Black and white, morning and night: the world is filled with conflicting forces that must coexist for it to function smoothly. Forces such as diversity, fear of terrorism or competition, and the desire to coexist peacefully with one another must both be present for one to survive. Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange also contains this idea: “Duality is key to Burgess's vision of reality; believes that the essence of reality is its dual nature” (Kennard 87). Burgess believes there is a balance that allows each force to live side by side. The harsh, foreign language and characterization used in A Clockwork Orange create a novel full of duality and contribute to the message that opposing but coequal forces make up the composition of Burgess's world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Alex and his droogs, or friends, speak in Burgess's made-up slang throughout the novel. This bizarre language keeps the reader in the dark for much of the novel, until he begins to understand it about halfway through the novel. Teenagers in the A Clockwork Orange dystopia use Nadsat mainly when describing violent scenes, "Burgess relies mainly on a strange language he has devised: a mixture of current English, archaic English and anglicized Russian (today, yesterday and the future)" (Aggeler 86). Only young people, however, use this composite language, saying things like: “There was a bit of confusion with nozzles, bicycle chains and the like” (Burgess 43). This creates a striking difference in how teenagers and adults communicate in the novel. Some readers may feel frustrated by the language, finding it difficult to follow, but “There is something about the novel so frightening that it required a new language, and something so immanent in the novel's message that it refused to separate from it.” the language” (Petix 4). Once the reader gets past the confusion, he begins to grasp it quickly; this allows the reader to see the humor that Alex possesses but also allows for a full understanding of the brutal violence that Alex is capable of. When Alex sees Pete, one of his old droogs, the difference in language between youth and maturity clearly appears. When they recognize each other, Alex uses the old slang that was once familiar to both of them, only to make Pete's wife giggle: "You talk funny, don't you?" (Burgess 208). Now that Pete has emerged from his reckless adolescence, he has abandoned the slang that marked him as a nuisance to society. Now she speaks in normal, everyday language, explaining to the shocked Alex about her marriage: “I'm almost twenty. Old enough to be married, and it's been two months already” (Burgess 209). The meeting between the two old droogs leaves Alex bored with his usual violent life: "Alex at first seems predestined to do evil, but as he matures he transforms into a completely opposite person." (Rabinovitz 15). When analyzing the duality between youth and maturity in A Clockwork Orange, the language used in this encounter is a fundamental part. The language shows the reader how they are two distinct entities, but yet one age group is not more important than the other. They need each other to exist. The carefully developed characters of A Clockwork Orange serve well to develop another duality in the novel: man versus government. Over the course of the novel the government progressively becomes more and more oppressive, in an attempt to erase every trace of contempt in the individual. They focus solely on maintaining the state, “Burgess dislikes the control the state has overindividuals because it limits individual freedom” (Galens 10). When Alex was released from prison after completing Ludovico's experiment, the rozz were out in full force to keep people repressed. Dim, one of Alex's old friends who had been bullied, and Billyboy, an old enemy of Alex's, were the cops who were called when Alex got into a fight in the library. This was a corrupt time, however, so the cops took Alex into the woods to beat him: “It's not right, not always, for the libertines in town to meddle in much of our summary punishment. The streets must be kept clean in more ways than one” (Burgess 168). Dim and Billyboy were aggressive and unnecessarily cruel to Alex as they berated him. Despite the many crimes Alex has committed, the reader still feels sorry for him: “Without Alex's redeeming qualities, readers would simply see his as morally repugnant” (Rabinovitz16). However, they don't think of Alex as morally repugnant, because they got to know him through the novel; instead, they think the government and the Rozz are abhorrent for what they did to Alex. Without these two characters and another, the Minister of the Interior, the intrusion of the government towards the individual would not be so evident. In pursuit of a society centered on stability, the Minister of the Interior, a character who gained his position during Alex's incarceration, implements two policies that can achieve his goals, both of which greatly influence Alex's life. When he comes to power, he decides to give the government full control of the prison sector. The Home Secretary or Lower, as Alex calls him, decides that prisons should only be used for the politically non-compliant, meaning that all criminals must be eliminated, "common criminals such as this unsavory group can best be dealt with on purely curative basis" (Burgess 102). He implements a brainwashing experiment, called Ludovico's Technique, capable of erasing any criminal tendency by associating violent actions with physical illness. Not worrying about the subsequent side effects that may arise from this technique, the Minister of the Interior or Lower claims to have fixed the criminals in just over two weeks. When this experiment occurs, individual people are subject to the whim of the government; the government has an agenda and the people cannot hinder it. Always trying to turn any situation in the government's favor, the Interior Minister or the one below still uses Alex when the experiment goes wrong. After being forced to commit suicide due to a side effect of the Ludovico Technique, the minister ordered his scientists to return Alex to his normal state, saying, "I and the government I am part of want you to consider us friends." ” (Burgess 197). Then he brought in cameras and newspapers that would see Alex shaking hands, so everyone knew that the government was still Alex's friend, despite the fact that “Alex's treatment had turned him into a perpetual victim” ( Rabinovitz 15). The government always manages to have a good image again, especially thanks to the many impressionable citizens who have full faith in it. The main duality in A Clockwork Orange is the free will against repression of the Home Secretary accounts for much of the suppression in the novel. It eliminates the choice of criminals; their only option is to be good citizens, unless they can bear the pain of feeling terribly ill, "Alex's 'good behavior' after the treatment will only be an illusory good for society" ("A Clockwork Orange" 2). Alex and theThe prison chaplain forms a strong bond while Alex is in state prison because the chaplain allowed Alex to listen to his beloved classical music and read the Old