Table of contentsIntroductionThe coming-of-age genre or the Bildung narrativeA Clockwork OrangeConclusionIntroductionA Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a novel that explores the nature of youth, and in particular the capacity of a young person to grow, change and develop. In the case of Burgess's tale, the central character is named Alex, and the reader follows him as he engages in senseless acts of violence with his group known as the Droogs. However, when Alex is imprisoned, he is subjected to an experimental technique, known as the Ludovico Treatment, intended to "cure" his extremely violent tendencies. Although this appears to have been a success, Alex is then "cured" of his reprogramming again, causing his violent impulses to return. It's not until Alex sees two of his former gang members who have grown up and become police officers that he begins to feel like he actually wants to change his behavior and become a productive member of society. As a result, it is possible to argue that a key element of the novel concerns the way in which it juxtaposes the type of forced conversion that Alex is forced to undergo, with a real situation of growth and development, something that does not occur only as a result of a change in a person's inner life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The difference between these two types of change, one being forced on Alex by the scientists trying to "cure" him, and the other whose outcome is the result of his own action and his own growing maturity, plays a key role in whether or not A Clockwork Orange is understood to be a conventional coming-of-age story. To investigate this point, it is necessary first to examine the precise qualities of the coming-of-age genre itself, and then to understand how Burgess's novel does or does not meet these criteria. The genre called "coming of age" is closely related to the bildungsroar or "forming" narrative. Generally, this type of story is linked to the novel, in particular to the Bildungsroman. This narrative dates back to the late 18th century and includes novels such as Goethe's The Apprenticeship of Wilmhem Meister. Typically, these novels involve characters transitioning from young adulthood to maturity and encountering a series of challenges, obstacles, and disappointments along the way. But it is thanks to these challenges that the individuals in question are able to progress and become well-trained and fulfilled people. In this sense, a clearly important aspect of the coming-of-age genre concerns how an individual protagonist, or in this case the anti-hero, relates to the world around him and to various social conventions and institutions . According to Melissa Gelinas, a key element of any coming-of-age story is therefore the way in which it offers the reader or audience an "in-depth relationship with the protagonist of the text" but also an "understanding of cultural critiques". of the author, examined through the protagonist and his peers.” In this sense, a typical coming-of-age story is one in which a person progresses from immaturity to maturity and in which, through this process, an author is able to demonstrate his or her own perspective on the various institutions and social situations that surround it. The protagonist is faced with this. It is important to note, however, that the coming-of-age narrative is not simply a combination of satire and personal experience. Rather, there are important conventions relating to the nature of the transformation that aprotagonist, but also to the way in which this transformation occurs and to what precisely it is about a protagonist.character who changes. Gelinas, for example, develops his discussion of the Bildungs ​​narrative by stating that there are three key elements through which one must understand the relationship between the protagonist and the world as part of a proper instantiation of such a narrative. She states that the first of these factors involves the idea that "the protagonist is represented in a process of becoming – his gradual learning of his personality, as part of a larger world, is crucial." According to this point, it is crucial that the protagonist of the Bildungsroman comes to understand himself as part of something that is larger than himself, but also as something that must participate in order to have a sense of self. Second, Gelinas argues that the good Bildungsroman will involve a narrative in which "the changes that occur" in the protagonist acquire "plot significance", meaning that, in one way or another, the fact that the protagonist of the narrative has reached a new state of maturity must directly affect the world of the novel as a whole. Finally, Gelinas argues that the world of the novel itself must be "presented as a place of learning and potential awakening", meaning that the reader must believe that the protagonist will be able to continue making his way in the world as it evolves or evolves. their arrival at maturity. According to this conception, it is therefore not possible for a true Bildungsroman to focus on a social outcast or someone who is completely opposed to society. Rather, this narrative form should involve someone who becomes a member of society in the end and who is never so isolated from society that he or she would be unable to live or work there. While the traditional conventions of Bildungsromans are clearly important when considering A Clockwork Orange, it is also important to note the challenges posed to these conventions, particularly in relation to those who argue for a different approach to the Bildungsroman in relation to the modern world . For example, Edward Engelberg argues that modern versions of the "coming-of-age" genre may actually involve multiple generations of the same family or group of people, and that it is more important than those people engage in what he calls a “war of trial and error with experience.” » than that, they succeed in their objectives. According to Engelberg, the most important aspect of such a modern coming-of-age story is its ability to ensure that the reader comes to glimpse some sort of possible development or change in the world, even if that development doesn't actually happen successfully. . In this sense, to understand whether or not A Clockwork Orange should be understood as a coming-of-age story, it is necessary to understand both how it meets the traditional criteria for such a story and, also, how it can be seen as a challenge. A Clockwork Orange The opening of A Clockwork Orange clearly establishes Alex as both the narrator and anti-hero of the novel. This also seems to suggest that Alex is clearly immature and essentially a delinquent with little interest in anything other than hedonistic activities. The opening of the passage highlights this feature of his character, as it describes his desire to become drunk and commit acts of violence. Specifically, Burgess writes that he drinks something that can "give you a nice little fifteen-minute horror show admiring Bog and all his holy angels and saints in your left shoe with a bright light all over your mog." The suggestion in this passageis clearly that