A Clockwork Orange

The first three chapters are a chilling account of Alex’s and his droogs’ violent impulses and actions. The young teenagers are left unsupervised and unaccountable for their actions; they appear to lack any moral or ethical sensibility as they senselessly batter vulnerable people, destroy public property, and rob and rape without remorse. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this behavior is that it often arises from boredom: “So I yelped: ‘Out out out out!’ like a doggie, and then I cracked this veck sitting next to me.” “‘Where out?’ said Georgie. “‘Oh, just to keep walking,’ I said, ‘and viddy what turns up, O my little brothers’” (7). Alex implores his gang to leave the drug-fueled confines of the Korova Milkbar to go on a violent rampage that begins with roughing up an old scholar coming out of the library and culminates in a home invasion replete with brutality and a horrific sexual assault. They also engage in equally senseless destruction of public property: “To pass the three-minute ride [on the train] we fillied about with what they called the upholstery, doing some nice horrorshow tearing-out of the seats’ guts and old Dim chaining the okno till the glass cracked” (31). This kind of disrespect for public spaces is echoed by the vandalism that Alex observes—with approval—in his housing complex.

In contrast to this thuggish behavior, Alex adheres to a fairly rigid moral code. From his loyalty to his droogs to his disgust over customers who become too intoxicated with drugs or alcohol, Alex reveals himself to be a fastidious young man. For example, Alex has a clear judgment of the man at the milkbar who ingested too many mind-altering drugs and is now babbling incoherently: “Now, that’s very nice but very cowardly. You were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God” (6). Later, outside the Duke of York pub, he is disgusted by an elderly drunken man: “I never could stand to see a moodge all filthy and rolling and burping and drunk, no matter what his age might be” (17). This meticulous habit of mind is what often puts Alex at odds with Dim, who is frequently messy and uncouth. When the gang is in the middle of the home invasion, Alex is repulsed when his fellow droogs raid the refrigerator and sloppily eat and drink: “I didn’t like that, it being dirty and slobbery, so I said: ‘Drop that mounch. I gave no permission’” (27). This is evidence of his self-appointed role as leader and, concomitantly, the group’s moral arbiter.

Alex also has an abiding love of music, particularly classical music. While this may seem surprising, it is revealed that this love of music is inextricably linked to the stoking of Alex’s violent impulses. The song that so excites Alex at the milkbar is from a German opera; more importantly, the scene recounted in the song “was the bit where she’s snuffing it with her throat cut” (33). When Dim yells over the song and laughs derisively, Alex sucker punches him because his violent reverie has been interrupted. Later, when he is listening to music in his bedroom before sleeping, he fantasizes about men and women “lying on the ground screaming for mercy” while he beats and kicks them, in addition to indulging in rape fantasies and masturbation (39). With this, Alex’s love of music—especially given his preference for high art and high culture—is not meant to redeem him.

Alex’s relationship with books and authors calls into question his ability to connect with artistic creation in any morally meaningful way. The first violent encounter of the night is with a man emerging from a library with some rare, scientific books in his hands. Alex’s immediate impulse is to destroy the volumes: “I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls of like snowflakes” (9). During the home invasion, Alex discovers that his victim is an author working on something called A Clockwork Orange. After reading a bit of it and finding that he does not readily understand it, he decides to destroy the manuscript. He is even more repulsed by the writer than the scholar: “so here was another intelligent type bookman type like that we’d fillied with some hours back, but this one was a writer not a reader” (26). Alex conflates the author with authority, and he rejects all attempts from authority to socialize or regulate his behavior. Thus, the scholar and the writer are his enemies. When the gang commits their crimes, they wear masks, and while the rest of the group wear political or musical masks—Benjamin Disraeli, Elvis Presley, and Henry VIII—Dim is stuck with what Alex calls “Peebee Shelley” (13). This refers to the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelly, or P.B. Shelley. Dim is therefore associated with the writers that Alex both disparages and despises. This, in turn, marks Dim as his enemy, foreshadowing what is to come.

The book begins in medias res, or in the middle of things, linking it to the epic tradition. In the novel’s first sentence, Alex asks his droogs, “What’s it going to be then, eh?” (3). The reader meets the gang already out at the milkbar, consuming spiked drinks and conspiring. One immediately gets the sense that this is one night out of many; it is neither the first nor the last night during which Alex’s gang entertains themselves at others’ expense. Only one incident gives the reader pause about this seemingly tight-knit band of brothers’ future: Alex’s assault on Dim and his subsequent dictatorial assertion of leadership reveals a potentially serious misjudgment on his part. When Dim mentions that he might “be just that malenky bit late” for their late-night merriment the following evening (36), the atmosphere turns a “malenky” bit ominous.