The boys discuss what to do with their night as they drink and Alex, the narrator describes the girls in the bar and the effects of the 'milk plus' cocktails that they are all drinking. In the near future, the main character, Alex sits at a bar called the Korova with his gang, Pete, Georgie and Dim drinking the drug-laced milk that the bar serves. Alex leaves the hospital and meets up with a new gang but finds that he has changed and does not enjoy violence as much anymore. While he is in the hospital he is deprogrammed and finds that he is able to commit violence again without getting sick. Alex is featured in the newspaper as a success story for the treatment and is then kidnapped by a group of political protesters who want to kill him so that it will come back on the prison system.Īlex escapes by jumping from a window but is hospitalized from the fall. The treatment is a success and Alex is released from prison a new man who cannot think of let alone commit any acts of violence without becoming terribly ill and vomiting. The book itself is told from the perspective of the main character, Alex a fifteen-year-old boy who, with his gang of 'droogs' goes out every evening to drink hallucinogen-laced drinks and participate in extreme, mindless violence.Īfter robbing and killing an old woman, Alex is taken in by the police and sent to jail where he undergoes an experimental treatment that is meant to take away his violent impulses by forcing him to associate violence with getting ill. In 1971, the book was adapted into a well-known movie starring Malcolm McDowell and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The term 'Ultraviolence' in particular was coined by Burgess for the book and refers to acts of excessive and often aesthetic violence.

The slang is referred to as 'Nasdat' in the book and is present throughout all of the stream-of-consciousness style narration.

A clockwork book