/section4/

6) Part 2 Chapters 1-4

Read part 2 chapters 1-4.

Then read and make notes from the following page with summary and analysis: http://www.gradesaver.com/a-clockwork-orange/study-guide/section3/

Click here to see a clip from the film showing the Ludovico technique.

5) Nature versus Nurture

The Nature versus Nurture debate

(Some ideas to consider after reading part one)

Essentially this comes down to whether one believes that humans are born ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Or, whether innate qualities (what we’re like when we’re born) are more important than the environment that we grown up in (parents, housing, media etc) in determining how we behave. This is a simplification of the debate but serves as a starting point.

On the one hand, some have believed that human are born as innocent, inherently good and even noble beings. It is the influence of society that makes people act in selfish, cruel or evil ways. This standpoint is sometimes referred to as the ‘noble savage’ and is often (mistakenly) attributed to the French philosopher Rousseau. Whilst Rousseau did not invent the term ‘noble savage’ he did criticise what he saw as the corrupting influence of traditional education and affirmed man’s innate goodness.

On the other side of the debate stands the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who, in his book Leviathan, wrote that "during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man". In this state, he wrote, any person has a natural right to do anything to preserve his own liberty or safety, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Basically Hobbes felt that we need laws and rules to keep the selfish side of human nature in check.

In William Golding’s* Lord of the Flies the boys, left alone on a desert island turn against one another and the suggestion seems to be that without the restrictions of their schools and the authority of adults children will revert to savagery. The issue is complicated by the fact that they boys are on the island because they were escaping from a war. So one might argue that their turn to savagery is an imitation of the conflict they have witnessed in the wider world.

Some philosophers these days would argue that the whole nature versus nurture debate is simply naïve since it appears obvious that both one’s genetic make up and one’s environment are important factors in an individual’s development.

It is still worth considering the two extreme views that Alex can either be considered ‘evil’ or that he is himself a victim of society. Alex lives in a society where everyone has to work. Therefore he is neglected by his parents. He seems to be surrounded by a kind of nightmarish concrete jungle (see the description of the flats where he lives). He is beaten by the police when he is arrested.

Alternatively, can we view Alex as a young man who has somehow escaped the usual restrictions of society? Can we view his behaviour as somehow aberrant or a perversion of normal behaviour and so he needs to re-educated, re-conditioned, or re-programmed.

The latter view is called bahaviourism and will be considered later.

Have a look at some of the links below and develop your own ideas about Alex, his place in society and how society might deal with someone like Aaex.

Some introductory pages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
http://portal.jarbury.net/essay/rousseau.html

A long and detailed essay
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/12710/a_comparison_of_jeanjacques_rousseau.html

*It is interesting to note that both Golding and Burgess had been school teachers.

4) Part 1 Chapters 5-7

Read chapters 5-7. Then, read the Gradesaver site's summary and analysis.

Focus on the presentation of violence, but also the environment that Alex lives in. Look at the nadsat descriptions of violent acts. How do they alter our view of these acts?

Remember the defintions of dystopia. Write 300 words summing up how Burgess presents a dystopian society in the first part of A Clockwork Orange, with particular reference to youth, violence, crime.

3) Part 1 Chapters 1-4

Read the first four chapters. Then, have a look at the Gradesaver site's summary and analysis. Make notes on Alex's character.

Have a look at the scene where the droogs beat up the homeless man in chapter one by clicking here to access the youtube clip.

Click here to see the attack on HOME.

(Please note that, whilst this clip has been edited, it contains scenes of a violent nature.)

Click here to see the scene where Alex puts his droogs in their place.

2) Dystopia

Dystopia and Dystopian Ideas

A Clockwork Orange describes a dystopian society. The opposite of utopias, or ideal societies, dystopias are severely malfunctioning societies. Dystopian novels such as George Orwell's 1984 portray bleak landscapes, corrupt social institutions, and characters among whom trust or authentic communication is impossible. The Korova Milkbar, where fifteen-year-olds can drink druglaced milk, symbolizes the decadence of the novel's setting, as does the fact that Alex — a charming rapist, killer, and thief — is the most appealing character in the story. Dystopian novels have a rich history and include works such as Jonathan Swift's eighteenth-century classic, Gulliver's Travels. However, they became especially prevalent and popular after World War II, as people increasingly took a dim view of human nature and the possibility for social change. Twentieth-century dystopian works include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

http://www.answers.com/topic/a-clockwork-orange-novel-3

A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is the often futuristic vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence and/or terror, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

See also

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dystopia

1) The title of A Clockwork Orange

First things first: the significance of the title

This is what Anthony Burgess said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

"The title of the book comes from an old London expression, which I first heard from a very old Cockney in 1945: 'He's as queer as a clockwork orange' (queer meaning mad...). I liked the phrase because of its yoking of tradition and surrealism, and I determined some day to use it."

In an introductory essay entitled "A Clockwork Orange Resucked," Burgess writes that the title refers to a person who "has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State."

In other words, and again Burgess's own, it stands for the "application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness."

Here is another quotation from Burgess that sums up nicely the whole issue:

The book was called A Clockwork Orange for various reasons. I had always loved the Cockney phrase 'queer as a clockwork orange', that being the queerest thing imaginable, and I had saved up the expression for years, hoping some day to use it as a title. When I began to write the book, I saw that this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness. But I had also served in Malaya, where the word for a human being is orang.
(From 1985, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, 1978)

So, there are 3 points to made about the title's significance.

1) The phrase 'queer as a clockwork orange', that cockney slang term that Burgess liked the sound of.

2) The title sums up neatly the attempts in the book to apply a mechanistic framework on a human, or to treat a human being as a machine, a kind of immensely intricate clockwork, or as a programmable computer.

3) The word 'orang' in Malaya means man (orangutan meaning man of the forest) and there is a kind of pun on the idea of a clockwork man which of course reinforces point 2.