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Dylan Chavarria
Professor Batty
English 114B
15 March 2014
Humans Right For Free Will
The ability to make our own choices is what makes someone who they are and essentially
a human being. Choosing an individual path to live by is what separates a human being from a
robot, only having the ability to do what they are told. In the Novel A Clockwork Orange by
Anthony Burgess, he reveals his stance on free will and how it truly defines a person. He
portrays a dystopian future where an overpowering government takes control to remain in power
by taking away the free will of its citizens. With a revolutionary new therapy called the Ludovico
technique, the government can erase violent thoughts and impulses from inmates in prison,
hindering them from making their own choices. Through A Clockwork Orange, Anthony burgess
conveys how an overpowering government like the Soviet Union during the cold war will stop at
nothing to take away free will and create its citizens into nothing but a puppet to society.
The dystopian setting of this novel is rampant will violence during the night. Young teens
have gone out of control and have terrorized citizens creating fear to roam the streets or go
outside. In the novel the government is losing power because of rebelling citizens leading them
to find any way to keep their control. Their main purpose is to lower the crime rate so the
citizens have nothing to complain about and they planned to reach their goal by brainwashing
inmates. Alex the main character is the leader of a gang that wreaks havoc throughout the city.
When he is put in jail he also becomes the first inmate to be subjected to this therapy. He
becomes nothing more than a machine when he cannot act on his thoughts. The novel brings up
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question to whether it is morally right to take away a man choice of evil. What does God want?
Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in
some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? (Burgess 106) The ability to
choose good or evil is a human trait that makes someone who they are.
The government resembles a communist regime when it comes to treating its citizens.
These regimes were characterized by the rule of a single party that tolerated no opposition and
little dissent. (Dagger 1) Burgess saw the communist regime to constrict its citizens of their
human rights. One way a communist regime keeps its power is through censorship, especially in
the media. Censorship in Soviet Russia as it was reorganized after the end of the civil war was
not a simple process of striking out words or banning books. In the course it became an
increasingly complex system of pre-publication control and post-publication evaluation,
involving state agencies.(Fox 1057) The Soviet Unions control on censorship was so prevalent
that they had government agencies strictly oversee what information the citizens had access to
through news and media. In the novel the government censors and manipulates the newspapers
to what they allow. The government portrays Alexs treatment as a positive cure, but in reality it
has taken away his humanity. When the truth is finally revealed about the treatment the senator
takes a picture with Alex and apologizes in order to subside the negative whiplash of the citizens.
In order to stay in power the government in the novel will go to any length to put an end
to any form of dissent or rebellion. They devised a plan to eliminate any form of opposition from
their citizens towards the government. To accomplish their goal they create an experimental
therapy to remove free will. The therapy involved to remove Alexs free will was a procedure
known as classical conditioning. Classical Conditioning is all about transferring an automatic
response (such as drooling when you see or smell food) to a new, formerly neutral stimulus (such
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as hearing a bell ring). (Goodfriend 1) In the novel Alex is subjected to watch violent video
clips of murder, rape and gory violence. The scientist in charge of the experiment also injected
Alex with nausea inducing drugs while he watched the clips. The main goal was to associate the
violent images he was seeing to the nausea he was feeling. Whenever Alex thought about or saw
violence he would become very nauseated and ill.
The Soviet Union also favored little dissent when it came to opposing views from the
people and used extreme measures to eradicate them like in the novel. The Soviet Union used
medical diagnosis to rid the country of rebellion. The political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet
Union originated from the concept that persons who opposed the Soviet regime were mentally ill
because there was no other logical explanation why one would oppose the best sociopolitical
system in the world. (Voren 1) The used the abuse of false diagnosis to take away the rights of
its patients like the novel.The government manipulated Alex by taking away his free will and
turning him into the citizen they wanted him to be and their goal of reforming citizens was
becoming a reality.









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Works Cited
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York: Norton, 1986. Print.
Dagger, Richard. Communism (ideology). Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia
Britannica, 15 Jan. 2013. Web. 04 Mar. 2014
Fox, Michael S. "Glavlit, Censorship and the Problem of Party Policy in Cultural Affairs, 1922-
28." JSTOR. Taylor & Francis, Ltd, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
Goodfriend, Wind. A Psychologist at the Movies. Classical Conditioning in A Clockwork
Orange Psychology Today, 8 May 2012. Web. 03 Mar. 2014
Voren, Robert V. "Schizophrenia Bulletin." Political Abuse of Psychiatry-An Historical
Overview. N.p., 5 Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.