Free Will

Even though the government itself tries to do good, they take away one aspect of life that is necessary for a thriving society, even if the society seems as if it would die with it: Free-Will. 

Alex kills an inmate, a year after his incarceration and is then volunteered for a government program: Ludovico’s Technique. During the commencement, Alex becomes injected with a special drug and then “watches” a movie. Being forced to watch acts of violence and rape to the sounds of Beethoven, the drugs causes Alex to feel deathly ill, associating the scenes depicted in the movie to the illness. After another year of treatment, the government deems him reformed. He is then released to the public, with publicity that whenever he tries to become violent, he becomes ill. The government sees this as a positive effect.

With the theme of the Imperative Right of Free Will,Burgess makes it a major point in the book that one of the basic human attributes associated with human rights is the choice of free will. He uses Alex as a device to show that Alex, though completely rational and well-mannered to an extent, chooses to life a life of wickedness and devious actions of malice. When making Alex the protagonist, Burgess strongly states that free will is important, despite of the personal choices one makes. This free will was hindered and taken as the government steals Alex from his life.

Though criminal punishment was forced upon those who were criminally liable, Alex had retained the free will of his person, though restricted due to laws. But through the Ludovico’s Technique, he completely loses the ability to make free choices, being forced to discipline himself towards goodness, whether he had to or not. Burgess also challenges the Christian belief in morality in that people are forced towards goodness, in that humans would indeed become good if they choose to be good, a theory that is challenged throughout the novel.

F. Alexander (the man whose house he raided and wife raped) also states that after the treatment, Alex has become someone that isn’t human, being that he has lost the will to choose goodness. This goes with the matter that a person who does good deeds should be deemed a good person if their intention and choice of good were deemed noble, as opposed to those who are good for the sake of self gain, i.e. monetary gain or avoiding Hell.