Learned Morality in A Clockwork Orange Essay

People Are Trained To Be Good.

To be a good person would mean to be loving, caring, honest, trust worthy, friendly, not act in violent situations, respect others and be nice to others. The novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a novel about a kid named Alex who was brought up in a bad neighbor and enjoys doing violent things with his droogs, (his friends.) Throughout this novel a lot of awful situations happened to Alex for his terrible actions. He ends up going to jail and in jail they try a technique on Alex which should make him into a good person forever therefore avoiding jail. I think that this story proves that you cant be born well or bad, a person is trained to be a superior or a dreadful person. When youre growing up you learn from the things around you and when youre born a baby doesnt know a thing about the world. Its like their brains are a blank slate ready to be written on. Babies arent trained while in a mothers stomach to be who they will become in the future but as soon as their born theyre things being taught to them.

The Ludovico Technique is used on Alex to make him become a good person. They said that this technique will make him never go back to jail again and thats exactly what Alex wanted. Goodness comes from within, goodness is something choosing.(83) This quote was said by the priest that worked in the prison. The priest feels that people chose to be superior or horrific and the Ludovico Technique is goodness forced upon you. The Ludovico Technique is just a form of behaviorism which can also relate to the Pavlovs dog theory. People are trained to be good by their surrounding and how their raised and many other things therefore its your decision, and because of Alexs bad neighborhood that could be one of the reasons why he chooses to behave badly.

Alex grew up in a terrible neighborhood where there was always violence and the laws were not observed. Its a stinking world because it led the young get onto the old like you done, and theres no law nor order no more.(14) This quote came from the old man Alex beat up because Alex hates people who are dirty and week and he saw the bum as one of those people. Alex chooses to be violent because of what he saw growing up in his awful neighborhood. All the modern youth saw was violence in the gazette and around where they lived.

When Alex meets Pete and sees that Pete is finally settled down and married to a wife it makes Alex yearn to be in that situation. Perhaps that was it; I kept thinking perhaps I was getting old for the sort of jeezny I had been leading, brothers.(189) When the Ludovico Technique was performed on Alex he had to live where everything he did was good and that wasnt the true Alex. After the huge fall that made Alex get back to the old him he was doing the same bad things again and seeing Pete made him realize a lot. Alex is only getting older not younger and he believes he should start making wiser choices. John Locke would agree with Alex decision because he also believed that people were born with a blank slate and that their experiences taught them whether to be good or terrible.

The novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess made me believe that people cant be born good or bad once born. People choose whether to be a good quality or a appalling person according to the environment they grow up in which including how their parents raised them, etc. I think this book was a excellent interesting book and it can relate to our world today because of all the violence that went on in the book and how violence occurs in our days. The violence Alex committed and encountered is similar to the violence that occurs now, such as little girls being raped by fathers or even strangers or people getting beaten up for no apparent reason. Unfortunately there is no Ludovico Technique for todays prisoners and often once they have been placed behind bars unlike Alex they have little or no personal choices left.