Triumph of Free Will in Anthony Burgess A Clockwork...

Triumph of Free Will in A Clockwork Orange Amidst a population composed of perfectly conditioned automatons, is a picture of a society that is slowly rotting from within. Alex, the Faustian protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, and a sadistic and depraved gang leader, preys on the weak and the innocent. Although perhaps misguided, his conscientiousness of his evil nature indicates his capacity to understand morality and deny its practice. When society attempts to force goodness upon Alex, he becomes the victim. Through his innovative style, manifested by both the use of original language and satirical structure, British author Anthony Burgess presents in his novella A Clockwork Orange, the moral triumph of free will within the†¦show more content†¦The melodic nature of the language creates vivid imagery, glorifying Alex as an artist (Tilton 107), and furthers the aesthetics of violence. Because Alex’s alienation from a robotic society serves as the manifest purpose of the slang language, the reader must quickly i dentify with Alex in order to understand the contrived language, and also to empathize with Alex’s unjust world. Considering the severity of Alex’s corruption , his society deems that it is the absolute lawful duty to purify his nature, but this arouses the debate over whether the origin of Alex’s depravity is in fact his inborn nature, or whether it was the result of an influential society. According to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, man is born good but it is society and civilization which corrupts him (Mazour 423). Following a more Hobbesian approach, comparable to the doctrine of original sin, officials in Burgess’s novel deem that Alex was born evil and must be changed into good. Although these two views contrast each other in the sense that they emphasize innate good or innate evil, they are similar in the sense that they both profess predestined nature. When Alex is questioned by a mentor as to the origins of his delinquency, he adamantly dictates that he willfully chooses to be bad, that lewdies are good because they like it (40) and that he behaves with such am oral intent simply because he likes to do so(40).Show MoreRelatedComparison of a Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies2273 Words   |  10 Pagesâ€Å"Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.†Ã‚   How do Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange and William Golding in Lord of the Flies reflect violence and social responsibility? Both Lord of the Flies, first published in 1954 and A Clockwork Orange, published eight years later, focus on the inherent human capabilities for evil as well as good. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously posits that ‘whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and