Revisiting “A Clockwork Orange”: The Ethics of Forced Peace

An area of intrigue that continues to plague and invite the curiosity of academics, scientists, sociologists, and even law enforcement is: What makes people evil? Are criminals born or made? Can they be treated—or cured? One film that explores these unsettling questions is A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The 1971 movie is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel of the same name.

The story follows its protagonist, Alexander DeLarge, a teenage delinquent who indulges in every form of violence he can—robbery, assault, rape, and random beatings for amusement. In Alex’s case, there is no clear circumstantial reason or tragic backstory that explains his behavior. After one of his many run-ins with the law, his post-corrective officer, Deltoid, laments his confusion:

“What gets into you all? We study the problem—we’ve been studying it for damn near a century—but we get no further with our studies. You’ve got a good, loving home here, good, loving parents, you’ve got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?”

The possibility that people may be evil for no reason is a terrifying thought to confront.

Eventually, Alex’s crimes catch up with him, and he is sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Luckily for him, an experimental “cure” for criminality has been developed. Prisons, overcrowded with “common criminals” like Alex, are seeking quick solutions. The idea is to deal with crime on a purely curative basis—by erasing the criminal reflex. The state officials understand that capital punishment and prisons often lead to a more disturbed mental space and rarely helps rehabilitation, often leading to institutionalization, where ex-inmates get so used to prison life that they find it impossible to re-enter society properly.

A quote from the film encapsulates this logic:

“Cram criminals together and what do you get? Concentrated criminality. Crime in the midst of punishment.”

This experimental cure declares that within a fortnight a criminal will have his criminal reflex cured by conditioning him so severely that any instance of violence or sexual violence would make the “cured” feel extremely sick until they remove themselves from that urge or situation. It would basically render a man incapable of being violent in any form. This was done by forcefully showing the subject instances of ‘evil’ acts and at the same time inducing a physiological reaction of sickness through a certain chemical.

Alex chooses to get cured to avoid jail time, and the cure is effective to such an extent that after being cured, Alex couldn’t even think of violent crimes, let alone commit them. Even thinking of violence made Alex physically ill. Here, one asks — is the story hinting that violence begins in one’s thoughts?

The success of the cure was presented to ministers and important law enforcement figures. A demonstration is set up where Alex is beaten up, spat upon, punched, and even put in front of a beautiful woman whom he would have abused sexually prior to being cured. But now we see Alex being incited to commit acts of self-debasement, and rather than defend himself — as defence would have required a degree of violence — he suffers waves of sickness, disgust, and nausea when he attempts to engage in violence. He helplessly takes the beatings, despite his attempts to fight back.

He also becomes averse to any sexual acts. Since he committed numerous acts of sexual violence, when the beautiful woman is placed in front of him provocatively, he feels sick at the thought of touching her. He becomes conditioned to think adversely of sex itself, since most of the times when Alex was sexually engaged there was a facet of violence in the ordeal.

A priest present at the demonstration says:

“Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity is clearly to be seen.”

Here the story asks a deeper philosophical question concerning the larger issue of free will.

“He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.”

The priest argues that if a person cannot choose to be good and is instead forced to be good by being made incapable of violence and evil, then he ceases to be a person. Freedom of choice is an essential part of personhood for the priest. Here, the movie also toys with whether violence is a necessary facet of being “human,” and then shifts the focus to the question of what deeper ethics lie in recognizing violence as violence. Who gets to dictate what violence is — what evil is?

Another thing that further makes this discussion more convoluted and complex is the recognition of “political offenders.” In the story, the prisons were being crammed by ‘common’ criminals like Alex, and so one of the reasons for applying this cure in the first place was to cure common criminals because prisons needed more space for “political offenders.” This is another important issue raised in the story. Political offenders are considered criminals and are jailed, but it is striking that even in this fictional, futuristic, dystopian society, the same cure for common criminals cannot be applied to political offenders.

We soon see Alex become the representative figure for powerful people with their own selfish ideologies. Cured Alex was a beacon of opportunity presented to everyone at the demonstration — each attendee with their own vested interests in this experimental cure. Firstly, the law enforcement, who did not care about the ethical implications of the cure because they wanted less crowding in prisons; then the attending ministers, supporting this experimental cure since elections were due and they wanted to show the people a sure-fire way to reduce crime statistics in their area; and lastly the prison priest, who presents the ethical dilemma to the viewers and readers — where on one hand, a condition of absolute theoretical peace can be achieved practically, and on the other, the supposed freedom of choice is curtailed by forcing everyone incapable of ‘evil’ and ‘violence.’

Anthony Burgess, the author of the book, says the title A Clockwork Orange comes from a Cockney expression which means “an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into a mechanism.”

Cured Alex, as he re-enters society, experiences a taste of his own medicine, where he encounters people he had wronged in the past and they take their revenge, during which he can’t retaliate due to being cured. He experiences being helpless in instances of violence. An old man who was also a victim of Alex’s violence but was not aware of Alex’s identity during the attack (as Alex had worn a mask) takes him under his care. The old man discovers that during his treatment, Alex had inadvertently been conditioned against his favourite musical piece, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, as it was playing in the background of the violent videos he was being shown during the experimental treatment.

The old man publicises this instance to show the world that the state has the means to condition you into anything — to make you a puppet for their own use if treatments like these are approved by the government. The old man had motives to make sure the government didn’t come to power again, as elections were due. The minister, to save face, then approaches Alex and offers to “fix” him — meaning his conditioning gets reversed, and he is back to being his pre-treatment self: a delinquent capable of thinking violent things without feeling sick.

When the movie ends, Alex does not commit any more crimes, but he can think of violence and crime like he used to, without feeling sick. After this point, the story ends, but this ending itself presents another question: Does thinking of violence inevitably lead to violence? Does talking about violence inevitably lead to violence? When policing and rehabilitation are done, should the will of the people dictate whether it is acceptable for a man to stop being capable of choice and freedom of thought, if those might lead to conditions deemed unfavourable by society?

Political dissent — any movement to bring about social change — sometimes requires degrees of unrest, law-breaking, even violence. Therefore, is forced peace a form of violence?

The book and movie, being among many stories written about dystopian societies with their thinly veiled warnings of the state as an oppressive mechanism over the will of the people, also reiterate that violence and peace are sociologically determined phenomena, as people, at the end of the day, are still in debate about what makes a person, a person.

What began as an interesting, vaguely tethered commentary on violence, evil, ethics, and power has, of late, become familiar news headlines. I come back to the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act): citizens in jail for more than five years without bail — is this a ‘political offender’ acting as a ‘common criminal,’ or is this ensuring citizens’ security and civil well-being? I think of AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) and Manipur, and wonder whether ordained violence is evil or not. I think of Nepal and youth movements, and wonder whether “cured criminals” could ever defend themselves as political offenders. Are political offenders not violent? What necessitates violence? If starvation is violence, is every person wasting food a criminal? If poverty is violence, is every ‘rich’ person a criminal?

Source: https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/A+Clockwork+Orange.pdf