Character Overview
Alex is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He is portrayed as a psychopath who robs, rapes, and assaults innocent people chosen at random for his own amusement, also showing no remorse when he realizes he's accidentally killed a woman he was trying to rob. Intellectually, he knows that this sort of behavior is wrong, saying that "you can't have a society with everybody behaving in my manner of the night". He nevertheless professes to be somewhat puzzled by the motivations of those who wish to reform him and others like him, saying that he would never interfere with their desire to be good; it's just that he "goes to the other shop".
He speaks Nadsat, a teenage slang created by author Anthony Burgess. The language is based on English and Russian words, and also borrows from bits of Romani speech, the Bible and schoolboy colloquialisms. He likes milk spiked with various stimulants ("milk plus") or hallucinogens ("synthemesc"). Alex is very fond of classical music, particularly Beethoven, or, as he calls him, "lovely lovely Ludwig Van". While listening to this music, he fantasizes about endless rampages of torture and slaughter.
Read more about this topic: Alex (A Clockwork Orange)
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“She [Evelina] is a little angel!... Her face and person answer my most refined ideas of complete beauty.... She has the same gentleness in her manners, the same natural graces in her motions, that I formerly so much admired in her mother. Her character seems truly ingenuous and simple; and at the same time that nature has blessed her with an excellent understanding and great quickness of parts, she has a certain air of inexperience and innocency that is extremely interesting.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)