A Clockwork Orange Lesson Plan

A Clockwork Orange is Anthony Burgess's most famous novel—although it is by many reports his own least favorite of his works. It was published in 1962. Set in a dystopian society rife with both street crime and government cruelty, it follows Alex, a young man who gets great joy from committing random violence. When after harming many people, he is arrested and convicted of a murder he committed by a police force whose violence and cruelty equal his own, he's sent to prison, where he volunteers for a treatment that renders him unable to commit violence without becoming ferociously ill. Denied his agency, but released from prison, he suffers at the hands of a cruel society and of those he...