case, but there are hints that Alex is brainwashed by society and culture even before he was taken in by the State scientists. Theepilogue spells this out a little, with the mature Alex viewing his former thug self as a machine obsessed with destruction.

Pastiche: The nadsat slang is a pastiche of Russian, Cockney, and Romani words, combined with Shakespearean-style English and baby talk.

Post–World War II world: Postmodernism is said to have its origins in the wake of WWII, which left the world shaken due to the rise of the Cold War and nuclear warfare, not to mention the scars left by the Holocaust. World War II is mentioned many times in ACO, particularly the fascist nations of the period. Alex is exposed to World War II footage during the Ludovico Technique, particularly footage of brutality and murder. Perhaps Burgess is suggesting that in the wake of the war, society and culture are more violent than peaceful.

There are many different postmodernist theories and thus many different ways to approach Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange from a postmodernist perspective. If you want to focus on Marxist versions of postmodernism, you could attempt a social and cultural critique in which you show that the repressive mechanisms of state and economic production in late capitalism give rise to an alienated proletariate. If you are more interested in the purely textual critique of high theory, you could focus on how the polyglot linguistic universe of the novel infinitely defers and possibility of meaning, both of language and action.

The psychoanalytic approach can be applied to A Clockwork Orange in two ways. One way is to try and analyze the book itself, as well as its protagonist Alex. The other is to see how it is used within the book—in the form of the Ludovico Technique.

Firstly, the novel itself has been a very common subject of psychoanalysis and a lot of the critique it received revolved around this. Alex is a deeply disturbed individual, who can safely be called a sociopath. He is incapable of feeling any real empathy for his victims or taking responsibility for the suffering he causes. To that end, what's wrong with him is quite clear.

Other characters in the novel are a different case, however. Having a protagonist like Alex works kind of like a cover for the rest—compared to him, the others seem less bad. On closer inspection, though, there are very few genuinely positive characters in the book. Most of them submit to the same impulses, but to a lesser degree. In Part 3, Alex goes through several brutal beatings, all from people he's hurt earlier. Deserved? Yes. Right? Hard to say. Anger is a powerful emotion and Alex's crimes were terrible. From a psychoanalytical standpoint, Alex represents an almost pure Id—he acts to satisfy his instincts, as that's the only thing he cares about. If we are to agree that the rest of the characters are less "broken" in that sense—that is, they have all three parts of the psyche (id, ego, superego) working properly—it leaves the reader to assume they choose to let the anger rule them.

That is most obvious in the case of the writer whose house Alex burgles in Part 1. He is beaten and his wife is raped by the droogs. In Part 3, we find out she's died from her injuries. Now, when the writer finds a severely beaten Alex on his doorstep, he doesn't recognize him. Before the personal level comes to play, the writer is helpful. He dislikes the government and wants to use Alex as an example of brutality (since he was subjected to the Ludovico Technique). Then Alex reveals himself and everything changes. In psychoanalytical terms, the Id kicks in with full force and drives the Superego away. All other plans go out the door and only revenge remains. He ends up locking Alex in a room and blasts classical music to him—the thing that triggers the nausea and pain.

If the reader didn't know who Alex was either, we'd think it was cruel. But we do know who he is. Everything comes down to what we know and how we choose to act upon that knowledge, just like psychoanalysis suggests.

Secondly, psychoanalysis is used within the book itself. The Ludovico Technique is a severe form of aversion therapy, which is intended to physically stop Alex from committing crimes. As he watches violent imagery, he is injected with drugs to make him ill. It works. Alex becomes, for a while at least, incapable of harming anyone.

The way the aversion therapy is used here makes it a backwards version of free association, an important tool for psychoanalysis. Normally, free association is used to bring things from the subconscious to the conscious mind. The process also works naturally—smells, for example, are powerful triggers. When we smell something very particular, we're often reminded of a person, place, or an event. In psychoanalytical therapy, the method is used to find those sort of links and use the knowledge to our advantage.

With aversion therapy, the process works the other way around—the triggers are created. As Alex tries to do something violent, his body reacts and he becomes nauseous. The therapy forces something into the subconscious, instead of bringing it out. In real world, there are a lot of ethical issues with this, of course. Even in the book, the question of losing free will is raised. That is why real patients volunteer for it.

One way to apply the psychoanalytic approach to this book would be to consider the protagonist, Alex, and his development in the novel. In Freudian terms, Alex is a youth who is ruled completely by his id, or his selfish responsive nature that causes him to act instinctively in a way that does not think about how his actions impact on others. Alex is presented as a youth whose id, or whose instinctual drive to satisfy the pleasure principle, runs rampant in his consciousness. He shows little evidence of being able to marshall the other two aspects of his consciousness, the superego and the ego, to control his id and reign it in. He therefore is an uncontrollable youth who is sadistic and lacks any form of remorse.

Even after the way that he is tortured using Ludovico's Technique and hsi time in prison his basic consciousness in psychoanaltyical terms remains the same. It is only in the last chapter that he shows any chance of developing into a "normal" young man when he begins to dream about having a wife and children. This last chapter suggests that he is moving slowly towards a normal and healthier consciousness in terms of having a balanced id and ego ruled over by the superego.

If I were you, I would want to approach this text through analysing the concept of free will. In a sense, this text asks a massive postmodernist question, which is what it is to be human. Through the Ludovico Technique, we have a thoroughly evil character, Alex, who is compelled to be good. Burgess very interestingly uses this situation to think about whether somebody who is forced to be good is actually better than somebody who chooses to be evil.

Alex is surely one of the most chilling characters in literature because of his absolute lack of remorse and the way that his evil nature rules his life. When he does start to behave well, it is clear that this is not something that is "natural" for him, as the desire to do good is something that has been created superficially within him by a government who wants to control their populace and their desires. The Ludovico Technique manages to erase the bad aspects of Alex's character, but the novel suggests that this also is tantamount to making him less than human, as he loses his freedom to choose his actions. This, Burgess suggests, is actually a crime that is worse than any of Alex's misdemeanours.

It is very significant that F. Alexander, the writer that is beaten up by Alex and his droogs, says the following comment to Alex:

They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good.

As he says later on, "A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man." This text therefore raises a very postmodern theme in its examination of what it actually means to be human. Clearly any behaviour that is imposed upon us that takes away our freedom to choose is something that detracts from our humanity.