I'm not sure what to think after finishing A Clockwork Orange. I believed that Alex more than paid for his crimes in part two when he was being brainwashed and tortured. The misery that followed this showed the consequences of being a clockwork orange. When I say, "the misery that followed" I am referring to the beatings that occurred after leaving prison. There were times during part three that I found myself wishing he could hit the people that would cause him harm, not to be violent, but just to defend himself. I think that this wish is what the author wants. Burgess wants the reader to feel empathetic towards Alex. Just like a reader would wish for any other victim to be able to defend themselves, we are suppose to want this for Alex. I feel that this role reversal is very important. It reminds me of one of my earlier posts when I was talking about the quotation, "What's it going to be then, eh?" and the different ways it can be looked at. By making Alex the victim, all power is out of his hands. This becomes more and more evident as part three goes on. He is forced out of his home by someone else, he wants to commit suicide, but the violence that it entails makes him sick, he is beaten up at the library while unable to defend himself, he is beaten up in the countryside by police while unable to defend himself, he is taken advantage of and used as a pawn by a political party, he is tortured once again in an attempt to make him try to commit suicide. Everything is completely out of his hands. If the book had ended when he jumped out of the window with him dying, the message would be much clearer to me. It would simply be telling us to be weary of the control of modern government, but the book did not end there. Alex lived. I never wanted the brainwashing he endured to have a lasting effect on him, but I think that I was hoping that the violence that he endured, in the form of both the torture during the brainwashing and the beatings that resulted from it, would somehow change him. Beethoven's 9th is a very victorious sounding symphony. Alex has won back his ability to choose for himself, and so this is a very fitting piece.

I found it interesting that no one really cared for Alex. It says something about mankind. I suppose someone could argue that his parents cared for him in the end, but they only did so because their name was in the paper and it was their integrity that was threatened. The only other people that showed true kindness towards him were only doing so to gain his trust so they could use him and eventually betray him. It makes one wonder, do the ends justify the means? There are two major parts in this book where the reader can ask that. The first is after the brainwashing. Does having a miscreant of the street justify the torture that had to occur to do so? Different people could probably give different answers to that question depending on how totalitarian they are. The other major part I mentioned above, about the people gaining his trust. Is it okay to sacrifice someone to get out an idea? I am talking about sacrificing Alex in order to point out that a Totalitarian regime is wrong. This might be a noble cause, but is it really worth someone's life? I suppose with no hope of a cure at the time, his life meant very little, but when he jumped, it was not of his own accord which is what makes it wrong. He was forced to jump by the music.

I'm now going to talk about the last chapter. My book says that some copies don't actually have the last chapter, so feel free to ignore this. This chapter changes the whole meaning of the story for me. It goes from being a statement about control and the ability to make a choice for yourself to saying something about age. First of all, I find it strange that he changes so suddenly, almost as if someone had flipped a switch. It has crossed my mind that when they were "curing" his ailment from before that made him sick at violence they were also making his mind more mature, but what happened immediately following his awakening made me discard this theory. The last chapter looks at this idea of young verse old, and I honestly don't know which side I am suppose to like more or less. On the side of the young seems to be the ability to choose, which seems to be almost a necessity if one is to admire it. Some people may argue that adults can still make choices, but Alex seems to contradict this. Dostoyevsky talked about being able to plan out the next however many years of one's life, and that seems to be exactly what Alex is doing. He talks about having a child, finding a wife, getting married, having a job, and being frugal. All of which seems to be a consequence of him maturing. The one thing that is making me perhaps like adulthood more is the talk of the ultra-violence that Alex seems to believe every teen must feel.