Free Will in "A Clockwork Orange"

In the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, the concept of free will is again brought up. This time, the motif of free will isn’t concerned with free will vs. determinism, but concerned with needing free will in order to be human. The point of free will in this novel is to show the reader that having the ability to choose how we live our lives makes us human and defines who we are. Being forced into decisions isn’t living and is no way to live life. This is shown when Alex, the main character from the book undergoes Ludivico’s Technique. Alex is a violent youth who robs people, rapes women, and beats people up for fun. However, after he is found guilty of murder he is sent to prison. While there, he gets in a fight with an inmate and the government decides to use a technique on him that will force him to be good. This technique forces him to become violently ill whenever he begins to think of violence, thus always making him act like a good citizen. However, due to the fact that Alex isn’t acting this way under his own free will, he isn’t really living the life of a human being. He is in some ways no more than a mindless machine. In fact, many characters in the book say that after Ludivico’s Technique Alex is no longer a man because he can no longer choose what he wants for his life. However, later in the novel, Alex is given a treatment that restores his ability to choose between right and wrong. While at first he falls back into his violent ways, he then starts to see that maybe he should turn his life around and try and choose the morally correct path. This ending shows that in order for a person to truly live the human experience they need free will. Making good decisions because you are forced to in no way develops you as a person or means that you are a good human being. When Alex decided to try and start making good decisions on his own however, it showed that he was developing as a person and that the only way a person could truly be a good human being was to do so under his own free will. A Clockwork Orange tries to say that free will is a necessity to be human. Without it, people can’t develop and their actions are meaningless in the long run.