A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange was intended to be, and is, an affirmation of individual choice,

The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen –’ Dim made the old lip-music at that and I had to smeck myself.

The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen.

When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’

Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.

It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.

‘Choice,’ rumbled a rich deep goloss. I viddied it belonged to the prison charlie. ‘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.’

They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good.