A Clockwork Orange (novel): Difference between revisions

The novella begins with the droogs sitting in their favorite hangout (the [[Korova Milk Bar]]), drinking "milk-plus", a drink consisting of milk, prodded with the customer's choice of certain drugs, including "vellocet", "synthemesc", or "drencrom" (which is what Alex and his droogs were drinking, according to Alex's own first-person narration). This drug, referred to as "knives", would "sharpen you up", as it did for Alex, in preparation of the night's mayhem. They [[assault]] a scholar walking home from the public library, rob a store, leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, stomp a panhandling derelict, then scuffle with a rival gang. [[Joyride (crime)|Joyriding]] through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and maul the young couple living there, beating the husband and [[rape|raping]] his wife. In a [[metafiction]]al touch, the husband is a writer working on a manuscript called "''A Clockwork Orange,''" and Alex contemptuously reads out a paragraph that states the novel's main theme before shredding the manuscript. Back at the milk bar, Alex strikes Dim for his crude response to a woman's singing of an operatic passage, and strains within the gang become apparent. At home in his parents' dreary flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume while fantasizing about more orgiastic violence.

Alex skips school the next day. Following an unexpected visit from P. R. Deltoid, his "post-corrective advisor," Alex meets a pair of ten-year-old girls and takes them back to his parents'the flat, where he serves them scotch and soda, injects himself with hard drugs, and then rapes them. That evening, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a "man-sized" job. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting with Georgie, then in a show of generosity takes them to a bar, where Alex insists on following through on Georgie's idea to burgle the home of a wealthy old woman. Alex breaks in and knocks the woman unconscious, but when he opens the door to let the others in, Dim strikes him in payback for the earlier fight. The gang abandons Alex on the front step to be arrested by the police; while in their custody, he learns that the woman has died from her injuries.