Character Analysis
Thug Life
Alexander DeLarge, our narrator, is your typical teenager. He has a slang that no Olds understand. He would rather hang out with his friends than go to school. He loves music. And he drives so recklessly that his auto insurance must be insanely expensive.
Oh, and he's also a rapist, vandal, and murderer.
You might be thinking, that's not typical at all! And you would be absolutely right…in our world. But things are a little off in the world of A Clockwork Orange, and it's not just because this is a film by Stanley "You Want The Creeps? I'll Give You The Creeps" Kubrick. It also has a little something to do with the world as envisioned by Anthony Burgess, the dude who wrote the book A Clockwork Orange.
Basically, Alex of the book (and of the movie) thinks that what he's doing is absolutely 100% natural. To be violent is to be human. And certainly ol' Alex has backup—the only peers of his we see in the film are just like him, his lackeys (a.k.a. "droogs") in his little gang. And there are gangs like Alex's all over this weirdo, warped world: everywhere you turn, there are white-suited, black-hatted young guys with a pension for "the old ultra-violence."
But why is Alex this way? It's a question that baffles even the characters in the movie:
MR. DELTOID: What gets into you all? We study the problem. We've been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You've got a good home here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?
The "you all" suggests that Alex isn't extraordinary. He is one thug among many (even if his eyelashes are more luxurious than most). We don't know whether Mr. Deltoid continues speaking to Alex in particular, or if he's asking Alex about the state of young dudes—the "you" he uses could be "you, singular" or "you, plural."
So there are two ways of reading this passage. Either a) most creepy, milk-lovin' teens are from good homes and have good heads on their shoulders or b) Alex is a lone creepy, milk-loving teen who just happens to be from a good home and have a good head on his shoulders.
But either way, we know that, to the older generation, it seems as if a devil has crawled inside of Alex. And, honestly, that's the way every older generation thinks about the younger generation…even when they're not busy raping, killing, and singing old Gene Kelly tunes.
We think that's the reason that people still find Alex fascinating. He's a monster: yes. But the way he's treated by the Well-Meaning Older People in his life is suspiciously like the way many of us are treated as teenagers…except, of course, we were asked "What gets into you all?" when we stayed out until dawn at a party that may or may not have gotten rowdy, and Alex gets asked "What gets into you all?" when he goes on a spree of ultra-violence.
At First He Was Afraid. He Was Victimized.
No two ways about it: Alex begins the movie as an inhuman monster. He beats a man, he rapes a woman, he destroys property…and he doesn't feel bad about it at all. In fact, he relishes it. In jail, though, he is totally dehumanized. What little humanity he has in him is removed as he is forced to strip and undergo a cavity search; his identity is then reduced to a number.
Alex, who never acted particularly humane to begin with, feels victimized by this treatment. As the narrator of the film, he manipulates the viewers into feeling sorry for him too, saying,
ALEX: This is the real weepy and like tragic part of the story beginning, O my brothers and only friends. After a trial with judges and a jury, and some very hard words spoken against your friend and humble narrator, he was sentenced to fourteen years in Staja No. 84F among smelly perverts and hardened prestoopnicks.
Yes, real weepy and tragic that a rapist and murderer went to jail. (Check your sarcasm detector if that sentence didn't make it ping.) Alex, who had no empathy for his victims, only feels bad when pain is inflicted upon him. He plays the victim card over an over again, saying things like,
ALEX: All right. I know how things are now. I've suffered and I've suffered and I've suffered and everybody wants me to go on suffering.
ALEX: Yes, sir, that's exactly who I am, sir...and what I am...a victim, sir.
Alex should change his last name to Ludovico, because he's trying to brainwash the audience into feeling sorry for him just as the Ludovico technique brainwashes him. But of course, because we are people with soft spots for anti-heros and unreliable narrators (as well as just super-slick, flat-out villains—lookin' at you, Frank Underwood), we eat up Alex's narrative with a spoon.
Alex Unbarred
Alex is basically the same person at the end as he was at the beginning. In the brief time he was brainwashed by the Ludovico technique, he was unable to experience pleasure. Not because the technique eliminates the capacity for pleasure, but because Alex only receives pleasure from violent acts. He's evil like that.
Alex, who always had a problem with authority, now finds himself having to answer to the Minister, who is using Alex for good publicity. We can't imagine what Alex will look like as a productive member of a peaceful society. But by making Alex a pawn of the government, they've effectively brainwashed him again into behaving himself without needing to use the gruesome contraption of the Ludovico technique.
Alex's Timeline