Music, Violence, and Identity in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange E

Music, Violence, and Identity in Anthony Burgess A Clock hammer orangish Linking the fundamental conflict between singular identity and social identity with tuneful resourcefulness in Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange creates a lens through which one can recognize the magnetic dip that fury has to destroy an individuals identity. Although Alex clearly associates violence with his avow individual identity and sense of self, he consistently reveals the impossibility of rest an individual in the face of collection-oriented violence. Images drawn from the realm of music parallel the destruction of Alexs identity, either through conformity to a groups style of violence or through failure to adopt the homogeneity of group actions associated with violence. As Alexs narrative progresses, musical imagery follows the decline and re-emergence of his personal identity as a function of his involution in violence. Musical references underscore the power of violence to negate ind ividual identity in favor of group identity, thereby illuminating the soul-destroying effect that violence as on the human personality. One musical image, the ode to Joy from Beethovens Ninth harmony, illustrates the manner in which violence steals the identity of an individual and replaces it with a group identity. As Alex puts on the bear movement of Beethovens symphony, he feels the old tigers leap in him (46),1 and he forces himself on the deuce young girls he has brought with him to his den. The rape of these two girls by Alex appears to constitute an individual act of the self, and indeed the vocal function in the last movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony begins with an individual voice, without any accompaniment. Alex offers this explanation ... ...ty of the group. Group violence in prison leads to a dream in which Alex literally becomes an instrument of the orchestra, a significant object without individual character or identity. In the final chapter thus far Ale x departs (at least temporarily) from a violent way of life. The Lieder, or the personalized legal of a single human voice, invoked in connection with Alexs expiry from violence, announces the return of individual identity. In helping to clarify the role that violence plays in the destruction of individual identity, musical references in Burgess work reveal the annihilation of self as the ultimate end of violence. whole kit Cited1. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (New York W.W. Norton and Company, 1986).2. Ludwig Van Beethoven, Libretto, Symphony 9, Arturo Toscanini dir., Louis Untermeyer trans., NBC Symphony Orchestra, BGM 1990.