Synopsis of A Clockwork Orange

In A Clockwork Orange, the main character is that of a mildly young child of 15 who, along with his fellow
friends, or 'Droogs', partake in evenings of Ultra-Violence. Ultra Violence consists of random beatings,
theft, destruction, and rape. The main character, Alex, is the self-proclaimed leader of the pack, and makes
judgment on their actions pending on his mood. His Droogs eventually find themselves under his direct
rule, following his every word, and decide to challenge his authority.
The three Droogs (Dim, Georgie, and Pete) join Alex on his romp to a local 'fat farm' to pillage the goods
therein. Inside, Alex stumbles upon the owner of the resort, and after a length scuffle with her, ends up
giving her a blow to the head with a rather large, ceramic replica of an erect penis. When he leaves the
outer gates of the complex, Dim surprises him by smacking a milk bottle against his face. His counterparts
escape while little Alex is left bleeding and blinded to deal with the police.
Upon interrogation of Alex, he discovers that the blow he delivered to the young lady was a fatal one. He is
charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison. While there, he befriends the resident
minister and becomes a helper to his service. The minister, Alex soon discovers, is a part in a new form of
treatment that is trying to be implemented prisons to help 'cure' inmates from committing acts of violence.
Through luck and discussion with the higher officials in the prison, Alex is chose to be a guinea pig for the
experiment, and is sent to become 'inoculated from violence'.
The treatment consisted of Alex being strapped down to a chair in front of a cinema screen, having
electrodes attached to his head, and being kept focused by small pairs of clamps used to disable his ability
to blink. This, along with the injection of an experimental serum, is monitored whilst he views movies of
UltraViolence. The serum leaves him vulnerable to his surroundings, which are destructive films, and
induces such feelings of helplessness, fear, and near-death paralysis, similar to that of drowning. Alex soon
associates this feeling of distraught with the violence, and with the background music being played
throughout the entire ordeal: Beethoven, Alex's main love. The final result is that whenever Alex is
confronted with either violent acts of any kind, or the sweet strings of Ludwig Van, he is soon on his knees
in pain and agony.
When he is released, his parents abandon him. He meets up with a few members of his old gang that have
turned into crooked cops, and with their newfound power and long-lasting loathe of Alex, they beat him
much and leave him for dead, this of which brought on the sickness that he was conditioned for. Stumbling
in the dark for help, he comes across a polite looking residence that looked vaguely familiar. Eventually,
Alex realizes that he is in the presence of a former victim of his, but believes that the owner would not
recognize him.
To his dismay, the author did recognize him after hearing Alex sing a song in a very similar fashion to the
way his attackers did 2 years ago. After slipping a sedative into Alex's wine, Alex wakes up to find himself
in a locked room on the second floor of an apartment high-rise. Through the floorboards, Alex starts to hear
the hateful sounds of Beethoven, and goes into his sickness fits. No exits, No escapes. His only way out is
to jump out of the closed window and end his life. He does just that.
Alex wakes in a hospital. The author was jailed for attempted murder, and the government officials that
started the program were ridiculed and harassed out of their positions. Alex finds himself broken and hurt,
but his thoughts are that of the Ultra-Violence. Alex was cured and ready to live again.
Aspects of Psychology
In A Clockwork Orange, Alex is portrayed as two different people living within the same body. As a
mischievous child raping the world, he as seen as filth. His actions and blatant disrespect towards society
are categorized under that of the common street bum. However, when he is away from his evening attire, he
is that of suave. His clothing, his words, his overall attitude. The distinction between the two is triggered by
the gentle sounds of Ludwig Van Beethoven.
The psychology of Alex would be that of a serial killer. He is a classic example of Darwin's, Skinner's,
Freud's, Erikson's, and Adler's major theories.
Alex is not truly close to any other person that he comes in contact with in the film. He is using his parents
for a place to live, and they show no emotion towards him, good or bad. His love for his gang is not that of
a male/male platonic relationship that is common in brotherhoods. It is that of a marriage of like interests,
when the parties involved loathe each other personally. Society is against him for all his mortal sins. The
only living creature that he shows love for is his snake.
Darwin's theory of man having the same thought process's of animals holds an interesting bearing upon
Alex. Alex's love is for his snake. Generally love is defined by an understanding, or a closeness between
two items. The snake is represented by many things in the natural world today.
Freud's analyzation for the male closeness to the snake is that the person involved is questioning his
sexuality, or his love towards the female gender. Alex keeps coming back to his snake after his nights on
the town, and his first concern with life after he is paroled is his dear snake. This, combined with the fact
that keeps his snake in a chest under his bed ( the most recognized sexual item in an average household),
show's his inadequacies with his sexual performance and his penis. He feels that by keeping in contact with
his snake, he will be more of a man then he already is, thus making him more noticeable and attractive
towards the opposite sex. Therefore, Alex doesn't view his snake as an equal, but as a greater being capable
of becoming a close friend and a security blanket.
