Clockwork Orange
Will Alex ever change? As one reads through A Clockwork Orange, written by Anthony Burgess, this question cannot help but pop into mind. Alex seems, in the beginning, hopeless of change. A crime seeking lad, he seems to be forever stuck in a crime filled world until he receives Ludovico's treatment after which he re-enters life and slowly changes, but will it last?
Alex, a young man bent on crime, feels no remorse for the horrible things he does. Along with his droogs, Alex breaks into a home, rapes a woman, and beats a man. This horrific act is nothing unusual for Alex; numb to the pain he has caused, he unemotionally states, “The writer veck and his zheena were not really there, bloody and torn and making noises. But they’d live” (Burgess 28). Alex will seemingly live like this forever, and it is not until he receives the experimental program during his time in jail that the readers see any change. This change is manifested in Alex when he leaves from the milk bar and reacts to Pete’s new life.
The milk bar is a familiar place to Alex and the reader. Although seemingly harmless in title, the milk bar actually starts most of the crime sprees of Alex and his droogs. "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking… You could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one” (Burgess 4). The reader knows that Alex visiting the milk bar ultimately leads to another crime, another dirty twenty-to-one. When Alex, after receiving the treatment, revisits the milk bar he seems let down stating, “I felt very bored and a bit hopeless, and I had been feeling that a lot these days” (Burgess 202). Losing its luster, the bar becomes part of his past; walking away from it Alex is ultimately walking away for good; no longer leading a crime ridden life, he has no place at the bar. The reader is not the only person to notice Alex’s...
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