A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he 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. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.

The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

I mean it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness.

Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’

‘He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.’

‘Oh,’ the prison charlie said, like sighing, ‘it works all right, God help the lot of us.’