Ludwig Van Beethoven is affectionately referred to as "Ludwig Van" by Alex in Stanley Kubrick's amazingly great flick A Clockwork Orange. The music of Beethoven was one of Alex's great loves; he played it in his room while engaging in the old in/out or thinking disturbing thoughts and imagined it while performing deeds of ultra-violence.

After they enforced their severe experimental reconditioning on Alex, one of the things that repelled him was music, even the compositions of his beloved Ludwig Van.

Alex made the mistake of sharing this information with his sympathetic host over dinner. Later, when his host remembered Alex as the derelict who had crippled him and raped his wife years ago, he used Beethoven as a means of torture. He locked Alex in a room and blasted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony until Alex became so sick and desperate that he threw himself out the window to escape the sound of the composer he had once loved.

Alex's response, as in Skinnerian conditioned stimulous-response, to Ludwig Van, as to the old ultra-violence, was without thought, even against his thought. He knew this was happening to him during the conditioning, and begged them not to do it to Ludwig Van. But, of course, they continued.

This is the approach to the nature of evil in A Clockwork Orange. Good is meaningless if it is done thoughtlessly.

This reflects upon the purpose of evil, and more, upon the nature of free will that permits the existence of evil, and sin. Man, and woman, are presented the option of evil, of the consciousness of evil, in order to become.

Alex throws himself out of the window, not to his death, but to his redemption, if not, in a way, to his transfiguration. At the very least, it is his triumph over the thought-control of his society.

This is certainly how he escaped being a clockwork orange.

See Wickernipple's fascinating Julian of Norwich on this point. See also the Fall of Man. For a curious counterpoint to Alex see Frankfurt example.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.