Part 2 - Clockwork Orange

After reading Part Two of Clockwork Orange, the following adjectives come to mind to describe the happenings in the story: sadistic, evil, cruel, cold-blooded, forgiveness, unsympathetic, and unforgiving. I am surprised that Anthony Burgess was not admitted to a mental hospital after writing this book because this cruel story is a creation of his mind. Basically, part two of Clockwork Orange takes place entirely in jail where Alex turns from predator to prey. Other inmates and guards treat him poorly, dealing beatings and raping him. He dominates the streets outside of jail, but his cellmates and guards teat him as a low life inside the jail.

As in the last post, I have identified a few more analogies that Burgess ha created, which don’t quite go together in a normal world. Alex befriends the prison Chaplain, Charlie who takes a liking to Alex because he is interested in the bible. When Alex reads the bible he is excited by the talk of sex, sin and violence. In addition, Alex greatly enjoys reading about the torture of Jesus and even imagines himself being the person torturing Jesus. As before, Alex listens to Classical music while studying the bible. This is the ultimate analogy that is reversed in the book:

The Bible: Righteousness as Violence: sin

According to Alex, Violence is Righteousness because as he is reading the bible, he thinks that the depicted violence, sex, and wrong doing is god’s message, where as a normal person would understand that violence is a sin.

After reading though blogs of other people in my class who have read Clockwork Orange, I would like to respond to a common theme all the blogs say. Here are the blogs:

MC
TN
MC
DP
MM
MM

Many of these bloggers say, “I disagree with the government for forcing Alex to change and controlling his ability to distinguish right from wrong.”


If I was a government official, the treatment Alex received, the Ludovico technique, would be a perfect solution to a great problem. The government has always experimented with altering behavior and mind control. Instead of keeping people in jail, which ends up costing the government massive amounts of money, they can just treat the prisoners to be “good Christians.” This will reduce crime, save money, and have fewer rebels in society. Sounds crazy, but its true.

I will post again after I finish part three.