A Clockwork Orange - Part Two

[Alana]

Please discuss Part Two here. Remember to put spoiler brackets and to post how far along you are in your reading.

[Irene]

This section was almost laughable with its simplistic approach to Pavlovian reconditioning. Really, two weeks of hang-over-like symptoms connected to viewing graphic violence and the person is reconditioned? The book never described torture level pain, just headache, nausia, thirst. If this were the case, teens would swear off of alcohol after the second or third severe hang over, but we all know that most of us never learn, not for many years. And, the reason is that we are motivated by far more than physical sensations.

So, what is our author trying to say by having our young thug enjoy classical music? Beauty and ugliness can reside in the same psychie? These grand musical pieces are as subtle as being hit over the head with a bat and stimulate the same pleasure/pain centers in the brain?

[Penny]

me too Irene - it doesnt seem very realistic to me.

[Renee]

I think they were taking away his ability to make choices about his life, like the priest in the prison says. I do agree Irene that the symptoms he does have seem to be less than what I thought they would be, he feels physically ill when thinking of doing violent things, but he still thinks of doing them so his mindset hasn't changed at all. It did seem a bit too easy.

I think the classical music was about him enjoying listening to it while imagining to himself all the violence he could do to the music and that's how he appreciated it. At least, that was my interpretation. Not that he appreciated the beauty of it, but that he appreciated the "beauty" to him of how violent it sounded and what pain he could inflict on people to the music, which is why he has so much trouble listening to it after because he can't even picture those things in his mind so the music is ruined for him.

Sorry for the run-on sentences!

[Irene]

Yes, I agree that this is about reconditioning. Rather than pleasure being associated with violence, now we have illness associated with it. And like Pavlov's dogs (spelling), the response is to be automatic when ever violence is seen or imagined, he is going to get a viseral response that will turn him off. But, there are so many other things that reinforce violent behavior that simply getting nausia and sweats would not be sufficient reason to get the person to swear off of it. Besides, he already as a certain amount of pain associated with violence since he gets beaten up in those sprees. Maybe I am over analyzing things. Ultimately, I get that this is about doing good by choice or because it is compelled. When he can no longer do evil acts because it makes him sick, he is not a good person. He still craves the old ways.

As for the music, I thought he did seem to appreciate the music for its own sake. After all, there is much better music to associate violence with. I thought it was the energy in the music that spoke to him.

[Alana]

Renee wrote: "I think the classical music was about him enjoying listening to it while imagining to himself all the violence he could do to the music and that's how he appreciated it. At least, that was my interpretation. Not that he appreciated the beauty of it, but that he appreciated the "beauty" to him of how violent it sounded and what pain he could inflict on people to the music, which is why he has so much trouble listening to it after because he can't even picture those things in his mind so the music is ruined for him."

This is an interesting point. I tended to feel like the "doctors" took the one beautiful thing he had away from him, but if it's more that that's the music he imagines his violence to, then maybe that was for the best, in some ways.

As far as what's done and whether it's too "easy" a "fix," I tend to agree with your statements, but I feel that that's not really the point that's being made. It's more what the one doctor points out, that he no longer has a choice, that he's compelled to do "nice" things because he is physically forced to by his own body.

And the degrading things he does in order to make the sick feelings go away! It's one thing to try to recondition someone's mind (although that's a psychoanalytic topic that psychologists have been studying for years and we can't even begin to hope to understand it all in a book discussion), but another to make him grovel and completely degrade himself as a human being in order to make the pain stop. Where's the humanity in that? We punish a criminal by completely distorting his mind? Where's his soul? Who is he now as a person? Is feeling sick a cruel and unusual punishment, or does it "fit the crime" and make him avoid causing harm to others?

Whether the mechanics of it are realistic or not, the ideas Burgess raises are certainly very important and worth discussing. We've grown a lot in the world of psychology since the book was written, but I'm not sure we understand that much more about the mind or soul than we did then. These are things that have been debated since the Greek philosophers and before.