Alex (A Clockwork Orange) - Character Overview

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.