A Happy Ending?

I have just finished A Clockwork Orange and it did not end the way I thought it would. At the end of the second section I thought that Alex would become an example for what the government was doing and die as a martyr or live on unhappily. The government was trying to play the role of God and tamper with the free will of people. It was turning out to end like that when three men opposed to the current sitting government came into contact with Alex and were planning to use him as an example to bring the party out of power in the next election. However, it turned out that they wanted him to kill himself so that people would see how inhumane the treatment really was and that the party was behind it. When all was said and done, Alex was cured of his inability to choose, and returned to the way he was before he was imprisoned. At the very end he decides that he has grown too old for his childish behavior and wants to find a girl to marry and live a normal life with. What now comes into question is whether Alex matured by his own free will or whether the “cure” he received in prison had any influence on him. I looked into the author’s religion to find this answer. Burgess’ faith lies somewhere between Pelagianism and Augustinianism; both are stemmed out from Catholicism. The two faiths state that God has created us, but has no influence on the way we carry out our lives. He has laid out the law for us and we can choose to follow it or reject it. If this is true, then the government has not interfered with free will since they were given the choice. One can also say that Alex had his choice before he was sent to prison, and he acted by denying God’s law and taking the life of another. However, the punishment did not fit the crime. I do not believe that the government interfered with Alex’s free will in the long run. After he was stripped of his free will, he regained his ability to choose and went back to being a thug. Nevertheless, it appears he grew out of that stage and realized that there was more to life than roaming the streets.