A Clockwork Orange F. Alexander Quotes

F. Alexander

Quote 1

"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. And I see that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain." (3.4.17)

F. Alexander verbalizes a key point of A Clockwork Orange. Robbed of his free will and choice to do good or evil things, and compelled to perform only socially acceptable acts, Alex is no longer a human being.

F. Alexander

Quote 2

"I think you can help dislodge this overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness." (3.1.21)

At the very least, F. Alexander and co. believe the Government is overbearing because it does not respect the individual liberties of its people, in addition to other reasons.

F. Alexander

Quote 3

"Recruiting brutal young roughs for the police. Proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning… Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism." (3.5.8)

F. Alexander fears that the State is under rule by a totalitarian Government. Here, he also exposes one of the ways this Government seeks to repress its people: it hires hoodlums (like Alex's droog Dim and kids like Billyboy) as police to scare ordinary citizens off the streets. This is like institutionalizing gangs.