What Is Alex's View Of Society

Life is a series of paradoxes. Society uses opposites that help us define the meaning of values and attributes that are acceptable. Could we know what is desired without knowing what is unwanted, recognize hatred without love or good without evil? In the novel A Clockwork Orange, our humble narrator Alex, is a teenager in a futuristic city where citizens are controlled by a corrupt, authoritarian government. Adult society seems to have been brainwashed into a trance as their free will is stifled. Alex is at odds with the citizens of this uber- controlled society because his free will is unfettered by super-ego and his propensity to use brute force is useful to the totalitarian government. We must first look at a typical day in his life at the beginning of the novel to understand Alex. He is the leader of his gang of droogs (friends), dresses in the height of teenage fashion, speaks in nadsat (slang) and
If you do not behave in ways acceptable to society’s norms, values, taboos and mores you will be ostracized. This idea hardly comes into play when we look at Alex as he and other uncontrolled teens are used as pawns to control society in A Clockwork Orange. Alex comments that, “The night belonged to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats… the day was for the starry and there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents during the day, too” (Burgess 45). Big government uses aggressive, sadistic youth like Alex to help dominate ordinary citizens. The teens help to maintain government control by making it unsafe to be out at night and there are few police to create any feeling of safety. Fearfulness is useful to totalitarian society when they want order and obedience. Therefore, people stay inside concerned only with their security and do not talk about their political opinions and opposition that might lead to dissidence and desire for