Creation and Destruction in A Clockwork Orange Essays -- Clockwork Ora

Creation and Destruction in A Clockwork orange In the apologue A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess shows his readers a society in which pure dying seems to reign supreme. The lead character, Alex, and most members of his generation, spend their evenings recreation whollyy beating passersby, having small scarce brutal gang fights, and generally destroying both property and people. Yet these images and instances of wipeout constantly interact with images of art, of things created, usually thought to be the diametric opponent of such violence. Indeed, over the course of the novel, creation and destruction become just about indistinguishable. The pauperisms for creation and destruction are more important to the novel than the distinctions amidst the two. Alex and his three droogs, Pete, Georgie and Dim, commit many acts of violence in the first quin chapters, vivid and graphic enough that even Burgess admits in his insertion that my intention in writing the work was to t itillate the nastier propensities of my readers (Burgess ix).1 The crimes are evermore committed with a certain theatricality, giving Alexs narration the tang of an artists pride. The maskies that the four wear are not but real horrorshow disguises, but also provide dramatic effect (153). It is ars gratia artis (art that comes strictly out of a desire to create art), as Alex does not come to any motivation for his violence besides the fact that he derives pastime from it, and these four perpetrators consider their violence art. Alexs repetition of O my brothers, in particular in the more grueling scenes, gives the novel the feel of one of Rudyard Kiplings Just So Stories,2 a creation myth. Both the manner of coitus the tales and the tales themse... ... Alex eventually grows up. Violence, at the end of the novel, ceases to be his most desired mould of creativity. Alex is ready to put his energies elsewhere. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphoni es and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music (189). The Ludovico technique that would have destroyed Alex would not have been something he could outgrow. A Clockwork Orange blurs the lines between creation and destruction, to the intimate where distinctions between the two become almost irrelevant. What is important to Burgess is the motivation behind each, and the ability of characters doing either, or both, to change their ways. Works Cited1) Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (New York W.W. Norton and Company, 1986).2) Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories (New York Doubleday and Company, 1974).