Analysis Of The Opening Of The Novel A Clockwork Orange (Pages 5-10)

Analysis of the opening of the novel A Clockwork Orange (pages 5-10)

The novel A clockwork Orange written by Anthony Burgess in 1962 is set in a dystopian world where violence, drugs and teenagers rule the society. It is a world filled with fear where people can’t live their normal lives without having to worry about teenagers stealing, rapping women and fighting. Adults out of fear had tostop doing things they enjoyed such as going out at night to have some dinner, or watch a movie etc. due to the extreme violent acts teenagers where doing under the effects of drugs, “You never really saw many of the older bourgeois type out after night fall those days, what with the shortage of police and we fine fine young malchickiwicks” (Burgess, pg.8). From this quote we can see how Alex(protagonist and narrator of this novel) is telling us that the streets at night are very unsafe and insecure due to violent gangs (such as his) that are committing atrocities, hence the adults are at home frightened to go out at night due to the lack of police.
As I have mentioned before this is a dystopian novel where people are living in a permissive society and in a youth culture at the same time.We can see how people are living in a permissive society since teenagers have excessive freedom of doing what they want since there is a lack of police. Teenagers can get drugs very easily since pub’s are selling drugs “The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto”(Burgess, pg 5) By the society having adopted the “youth culture” I mean that teenagers are only interested in sex, violence, drugs andfashion. From the opening chapter we can see how education is not relevant to teenagers anymore, they almost don’t go to school anymore and they beat up an old person just for carrying some books with him.
From the opening pages of the novel A Clockwork Orange we can see how law and order has been broken down, teenage gangs rule the streets committing extreme violent acts. Established authority nolonger exists and adults are powerless and ineffectual. People are living in a disintegrating society where there is a lot of corruption but this is the ideal world for Alex and his gang.
From the first pages of this novel we can start to appreciate the violence and the lack of authority that teenagers have. At the beginning of the novel we can see how Alex and his gang go to “The Korova Milkbar”to get drugged. Once they are high they go out into the streets to “viddy what turns up” (Burgess, pg.8). Unfortunately an old man was “coming round the corner from the Public Biblio”(Burgess, pg.8), but he was carrying three books under his arm and looked very similar to a schoolmaster. The problem with this is that teenagers and adults where at war since they both wanted different things.Adults represent democracy, education, security and a well-organized society whilst teenagers represent violence, insecurity, drugs and crime. Since there is a huge difference in the interests of both teenagers and adults, when Alex saw this old man with the look of a professor we can say that in a certain way he felt threatened that if he didn’t teach him a lesson more of those adults would startwalking in the streets at night.
We can see the cruelty of this novel when Alex and his gang go up to the old man and with out no reason what so ever they start ripping his books apart. The old man is completely outraged by this action and demands Alex and his gang to stop by telling them that those books are “the property of the municipality, this is sheer wantonness and vandal work” (Burgess,pg.9). Alex finds this very funny and decides to take the old man’s false teeth out of his mouth and crushes them right in front of him, then he and the rest of his gang punch the old man until he starts bleeding, but the curios thing that we can see is that Alex has a strange fascination for blood, its as if when he makes someone bleed he feels satisfied “out comes the blood, my brothers, real...