In A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess presents Alex as a misguided young man who finds himself at the mercy of a government trying to control him. Alex is a violent person who takes pleasure in violent acts with the sole purpose of entertaining himself. These violent acts lead to his imprisonment, where he agrees to become a subject in an experiment in order to be released from jail. As a result of this experiment he can no longer partake in violent acts as well as loosing his free will. Alex can no longer control the things he does in his life because of the effects of the experiment.
Alex and his three friends, Georgie, Dim, and Pete, are in a gang with Alex as the undeclared leader. They steal things, they beat people up and they rape young girls and women. At this time, no adults would go out at night for fear of being raped or hurt. The majority of people out at night were gangs looking for trouble, or people who did not know any better. The gangs would hurt anyone they could get their hands on, and they would rob stores because they knew they would not get caught. It was corrupt but no one could stop it. Because of the drugs they take, they have are able to beat up helpless people on the street. The boys beat up a man because he had library books, so they tore up these books and stripped him of his clothes for no reason. The gang steals a car in order to get out of town to do more violent acts. They see a little cottage right outside of town and decide to break in. The outcome of this certain break in was, they raped and killed the woman, tore up the man's book he was writing and left him paralyzed. Alex has a love for music and his favorite composer is Beethoven.
The day after they broke into the cottage Alex went to a music store to get another record. He sees two girls that go back to his house with him and he rapes them after giving them alcohol. For Alex, violence can go on any at any time of the day, not just night time; he has no mercy for these innocent people he does such horrible things to. Alex took it upon himself to name him the leader of his gang, but his gang wants Georgie to be their leader, and Alex does not like this at all. Alex, Georgie, and Dim all fight because of this misunderstanding. Alex has to have some way to prove to his gang that he is a better leader then Georgie so they go to an old ladies house they want to rob. Alex decides to go into the house without anyone else. Alex is supposed to let his friends in, but he decides to rape and beat the old lady and her cats without them to show how good he is. The police show up to arrest him and he blames everything on his friends, because they all left him to be arrested.
After Alex is put in jail, he cannot stand the thought of being in there for very much longer, and needs to find a way out. One way Alex tries to get out is by reading the bible in order to be well liked by the prisoner chaplain. While being in jail, Alex accidentally kills one of his new inmates who was coming on to him, and he hears about the Ludovico Technique that will make sure you are never in jail again, so he turns all of his thoughts to this. During this experiment, Alex was made sick by drugs and forced to watch violent movies of things that he has done to people in the past. Once these movies started he could not take the torture that was going on so he would beg for the doctors to turn it off. In addition to the violent scenes in the movie, they played Beethoven in the background of the movie and this made Alex even madder because he is his favorite composer.
This experiment shows that the government does not care how they get people to stop being violent, as long as it does not go on any longer. They did not think about the effects on the person after, they just cared about the streets not being contaminated with violence. This experiment is supposed to make Alex sick whenever he thinks of doing violent things and it accomplished that, but it also results in Alex loosing his free will. After the experiment, Alex cannot listen to music by his favorite composer because it was played in the violent tapes he had to watch. He loses his ability to defend himself if it is needed because the government too away his free will to do some necessary things in life. It is good he can no longer harm anyone, but it is not good that he cannot do things that bring joy to his life or protect him.
