During the first two decades of the 20th century the police in England and Wales recorded an average of 90,000 indictable offences each year, a figure which increased to over 500,000 during the 1950s. It was rapid rising and many scholars claimed that it was one of the consequences of World War II. Especially youngsters rate were increasing and something had to be done in order to decrease crime rates. Punishments should be used in order to prevent repeat of crimes and dissuasive actions and the only method for punishment was to put crimanals into the prisons. However, As Lord Waddington, Home Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, would 40 years later said ‘Prison is a very expensive way of making bad men worse'.
Anthony Burgess wrote a distopian novel “A Clockwork Orange” in 1962. Though it was remarkable novel since its publishment date, it would achieve its top popularity in 1971 with Stanley Kubrick's controversial film. Later, Burgess would said that “Kubrick's film was an orange of my tree”.
The most remarkable side of the novel and what makes it one of the best novel in our century is, it tells violence and viciousness clearly and as they are normal behaviours. Narrator Alex is 15 years old boy and he is evil. He is not described as he is forced to be evil or as he has not got any choice instead of evil. As our narrator says, he chooses evil instead of good and it is such a simple choice for him since he'd like to beat, rape, rob etc.
Book's second part is about controversial aversion therapy on Alex. Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. (for example: placing unpleasant-tasting substances on the fingernails to discourage nail-chewing, or to make touch child's hand to stove in order to prevent further touchings.) Dr. Broadsky, although it was not discovered on these days yet, uses emphaty and mirror neurons in his therapy.This shows powerful sci-fi side of novel.
As a result of successful therapy there is a clockwork Alex who can not choose violence.
However, Burgess asks a real good question,
“What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
and the other question,
“Can we say He won't choose goodness ever, since he chose evil once. “
According to the Burgess, free will is equal to free choice and therapy which restricts free will of human, is the worst evil thing.