Alex likes recreational drugs because they allow him to have intense psychedelic experiences. The desire for such experiences may be generally associated with a youthful, immature and hedonistic attitude. It is important to note that, as this is an important convention of the majority narrative as discussed, this feature of Alex's behavior is also arguably linked to Burgess's own views. about the world, and in particular about a society that encourages such hedonism. Alex explicitly states that while there is a law against alcohol, there is no law against drinking milk laced with drugs. He then adds that taking these drugs will also “sharpen” him to commit acts of violence. This violence is a key part of how Alex's character is presented and Burgess makes it clear that it is only for fun. When talking about the violence the Droogs will commit, Alex states that his pockets were so full of money that "there was no need, from pretty Polly's point of view, to strangle an old veck in an alley and make him swim in the water. his own blood”, but “as they say, money is not everything”. Through this description of the violence that Alex will willingly commit, we see that he is motivated by a purely hedonistic desire, something that serves no purpose apart from his enjoyment. In this way, Burgess draws a connection between Alex's hedonistic drug use and his hedonistic enjoyment of violence, in that drugs facilitate violence. This fact can be argued to show that, as in a conventional coming-of-age story, Burgess uses elements of his story in order to criticize the superficial nature of society, which he believes actively encourages violence in which Alex engages in. In addition to showing Alex's inherently immature nature at the beginning of the novel, this opening depiction of violence also connects A Clockwork Orange to the coming-of-age genre as a whole. The first section of the novel is dedicated to showing hedonistic activities. of Alex and the other Droogs, activities which culminated in Alex's arrest and imprisonment following the murder of an elderly woman and after being betrayed by other members of his group whom he had humiliated during an earlier fight, which broke out after they tried to usurp him as the gang's leader. Following his arrest, Alex is subjected to the "Ludovico Technique" which aims to permanently modify his behavior and make it impossible for him to act on his violent tendencies, in addition to his sexual desires, by leading him to associate any idea of portage. violent or sexual acts with a deep feeling of terror and nausea. In a sense, it is obvious that this technique is intended to produce a "change" in Alex that would, in some way or another, be similar to the type of change a person would experience in the conventional narrative of transition to adulthood, in that it would allow him to be a functioning member of society, overcome his violent impulses and stop treating people as if they were mere objects for his pleasure. But at the same time, it is also clear that the change that the technique causes in Alex is false and does not stem from any real growth or maturity on his part. Instead, Alex is treated as if he were simply a mechanical object to be reprogrammed. Rather than actually facilitating his own personal development, Ludovico's Technique can therefore be seen as another aspect of Burgess's social criticism throughout the novel. The nature of this criticism is easier to understand if we consider Burgess's views on the form of the novel. as a whole and on itsrelationships with other social issues. According to Charles Sumner, Burgess argued that the novels themselves were the expression of a society that valued individual freedom and that without this freedom it would be impossible to write novels. According to this reading, it is therefore possible to consider Alex's initial resistance to what he must undergo in the Ludovico Technique as being in a certain sense heroic, because it allows him to maintain his individuality in the face of a social institution that wants reduce it. at the level of a pure machine. Sumner writes, for example, that "by preserving his individuality despite government efforts to erase him, Alex defends the raw human matter that Burgess sees as necessary for the survival of fiction." In Sumner's reading of the novel, this "raw material", although it can be profoundly violent in Alex's case, is something that must be preserved and not simply programmed out of a person, regardless of the degree of violence of his behavior. Indeed, Sumner thinks that Burgees wants to extol the beauty of individuality, however horrible it may be. At certain points in the central part of the novel, in which Alex is subjected to the technique, it is certainly true that he appears to be an individual who sees himself as resisting authority and engaged in a kind of heroic rebellion which preserves individuality in the face of a social institution that wants to make all men the same. In a passage in which he reflects on his treatment by the prison system, Alex states that "the non-self cannot have evil, which means that the government, judges, and schools cannot allow evil because 'they cannot allow the self. And isn't our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave Malenky men fighting these big machines? According to his thinking in this passage, Alex is subjected to the Ludovico Technique by a social institution that wishes to erase all traces of individuality and cause a situation in which people are reduced to "non-selves" instead of true human personalities. . By resisting the transformations to which he is subjected, Alex gains insight into his own self-understanding. It is therefore important to note that the Ludovico Technique is not the only significant change that occurs in Alex at this point in the novel. On the contrary, the fact that he is subjected to technology also leads him to reflect on the nature of society and to acquire a specific perception of himself. At this point, however, this sense of self is not exactly what one might expect to find in a classic coming-of-age drama, because it is not a feeling based on an understanding of Alex as an individual who is part of a larger world. Rather, Alex simply sees himself as oppressed by the world, meaning he's clearly not yet ready to fit into it and grow as a result. At other points in the story, Alex makes it clear that people other than the government who are trying to change remain resistant to their treatment and express an essential individuality that cannot be taken away from them. He states for example that "of course some of the malchicks living in 18a had, as was to be expected, embellished and decorated said large painting with a handy pencil and ballpoint pen, adding hair and stiff stems and dirty slovos ballooning out of the frame. rots worthy of these nagoy (naked, that is) cheenas and vecks.” In this sense, it is clear that Alex is not the only individual who feels resistant to change by force. Indeed, at this point in the novel, it is possible to argue that Burgess is writing almost a satirical version of a coming-of-age story or Bildungsroman. This.