Testament, an activity he loved due to all the violence it contains. When Alex goes to inform the chaplain that he will be subjected to conditioning, “Charlie”, as Alex calls him, becomes very emotional. Charlie disagrees with the technique: “I know I'm going to have a lot of sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses evil perhaps much better than a man on whom good has been imposed? Deep and difficult questions, small 6655321” (Burgess 106). Charlie's tearful speech with Alex provides important questions for the government that takes away free will from criminals, “Burgess claims that the freely chosen life, even the freely chosen evil life, is superior to the passive existence of the automaton” (“A Clockwork Orange ” 2). He would prefer a world where people choose how to act, and a government where they don't take the easy way out by brainwashing its citizens to do only good. Ultimately, the government allows Alex to get his free will back. They are just saving their image, they would much rather have citizens conditioned to get sick at the thought of violence than violent citizens filling their space in prison. Alex at first returns to his old bullying ways with a new gang, but ultimately chooses to change his life. He makes this choice with his mind, which clearly thinks: “I felt this big hole in my plot, feeling very surprised about myself too. I knew what was happening. I was growing up” (Burgess 211). It is much more satisfying for the reader that Alex wants to be good than when Alex was forced by the government to be good: “Finally grown up and fully prepared to accept the difficult challenges of the self, Alex no longer chooses the easy path to ultraviolence, opting instead to embark on a life of family commitment and human renewal” (Davis 9). Although seemingly necessary to the novel, the final chapter in which Alex chooses to turn away from violence was initially not present in the American version of the novel. It was later added because: “Burgess said he wrote the twenty-first chapter in part to symbolize the age of reason Alex is moving towards; in the end he is only eighteen, so his intuition is clearly only a first hesitant step towards maturity” (Cullinan 2). Twenty-one is the age when children will become adults, when they will have all the responsibilities that will make them capable in the world. Without the twenty-first chapter in which Alex chooses maturity of his own free will, the novel could not have been complete. A fourth duality, the battle between good and evil, rages in Burgess's novel. A Clockwork Orange, “explores ideas of good and evil by asking what it means to be human” (Galen 6). The character he creates, called F. Alexander, shows how thin the line is between the two sides. When Alex first shows up defeated and tired at F. Alexander's door, he welcomes him warmly, saying, "God help you, poor victim, come in and let's have a look at you" (Burgess 171). We learn that F. Alexander has been fighting against the government for a long time and is firmly opposed to the Ludovico Technique that they performed on Alex. F. Alexander provides a room for Alex, cooks for him, and talks to him openly. You might think he was a very good and caring man, until F. Alexander suspects that Alex brutally raped his wife a few years ago: “Because, by God, if he were, I would tear him to pieces. I would share it, by God, yes yes, so I would” (Burgess 184). Because of Alex and his peopledroog, F. Alexander now lives alone. F. Alexander's suspicions are enough to transform him from a man who cares about Alex's well-being to a man who could kill him without regrets. F. Alexander and his friends take Alex and lock him in an apartment where classical music blares through the walls. Alex can't stand this music, because a side effect of his conditioning also included classical music making him feel bad along with violence. There is nothing Alex can do to stop the music except commit suicide: "Then I climbed onto the windowsill, the music was playing to my left, I closed my glasses and felt the cold wind on my wheelchair, then I jumped" ( Burgess 188). F. Alexander no longer cared about Alex, his love for his wife prevailed over his good character. He decided to hurt Alex to prove a point about the government's conditioning technique instead of proving his point in a less shocking way than Alex's death. The duality between Alex and F. Alexander is easy to discover, since they both have the same name. Although the similarities between the two characters end there. Alex is impulsive and always wants to be the dominant force with his droogs, even though “Alex becomes a character that readers sympathize with, because of his artistic conscience” (Semansky 12). F. Alexander is much more introverted. He closes himself in his house on the outskirts of the city and finds joy in quiet activities, such as writing. Burgess created these characters to balance each other: “Many of Alex and Alexander's characteristics can be resolved into examples of extremes that follow the pattern of the polar antithesis, predator and victim; uncontrolled libido (rape) and controlled libido (husband); young people and adults; man of action and man of ideas; destroyer and creator; conservative and liberal; alienated man and integrated man” (Semansky 14). The two characters, despite their opposite behaviors, are nevertheless deeply linked. One of Alex's many victims of his brutal rapes includes F. Alexander's late wife. One night Alex and his droogs broke into his house and forced him to watch the boys rape his wife while they savagely beat the couple. F. Alexander's wife took her own life after this incident. When Alex is later lured into the same house after being beaten by the rozz, they both soon realize that they have met under very bad circumstances before. Alex and F. Alexander have a yin and yang relationship. Burgess advances the idea that “there is a cycle of recurring phases in which each young man passes through a period of existence as a violent and mechanical man; then he matures, gets more freedom of choice and his violence subsides” (Rabinovitz 18), so perhaps F. Alexander was once a violent teenager like Alex, but now he has matured. Alex and F. Alexander are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum, but they still have to interact with each other because they have a deep connection that unites them. Through Alex's violent yet entertaining narrative, Burgess conveys to the reader that the world is composed of polarities. These polarities help balance each other, creating space for choice and space for individualism. The novel has so many different parts and ideas to explore, but they are able to all come together to tell Alex's incredible story: "A Clockwork Orange aims to serve as an example of the kind of work that can truly reconcile opposing values" (Rabinovitz 19).The work Burgess creates bridges the gap between the incredibly immoral Alex and the mostly moral readers who immerse themselves in Alex's story, but that's not all Burgess bridges the gap between many different entities to create a novel that can speak universally Using Nadsat and extreme characters, Burgess shows us that they can 2007., 2002. 11-13.