A Clockwork Orange (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

First Section

A Clockwork Orange opens with Alex, the main character of the novel, and his droogs, Dim, Pete, and Georgie, drinking drug-laced milk at the Korova Milkbar. After leaving the Milkbar, the four commit what is to be the first in a string of "ultraviolent" acts, savagely beating up an old man carrying library books and destroying his books. Next, the group comes across a rival gang in a warehouse. Billyboy, the leader, and his five droogs are raping a young devotchka (girl), and Alex's crew attacks them, beating them back until the millicents (police) arrive.

Alex and his gang next come to a house with the word "HOME" on the front gate. This marks a turn in the novel towards the fabular (fantastical), and away from the realistic. After telling the woman answering the door that his friend is sick and he needs to use her phone, Alex breaks into the house with his gang, now wearing masks. They viciously beat the woman's husband and pillage the house, then gang rape the woman. The man, F. Alexander, is a writer working on a book called A Clockwork Orange, which Alex calls a "gloopy" title. The book critiques the welfare state and government oppression of civil liberties. The droogs destroy the book. (This scene echoes an event from 1943 in Burgess's own life, when his wife was raped and brutalized by a gang of American soldiers.)

After returning to the Milkbar, Alex hits Dim for ridiculing a woman singing opera at the bar. Georgie and Pete side with Dim, Pete remarking, "If the truth is known, Alex, you shouldn't have given old Dim that uncalled-for tolchock [blow] if it had been me you'd given it to you'd have to answer." Alex returns to his parents' flat and falls asleep masturbating while listening to Beethoven. In the morning, his Post-Corrective Advisor, P. R. Deltoid, visits him, warning Alex that one day the police will catch him if he continues with his antics. After Deltoid leaves, Alex visits a music store, where he picks up two ten-year-old girls, brings them back to his apartment, plies them with liquor, and rapes them.

At the Milkbar, Pete, Georgie, and Dim convince Alex that they need to rob a larger house. Alex goes along with the plan, to show he is a good "brother" and leader. That night, they break into the house of an elderly wealthy woman who is feeding her cats. She fights with Alex, and he knocks her out with one of her statues. When Alex tries to escape after hearing the police sirens, Dim hits him with his chain, knocking him out. The police arrive and arrest Alex, as Georgie, Pete, and Dim abandon him. The police take him to a cell, where he is visited by Deltoid, who spits in his face. Alex later learns that the old woman he fought with has died of a heart attack. "That was everything," Alex says. "I'd done the lot, now. And me still only fifteen."

Second Section

The second section, chapters eight through fourteen, describes Alex's life in the "staja" (state penitentiary), after he is sentenced to fourteen years there. A model prisoner — despite killing a fellow prisoner who had been making sexual advances towards him — Alex makes fast friends with the chaplain, who allows him to listen to classical music on the chapel stereo. Prison officials and the Minister of the Interior offer Alex the opportunity to undergo Ludovico's Technique, an experimental treatment that guarantees his release from prison and ensures he will never return, and Alex agrees. Burgess models the idea of Ludovico's Technique on the work of B. F. Skinner. Skinner, a mid-twentieth-century behavioral psychologist, wanted to build a society based on a system of rewards and punishments. He believed that human behavior could be conditioned, once people learned to associate "good" behavior with the pleasure of the reward they received for it, and associate "bad" behavior with the pain of punishment. These methods were used for a time on juvenile delinquents and retarded children. Skinner outlines his ideas in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

For two weeks, Alex is given injections of a drug that makes him physically ill whenever he witnesses violent acts. His eyelids clamped open, Alex is forced to watch films packed with scenes of torture, rape, and beating. After being shown a film detailing Nazi atrocities from World War II, with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as its sound track, Alex develops an aversion to both violence and Beethoven, whose music he loves. At the conclusion of the treatment, Alex is paraded before a panel of prison and state officials, during which time he grovels in front of a tormentor taunting him to fight and is sickened by his own lustful response to a beautiful woman. Alex has been stripped of free will to choose his actions, and Dr. Brodsky pronounces him fit for release from prison.

Third Section

In the third section, Alex becomes a victim. In his absence, Alex's parents have taken a boarder, Joe, so Alex is forced to the streets, where he encounters the people he victimized in the first section. He is being beaten by a group of old men in the Public Biblio (library), one of whom Alex and his gang had beaten before. Alex is then "rescued" by three policemen, two of whom turn out to be Billy boy and Dim. The government had recruited the two in its efforts to use society's criminal elements for its own repressive purposes. Billy boy and Dim take Alex out to the country, beat him, and leave him for dead. Alex then wanders through a village and comes upon the house with "HOME" written on the gate. F. Alexander, the writer beaten by Alex earlier, recognizes Alex from the newspaper and takes him in, planning to use him in a campaign to "dislodge this overbearing government."

While Alexander and his liberal friends brainstorm how to use Alex as an example of government repression, the writer recognizes Alex as the person who beat him up and raped his wife a few years ago. With his friends' help, Alexander locks Alex in an apartment and plays classical music, Otto Skadelig's Symphony Number Three, driving Alex into a suicidal frenzy because of the sickness and pain he feels listening to the music. Alex jumps out the window, but does not die. He awakens in the hospital, his love for violence restored. Mean-while, the Minister of the Interior visits Alex, telling him that Alexander and his friends have been imprisoned, and offering Alex a well-paying job in exchange for his support of the government.

In the last chapter, Alex is back at the Korova Milkbar, this time with a new group of droogs, who resemble the old group. Although they engage in ultraviolent acts, Alex says that he mostly gives orders and watches. He is "old" now, eighteen. He meets one of his former gang members, Pete, who is married and works for an insurance company, and Alex begins to fantasize about also being married and having children. "Youth must go, ah yes," he says. "But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal."

Media Adaptations

• A Clockwork Orange (1971) was adapted as a film by director Stanley Kubrick and stars Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Aubrey Morris, and James Marcus. It is available in both VHS and DVD format.
• Harper Audio publishes an audiocassette of Burgess reading from A Clockwork Orange.