| Alex DeLarge | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | A Clockwork Orange |
| Created by | Anthony Burgess |
| Portrayed by | Malcolm McDowell |
Alex is a fictional character in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange and the film adaptation, in which he is played by Malcolm McDowell. In this film adaption, Alex's surname is DeLarge, in relation to Alex's reference to himself as "Alexander the Large" in the novel. This, in itself, is an apparent reference to Alexander the Great as well as a sexual pun. The American Film Institute rated Alex the 12th greatest film villain of all time, Empire Magazine selected Alex as the 42nd greatest movie character of all time[1] and Wizard Magazine rated Alex the 36th greatest villain of all time.[2]
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Alex is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He is portrayed as a sociopath who robs, rapes, and ultimately murders for his own amusement. 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 Romany 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.
At the beginning of the novel, Alex is 15 years old and already a veteran juvenile delinquent. In the film, to minimize controversy, Alex is portrayed as somewhat older, around 17 or 18 (McDowell himself was 28 when he portrayed Alex). He lives with his parents in a bleak, heavily-vandalized Municipal Flatblock in an unnamed English city in the near-future.
He is the leader of a gang of "Droogs": Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Although the youngest of the foursome, he is clearly the most intelligent and fearless, and the one who comes up with most of the ideas. Georgie, who resents his high-handedness, sets him up to be caught at the site of one of the gang's crimes, and Alex is sent to prison for murder.
Alex is sentenced to "14 years in Staja 84F," the word "Staja" being the abbreviation for "State Jail". He ignores the convict code of ethics by betraying a fellow prisoner's escape plans to the prison chaplain, knowing that he will report it to the warden. He curries the chaplain's favor by reading the Bible (using it to fantasize about being one of the crueler Roman emperors, or one of the soldiers who tortured Jesus). He is selected for the "Ludovico Treatment", justified in the novel by his stomping an obnoxious fellow prisoner to death in their cell.
The treatment, a form of aversion therapy, involves injecting him with a drug that makes him violently ill, and then showing him films of rape and violence — which will result in him becoming sick at the thought of hurting anyone. While being forced to watch footage from a Nazi concentration camp, Alex notices the soundtrack; classical music. While in the novel, this soundtrack incidentally makes Alex, in a sense, "allergic" to all music, the film concentrates solely on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was the symphony in particular that was playing, coincidentally also his favorite. Since he now associates Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with violence, he similarly gets sick when listening to it.
After the Ludovico treatment, Alex's sentence is commuted to time served and he is released. However, he soon finds that the treatment worked too well: He can't defend himself even when necessary. Upon returning home, he is rejected by his parents, who have rented out his room and turned over his belongings to the police pursuant to a new law compensating victims. In the novel version, he is then nearly beaten to death by a librarian whom his gang had previously victimized (a homeless man in the film). When two policemen break it up, they turn out to be none other than Dim, his former associate, and Billy Boy, a former adversary and gang leader whom Alex had bested in the past, who brutalize him further and leave him to die.
Disoriented with pain, Alex stumbles to the nearest house, pleading for help. The owner, a paraplegic writer whom the government calls a "subversive", recognizes Alex from the newspapers and wants to help him. Alex recognizes the writer as well: as a man whom he and his friends had once beaten nearly to death (hence his paralysis) and forced to watch as they gang-raped his wife (who later died of injuries brought on by the assault). The writer doesn't make the connection at first and treats him well, but eventually realizes his guest's true identity; in the film this occurs when the writer overhears Alex in the bath singing the song "Singin' in the Rain", which he had been singing during the attack. In the novel, the writer realizes who he is dealing with when Alex says "I thought you didn't have a phone," remembering his wife's excuse for not letting Alex and his gang into the house.
Seeking revenge, the writer drugs Alex, locks him in a room, and forces him to listen to the Ninth Symphony, the effects of which Alex had mentioned in conversation. Wracked with pain, Alex tries to commit suicide by jumping out the window — only to awake in a hospital, where the effects of the treatment are wearing off. His parents arrive to welcome him back home, and the Minister of the Interior, smarting from the bad publicity Alex's case has brought, offers him a government job. In the film and the early United States editions of the book, Alex becomes his old ultraviolent self again, thinking sarcastically: "I was cured all right", seconds before his brain buckles due to the neural surgery he recalls as recurrent dreams.
The final chapter of the British edition of A Clockwork Orange shows Alex, at the age of 18, in his government job at the National Record Library, growing out of his sociopathy and daydreaming about starting a family.
The character of Alex has gained considerable notoriety among filmgoers and can often be found on lists of greatest villains. Alex DeLarge, as played by McDowell, was named the 12th greatest movie villain of all time in the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Heroes & Villains. The character was named the 36th greatest villain in the Wizard Magazine #177 feature "100 Greatest Villains of All Time".
McDowell's performance has been widely acclaimed by critics.[3][4][5] He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and his failure to receive a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards is now seen as a major snub.[6] In 2008, his performance was ranked #100 on Premiere Magazine's "100 Greatest Performances of All Time."[7]
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