. Spinning .

As is my method, after finishing Burgess’ novel I sought further insight via lit reviews online.  One thing (among several) I missed was the apparent significance of the musical arrangement style used in many of the phrasings and structure of the text.

Overall, it was pretty straight linear narrative, following a timeline from here to there, presented in three sections of seven chapters each.  Each section flowed one from the other, separated by Alex’s escapades, his time in prison and rehabilitation procedure and then his freedom, and in the third, his life changes as impacted by the prior two years covered in the previous sections.

In drawing a story arc, I would claim that it steadily rises, plots rising in tension until he is caught.  But that, I do not feel, is the climax.  I would think that it perhaps spikes with each of his acts as they worsen in evil, the getting caught, the incarceration, the possibility of freedom, the rehab procedure, the freedom, the being turned away from his home, the abduction by the rebellion, and the attempt at suicide.  There, I would think, is the major climax, brought about as his freedom of choice to perform this one act that is the only violence that he can hope to accomplish–one against himself. 

The following sequence of his hospitalization, his return of free will, may indeed be considered an anti-climax.  From there, we get another dose as he changes and decides to leave his old ways behind.  Both areas, and perhaps the suicide decision as well, are offered as resolutions to the story.  Yet Burgess has carried it out to a further, major change in the character’s life.  Even so, this final resolution, Alex thinking of finding a wife and having a son, has been left open as to the ultimate future for Alex, as well as the future of society itself.

Unanswered questions; the best form of unresolved resolution in fiction, if not in life.

Very strange that the American publisher should want to cut out this final chapter.  There is resolution here, and a good one wherein Alex grows weary of his ways and seeks a family and continuity of the life cycle of mankind.  He puts it all down to "growing up" though I can’t seem to see that as the message of power in this novel.

My curiosity is peaked at the question of leaving the story where Alex is bound to go back to his ways.  Is this a message in itself from the "higher powers"?  Did the U.S. version require that edge to leave us standing upon?  Were we supposed to give up all hope, or was it to rile us into action, or, what it merely a trend of the times.

Interesting questions very boldly brought up by Burgess as to society versus the individual.  And the law as a protector/enforcer was never presented as uncorrupted or even useful.  Is this future society just another room of history, decorated same as the last, preparing the paint in the same shades to color the next? 

Good book.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to hunting down the video.

From what I understand in an introduction by the author, Anthony Burgess, this novel ends at Chapter 20–at least for lily-livered 1961 America.  Without knowing what that edited out by the publisher last chapter (21) will bring, let me remark on where the story leaves me had it ended here.

Alex, no long loved by anyone, used by both government and rebellion as a poster boy for crime-stopping measures by destroying freedom of choice, decides to take his life and unfortunately is thwarted by his selection of too short a building.  But whatever has been done to him while he lies in a coma has negated the sensations of pain and nausea that were part of the "cure."  The government has won, or so they think, and the rebellion of those opposed to the process of which he had been a victim have been beaten and jailed.  Of course, his own tendencies to slash and stomp have never been changed, so now he’s free to do whatever he pleases.  Here, he has been assured that he has recovered, and he asks that they play for him Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his favorite.

Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum.  When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva.  And there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement still to come.  I was cured all right.  (p. 205)

Leaving it here, we see a circle that Alex has come through that ends where it began.  Freedom of choice is inviolate, and so is the power of the government to control people’s minds.  They are of course taking advantage of the opportunity to quelch public opinion by "curing" Alex of what had been done to him.  What their plan is for controlling his later behavior is still a question.

But, Alex is free.

So Alex has been sensitized to violence.  There is an ethical question here of course, as his total feedom of choice has been compromised permanently by the procedure he was subjected to at the prison.

Alex does try to go back to his prior life, but a child’s worst nightmare is real:  His parents have rented out his room while he’s been gone.  His former mates and enemies have become policemen, a strange turn of events when they are called to the scene where Alex, in a bar, is beaten up by older men.  Of course his friends haven’t changed; they simply can do legally what they did before–beat up on their captives.  When Alex, broken and bloody, stumbles into a house looking for help, he finds it.  But it is where he and his cohorts have beaten and raped before, though the man doesn’t recognize him.  The man also is anti-government, and is thrilled to find Alex who represents victimization by the government.  Once more, Alex cannot escape.  He fails at a second suicide attempt.

Alex’s despair is over the loss of his former life, and that includes his parents, any form of friendship or love, and his ability to enjoy as well as get money from bullying others.  He feels abused and alone, though others are anxious to use him to protest government power.

So which is right?  If Alex was left alone, there’s no doubt he would be up to his old life and likely imprisoned again.  But that would be up to his own choice to do.  As he is, he cannot help but change, forced by the changes made to his mind.  However, he is allowed to be free–at least to change, and he is not a threat to society.  Interesting questions here as to the rights of the individual versus the whole.

Brings to mind Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, and for now, Alex is the scapegoat, held as a poster child for the future of crime and punishment.

I don’t believe that Burgess is giving us just the usual youth rebellion, but rather a social comment on a move towards violence through the freedoms granted within a civilized society.  Alex, the narrator and bad boy, has turned sly; he knows right from wrong.  He exercises his freedom of choice by seeking out pleasure, despite the damage to others, and keeps pushing the ticket to obtain greater thrills.  Beethoven and Mozart brought him the same bliss as beating, stealing and rape, and so it is obvious that he picks and chooses what pleases him.  What this young generation has done is gone beyond the control of a society grown complacent and tolerant, one that has fought for freedom of choice.  Now, they don’t know how to handle the outcome.

The process that Alex undergoes is one that uses punishment of pain and nausea via association so that Alex in effect, has lost freedom of choice as far as doing good or bad, though the choice is still his to do bad if he is willing to suffer the horrible effects.  While incarceration certainly is a deterrent, as long as one doesn’t get caught, one may be willing to risk it.  Even the death penalty seems an unlikely possibility when one is enjoying the fruits of one’s deeds.  But what has been done to Alex is immediate.  He’ll suffer if he so much as thinks about evil (shades of Catholicism here).

It hasn’t however changed his desires.  It has just overcome his desire to rape and pillage and burn with the stronger desire to avoid feeling bad.  And that is, feeling bad physically; they still haven’t changed what he’d really like to do.

How different is this then castration?  How are the rights of individuals to do evil protected versus the rights of the larger society to be safe?  How valuable then is freedom of choice?