One of Anthony Burgess’s, A Clockwork Orange, most important believes is that the freedom to choose is the big human attribute. In other words the presence of moral choice ultimately distinguishes human beings from machines and animals. This belief provides the central argument of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex asserts his free will by choosing a course of wickedness, only to be followed by him being robbed of his self-determination by the government. “So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks”. In this quote Alex, a criminal guilty of violence, rape, and theft, the hero of the novel, Burgess argues that humanity must, at all costs, insist that individuals be allowed to make their own moral choices, even if that freedom results in depravity. When the State removes Alex's power to choose his own moral course of action, Alex becomes nothing more than a thing. A human being's legitimacy as a moral agent is predicated on the notion that good and evil exist as separate, equally valid choices. Without evil as a valid option, the
One of Anthony Burgess’s, A Clockwork Orange, most important believes is that the freedom to choose is the big human attribute. In other words the presence of moral choice ultimately distinguishes human beings from machines and animals. This belief provides the central argument of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex asserts his free will by choosing a course of wickedness, only to be followed by him being robbed of his self-determination by the government. “So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks”. In this quote Alex, a criminal guilty of violence, rape, and theft, the hero of the novel, Burgess argues that humanity must, at all costs, insist that individuals be allowed to make their own moral choices, even if that freedom results in depravity. When the State removes Alex's power to choose his own moral course of action, Alex becomes nothing more than a thing. A human being's legitimacy as a moral agent is predicated on the notion that good and evil exist as separate, equally valid choices. Without evil as a valid option, the