Alex’s insistence on formal and structural motifs in his
narrative draws attention to his reinstatement as someone capable
of and predisposed to viciousness, while simultaneously alerting
us to the transformation his character undergoes. Alex looks the
part and speaks the part, but these days he shies away from acting
the part, as he suggests to us while Bully and the others beat an
old man: “More and more these days I had been just giving the orders
and standing back to viddy them being carried out.” The rhythmic
intensity of the language Alex uses to describe the ensuing violence
pales in comparison to Alex’s earlier accounts of poundings given
by his old droogs. Indeed, its vigor seems all but gone as his fondness
for violence fades.
Alex’s nadsat returns with full strength
during his meditations on the prospect of fatherhood and the likelihood
of him making the same mistakes as his father: “And so it would
itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round,
like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself
(by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning
a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers.” This passage demonstrates
Alex’s recognizably Christian conception of life as a cyclical pattern,
with original sin eventually being followed by redemption. Upon
realizing this concept of moral and spiritual growth, Alex finally
answers the question he asks himself in the beginning of this chapter:
“What’s it going to be then, eh?” Alex is now mature enough to understand
the connection between violence and youth, the latter of which he
compares to clockwork wind-up toys that move forward, unrelentingly and
unthinkingly, in straight lines. Earlier in his life, violence has served
as an affirmation of Alex’s free will, but as he grows older, Alex
realizes that only through suffering can he truly be capable of making
meaningful moral choices.
