Plot Summary for a Clockwork Orange

Directed by Stanley Kubrick 1971

Plot Summary for

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

In a futuristic Britain, a gang of teenagers go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims. After one of the boys quells an uprising in the gang, they knock him out and leave him for the police to find. He agrees to try "aversion therapy" to shorten his jail sentence. When he is eventually let out, he hates violence, but the rest of his gang members are still after him.

Summary written by Colin Tinto {cst@imdb.com}

In the not-too-distant future, a charming young sociopath named Alex, leads a nihilistic lifestyle of 'ultraviolence' which comes to a head when he is jailed for murder and volunteers for an experimental brainwashing treatment to reform criminals in exchange for a shorter prison sentence.

Summary written by Denny Gibbons

Alex, a teenage hooligan in a near-future Britain, gets jailed by the police. There he volunteers as guinea pig for a new aversion therapy proposed by the government to make room in prisons for political prisoners. "Cured" of his hooliganism and released, he is rejected by his friends and relatives. Eventually nearly dying, he becomes a major embarrassment for the government, who arrange to cure him of his cure. A pivotal moment is when he and his gang break into an author's home: the book he is writing (called "A Clockwork Orange") is a plea against the use of aversion therapy, on the grounds that it turns people into Clockwork Oranges (Ourang is Malay for "Man"): they are not being good from choice (sentiments later echoed by the prison chaplain). The film reflects this: many bad scenes in a Clockwork Orange are accompanied by jolly music; if we are to experience them as we should, we have to do it consciously, by realising they are bad, and not because the director tells us so through the use of music and images.

Summary written by Steven Pemberton {Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl}

Alex, a violent juvenile in the near future, is caught after a number of brutal rapes and murders. While imprisoned, he submits to a controversial experiment to make criminals ill at the mildest suggestion of violence or conflict. Now Alex's victims want to welcome him back into society with the same enthusiasm Alex had always exhibited when performing his crimes.

Set in a futuristic England (circa 1995), the film follows the career of a young man named Alex whose main pleasures in life are classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and random acts of "ultraviolence". Alex is approximately 15 years of age at the film's beginning, and about 17-18 years of age at the film's end. Alex provides a voiceover narration through most of