The Droogs (Warren Clarke, James Marcus, Michael Tarn)

Character Analysis

Brothers From Other Mothers

Alex and his gang mates—Georgie, Pete, and the unfortunately-named Dim—spend more time with each other than anyone else. Together, they terrorize the community, destroying property, raping women, and beating up men. And you know what they say: the friends who commit sexual assault together stay together.

(PSA: This is not what they say. No one says this. If you meet a single soul who says this, run away…and then call the cops.)

We have to hand it to these creepy psychopaths, though: they certainly have a snappy dress sense.

And, like any gang, they have a delicate power dynamic, and Georgie—or is it Dim? It's hard to tell them apart—is tired of Alex calling the shots. Pete, however, is the useless one. He'll follow along with anything and disappears altogether halfway into the movie.

Georgie and Dim want to overthrow Alex because they want more power. However, Alex is generally smarter and stronger than they are. Alex tells them, "a real leader knows always when like to give and show generous to his unders." Perhaps if Alex treated his friends like friends instead of subordinates, they wouldn't have rebelled against him?

It's somewhat of a shock that Dim and Georgie become police officers. This reveal tells us a couple of things.

First, that Georgie and Dim finally gain the power they always wanted. As corrupt cops, they can almost do what they did as members of Alex's gang, with the added benefit of getting away with it.

Also, this droog-to-cop switcheroo gives us a little bit of context: society in the world of A Clockwork Orange is seriously sordid. Power is being abused on all levels, from the milk bar to the local precinct. The lines between police officer and criminal are more than blurred.

Because, unlike Alex, Dim and Georgie don't get Ludovico'ed. They don't even get sensitivity training. They straight-up beat Alex to a bloody pulp when they see him.