Tying it All Together...

These three novels both share and have different uses of free will. All three novels state that free will is a part of human life, but that is where the similarities between the novels usage of free will ends. In Slaughterhouse – Five, free will is seen as an illusion, something that we want to have but isn’t really there. In both Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange, free will is seen as something essential and needed to live life. These novels explain how free will is something so important that it should never be lost sight of and must always be used. Slaughterhouse – Five on the other hand trivializes it by using an alien philosophy to show that free will doesn’t exist. A Clockwork Orange also separates itself from the other novels because it focuses on free will being the basis upon how we define ourselves as humans. A Clockwork Orange shows that a human’s ability to make their own decisions in life and choose what they think is right is what defines a person and separates humans from animals. Brave New World and Slaughterhouse – Five don’t go as far as to associate free will with the human condition, instead, those novels focus on how humans perceive free will and how it should never be sacrificed. This being said, these works show that just the thought of free will is essential to human survival. Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange both are very explicit in the fact that free will is important to human survival while Slaughterhouse – Five hides this fact a little more than the other two. In Slaughterhouse – Five, the Tralfamadorians say that only on Earth is there any talk of free will. This shows that even though free will may be an illusion, it is an illusion people need to have to find meaning in their lives. These three works of literature show that having the ability to choose how your life plays out gives people a reason to live and inserts meaning into every person’s life. If no one had control of their lives, we would live in a nihilistic world where no one cared what happened next. These novels are trying to say that free will (or even the appearance of it) allows humans to live meaningful lives and not fall into nihilism.