The snake is also used in many different cultures to represent the evil and hate that man kind dwells on.
When something evil happens, culture blames all of it's fears upon the snake, the idol of fear. The love that
Alex feels for his snake could fall under the love of understanding. With this love, Alex feels that he can
relate to his snake, and to what society views the snake as. Alex finds the snake to represent sin and the hate
that spawned the world as we know it today. In Genesis, the serpent convinced eve to disobey her god and
to eat an apple from the tree of life, thus causing man to not be eternal, and for woman's childbirth to be
complex and painful. In Christianity, the snake is the originator of sin. Alex feels that he is the modern
bringer of sin.
Alex often finds himself in many situations where he is surrounded with scenes of graphic sex or some sort
of phallic reference. After a night of Ultra-Violence, Alex and his droogs find themselves relaxing at the
Karova Milk Bar drinking Milk Plus, Milk Plus Dreminol, and Milk Plus Synthemesc. The bar is adorned
with images and sculptures of naked women in various positions of sexual encounters, all of which with
exaggerated colors and lengths of fluffy hair. This corresponds with Harlow's experiments with monkey
babies finding comfort in soft items in times of distress. Alex finds comfort in the fluffy hair and softness of
the environment of the bar. When he has committed an act of distressing nature, be it violence or everyday
normal occurrences, he retreats to Karova to bring him a feeling of warmth, satisfaction, and justification of
his previous deeds.
This form of relaxation is common from children of broken homes. Freud believes that the self-image
within a man is shaped in the first 5 years of life. With the response that Alex's parents give to him in his
home-life, it is obvious that they did not offer much love to the growing child. By Freud's belief, if the child
does not receive the proper love from a mother that it should, it will find other means to replace the comfort
that a mother provides. Alex's comfort was the violence and the pleasure brought from a night completed.
There is no reference in the movie about Alex's parents being his natural born parents, or if one of them
died and remarried. My beliefs are that Alex's natural born mother was beaten and eventually left his father.
Alex was in the middle of this action, and like Bandura's findings, the child imitates the action that he
views and takes it as natural, thus using it in everyday life. Alex's aggression upon society are truly the
natural urges and feelings that he experiences, thus making him normal, being unaware of the wrongs that
his violence induces.
In a Freudian aspect, this could explain a vast majority of his aggression that he displays. His actions
interpret his hatred towards his father for being the reason he lacks a parental security blanket. As quoted in
one of the first few scenes: '...and in the mess of wobbly chaos the drunken old malchek had found himself
lying in, he had managed to be able to push out an ugly lyric or two. Now, the one thing that I truly hate in
the world is a drunken old malchek singing out the songs of his father with an occasional 'blurp,blurp' in
between.', this shows his loath for
1) Disrespect for music.
2) Drunks,
and
3) Men in his fathers image.
The music was his salvation, for it could snap him in and out of his dementia. The music was used in a
pseudo-Pavlov experiment to eliminate Alex's love for violence. In the experiment, Alex ingested a serum
that would induce a deathlike paralysis. While the serum was taking effect, he was bombarded with sights
of violence and the sweet sounds of Ludwig Van Beethoven, both leaving an impression in his psyche,
relating the sickness to the sights and sounds that he was subjected to.
In Pavlov's experiments, his major goal was to prove that he could train a subject to give a conditioned
response with no reinforcement. This was accomplished by training a dog to salivate when he heard a bell
ring. The dog was use to the sound of a ringing bell before receiving his food. Eventually, Pavlov removed
the food from the experiment, but the dog retained the conditioned response of salivating whenever he
heard the bell ring. Thus a conditioned response without positive nor negative reinforcement. Alex's
conditioned response was to fall to the 'sickness' when subjected to Beethoven. With the sickness being the
conditioned response, there is no Reinforcement because the sounds of Beethoven were not intentional,
thus not needing reinforcement.
However, Alex's trauma could also be referred to as a Skinner approach to treatment. Skinner's theory was
that one could achieve a conditioned response by giving the subject positive or negative reinforcement. In
his experiments, a mouse was put in a cage with nothing but a pressable button and a light. When the bar
was depressed, the light flashed and food was delivered into the cage. If the mouse were dropped into a
similar cage, it would be safe to assume that it would retain the reaction to hit a bar and receive food. The
conditioned response was to hit the bar when hungry. The reinforcement was the food that was provided by
completing the response. In Alex's case, the reinforcement would be the metal satisfaction of not going
through with his violent needs when he is subjected to violent surroundings.
In conclusion, the theories used as a basis behind Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange, resemble that of
the theories that came from the greater thinkers of modern time. Alex, the guinea pig in this tale, is a classic
example of many psychologist's case studies, and could be analyzed differently from each.