The Authority to Condtion Goodness

Ideology has no history, which emphatically does not mean that there is no history in it (on the contrary, for it is merely the pale, empty and inverted reflection of real history) but that it has no history of its own (Althusser, 34). In A Clockwork Orange, the narrator Alex is imprisoned for 14 years after murdering the lady with the cats. While he is in prison, he reads the bible and thinks to himself how he would be one of the people torturing Jesus. From an outside point of view it looks like Alex is really trying to be good but we see through his narration that he is still bad (or at least what is deemed as bad). Here, the ideology of Alex’s character having no history of its own is due from Alex coming from a good family and background. The reality of it is that Alex is his own twisted individual despite growing up from a good background. And from a cultural perspective he is deemed as being bad and an individual who is in need of transformation to fit into the ideal. Goodness initially comes internally and the environment from authoritative factors plays a part in the management to be good.

In A Clockwork Orange, the government maintains a new treatment where they take bad individuals and make them good. Alex is picked to do the treatment. He is drugged and is forced to watch several films that have bad acts (for example, rape, Hitler, etc) and every time he experiences these bad acts Alex is conditioned to feel sick. After the treatment Alex is deemed cured and anytime he has thoughts of being bad he gets sick. I pose the question is Alex really cured or is he just prevented to do bad acts because he is conditioned to get sick? I think that Alex is not really cured and has no real choice to be good or bad.

Those capable of embracing it, investors all, would be the managers if not masters of their own lives. Those who could not would be cast as populations “at risk,” and be the targets of all manner of domestic wars (Martin, 2). In the beginning of the film Alex does bad acts with his friends at night. In one scene these ‘friends’ decide to take over and deem George as General over Alex. Alex plays along at first but then shoves George over and cuts him down. In the article Martin talks about the population that is able to control their own lives are masters of their own lives and those that cannot are considered “at risk.” In A Clockwork Orange, I observed that power and authority were really important and for Alex to survive he had to take control of his life. Although it was his own friends who left him to be caught by the detectives, Alex does try to take control of his own life by always being the one in charge.

More so, one of the lasting impressions I obtained from A Clockwork Orange is that there is always some higher authority that do acts for personal gain. As an example, the treatment for Alex was supposed to be for his transformation towards becoming a better person. Instead, he ends up at a worst state and at the hands of other powers who takes advantage of his condition.