The theme that always gets talked in A Clockwork Orange - particularly in the original novel - is that of free will. That is for the chattering Leftist academics who love to ejaculate over violence as an expression of free will - the violence of which they themselves are incapable and by which they are fascinated as voyeurs - but this for me has never been the interest in the novel, which I view as indulgent in a seedy kind of way. The real quality in the novel is in the observation of how the state uses thuggery to keep the masses in check, promoting reprobates to positions of power and authority, as we see when Dim, one of Alex's former droogs and another rival gang leader become policemen and give Alex a good beating while he is helpless after the fictional yet plausible psychological conditioning known as the Ludovico Technique.
