A Clockwork Orange †Literary Response Essay

Nadine Gordimer, South African source and Nobel Prize winner, said that penetrating fiction doesnt give answers, it invites questions. This extract is accurately reflected in Anthony Burgess novel, A Clockwork Orange, in which humansy questions and clean values atomic reckon 18 explored. Burgess strongly believed that humans ability of prize is the only factor distinguishing us between animals or machines. The two to a greater extent or less predominant recurring themes of and questions relating to the novel involve good vs black, and percentage and openhanded will.The novel begins with the words whats it going to be then, eh? , through which Burgess poses a literal question that ultimately leads to choice, and is everlastingly asked before determining ones fate. This question introduces all common chord parts of the novel, as well as the final chapter. The repetition emphasises the isobilateral and symbolic structure of the book. It also echoes one of the aforementione d explored themes fate and free will. The novel concludes with Alex finally deciding what its going to be, by him consciously deciding to discard his previous violent and evil habits. edict and religion recur frequently in A Clockwork Orange, and each livelihood similar views and opinions concerning choice and good vs. evil. In Part 1, Chapter 4, Alex wonders why evil is analysed and goodness is not only universally strived for, only if accepted as the norm They dont go into the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies and that self is do by old Bog or God and is his great surcharge and radosty.But the not-self cannot have the crowing, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the tough because they cannot allow the self. Here, Alex refers to society and authority as the not-self. He believes that people are born evil, and suggests that conditioning human-kind to be good r emoves individualism. The passage concludes with Alex saying, I do what I do because I like to do, which is more or less animalistic in the sense that his action depends solely on desire, impulsion and instinct.In Part 2, Chapter 3, the questioning of fate and free will is asked insofar again, from the perspective of Christianity. The chaplain refers to the Reclamation Treatment a physiologically imposed behavioral modification that would render the incapability of performing evil deeds which Alex is to undergo. He asks Alex if God wants goodness or the choice of goodness. (Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? It is interesting that the questioning of free will is render by the novels religious figure, and that this time, it does not come from Alex himself, but is rather asked of him.The chaplain wonders if good acts are morally valueless if performed without free will, and if force benevolence is in fact more evil than sin itself. Although he rhetorically directs this to Alex, he is essentially asking the readers opinion, because it is indicated in previous chapters that Alex disagrees with the conditioning of goodness.The question is left open-ended and dissonant for the reader to interpret. Thus, rather than being didactic, penetrating fiction does solicit more questions than it answers. It allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, rather than enforcing a special point of view. In A Clockwork Orange, this is true in a number of ways (as demonstrated), but most powerfully in terms of the perpetually revisited themes good vs. evil, and fate and free will.