’’Long long time ago,
there was someone named me,
Singing and laughing,
From all I was free,
Now I am not me,
They don’t let me be,
Torn away from music and myself,
Shouting out my plea,
All I want, Oh all that I want,
is just to be me, just to be me.’’
They say that violence begets violence. True... very true.. But, in what form is that violence perpetrated? As humans, are not we morally obligated towards our brethren to protect and maintain that most holy of causes, namely social harmony? And in that quest, can we be amoral so that our moral responsibilities can be carried out? Do we treat man as a mechanical system? A system, that must respond in a predictive manner when presented with certain circumstances.. a system that recorrects itself everytime it tries to go out of control.. a system that no longer uses that fundamental entity of existence, the mind.. a system stripped of everything, but predictability and yes, social harmony...
As I said before, stories narrated in first person excite me to no end and in this case, my good droog (friend) is named Alex de Large. Alex is a very violent teenager, he likes stealing, drugging, beating, fighting, raping and anything that he can term as, the way he puts it, ultra-violence. As he says it, while the day time belongs to the people of the good side, the nights belong to him and his likes.. he patronizes the bad side with absolutely no regrets. He is bad just because he likes to be bad. Though a teenager, he has been at the old ultra-violence for years now, and has been put through corrective measures...
There is one more thing that Alex likes, music. He loves Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. But as disturbing as it may sound, music serves as a path for his ultra-violence. He translates the melodious rhythms to sexual assaults (as he terms it, the old in-out) and he identifies the violent symphonies with his fights, wherein he stands over bloodied bodies, people begging for mercy at his feet and himself laughing it all off.. Yes, he associates music with himself and all his activities...
Finally, due to some unfortunate and devious happenings, Alex is apprehended by the law and he is sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Here, he is confronted with other hardcore criminals, some of whom veer towards the wierd side of sexual preferences, while others just make crime a way of life. In the state jail, Alex befriends the jail chaplain (jokingly referred to as charlie), and in an effort to free himself from the jail on the basis of good character, he pretends to adopt the religion though even in the Holy Bible, he only identifies with the lurid details quoted therein. He also takes up the job of conducting the music during the religious sessions held in the jail. Particularly humourous is the way in which the religion seems to be forced upon the prisoners through threats of hell and other such instances. During one meeting with the chaplain, Alex volunteers for Ludovico’s Technique which Alex sees as an opportunity to free himself from the jail. The principle of this technique is to compell a man not to commit acts of violence.
The human thought process is what makes us do what we do. And any amount of unpredictability that can arise in our behaviour as a result being a human system is a direct consequence of a thought or a choice being exercised. All that needs to be done to control the predictability of human actions is to condition the mind... That root of all thoughts, all emotions, all ideas. Condition the mind to make it act consistently. The human mind, and hence the human, works on associations; as simple as that. Everything is usually associated with something else, so that the reaction of the human when presented with those circumstances is conditioned to act according to its associated emotion. Hence, the emotion of fear in acrophobia, emotion of happiness in laughter, emotion of pain and calmness in music.... none of all this is concrete.. So, a conditioned mind is a controlled mind. Associating violent behaviour with something equally violent would repel someone from violence, and that is exactly what Ludovico’s Technique did. It conditioned Alex’s mind. You have got to read the book to know how the technique works. Its unexplicable and chilling.
Freed from the jail, Alex is abused and beaten up by his old enemies and he cannot retaliate in violence because he has now been conditioned. Chilling as it may sound, Alex could not kill himself as well, because he could not commit that act of violence either. Life was not a companion, yet death also did not seem ready embrace him. What then happens to our chief protagonist forms the remnant of the story.
Written by Anthony Burgess, Clockwork Orange is a brutal and a horrifying tale of violence and the punishment faced by the protagonist who advocates it. Burgess makes the use of a version of Russian and Slovak language which he calls Nadsat. The use of this language throughout the books makes the situations seem even more brutal and chilly, while at the same time, the language seems beautiful and very likeable to the rolling tongue.
Remade by the genius Stanley Kurbick in 1971, the movie version went to be a classic, though I am yet to see it. Considering Stanley, I am sure that it must be nothing short of the book. Interestingly, I came across the movie as a reference first, after which I realized that it is based on a book. Ranked as one of the best books written last century, there is absolutely no two thoughts about the fact that the book is a classic. Undoubtedly, it will influence you into thinking about the usage of a man, as a puppet in the hands of science and politics. A cold and chilling satire, Clockwork Orange is horrorshow, both in Nadsat and English.
As Alex puts it, ’’What’s it going to be then, eh?’’