Connections between The Road and A Clockwork Orange

Connections between The Road and A Clockwork Orange

Tyler Croll

 :)

I made many connections with the novel The Road and the film A Clockwork Orange. First, at the end of A Clockwork Orange Alex is placed in a world where nobody on his side and everyone is out to get him pretty much, which is connected to the father and son in The Road because they are fighting for themselves against everyone. Also, after being imprisoned, or moreover from the point on after Alex through them into the water, Alex’s life becomes literally destroyed; his parents do not really care for him anymore (renting out his old room), the people who used to be his friends become police officers and beat him, and he has nowhere to go. This connects with The Road because the world has been destroyed and so has the old lives of the father and son; just like Alex the father and son have lost the Mom of their family. The father and son are helpless in this world, just as Alex is.

 Next, after being imprisoned, Alex takes an experimental drug and is forced to be scared of things he would not normally be scared of, as he is forced to adapt himself to society. This connects with the son in The Road because he did not ask for the world to become such an immoral and dangerous place, but it happened, and he was forced to adapt to such a world. Both for the better, but neither of them is happy. Neither of them wants to live.  The suicide attempt by Alex in A Clockwork Orange strongly connects with the father and son in The Road. Through Alex’s failing to break free of his miserable world/life, the father and son, in the same situation, endure the same thing. With the Mom killing herself, the father and son have to live for the purpose of each other, even though they want to die and escape; just as Alex must live since his wanting to kill himself wasn’t enough to do the job  and he lived through the fall.

 Also, all the brutal violence and lack of morality within these two dystopic worlds stands out to me, BOTH lacking a controlling government in my eyes. With all the murder and rape going on in both these worlds, it is hard to see a major difference between the two, for both these worlds do not function very well at all in my opinion. I mean, in The Road, there IS no government, literally; so this world is obviously not capable. However, in A Clockwork Orange, there is a government, but it does not serve as well as it should for society to function well. With all of the murder and rape and everything else going on; how easy it is to get away with it, the government is not real there as it should be. So what is the point in having it then? The government is supposed to be flawless; actually it needs to be flawless for society to function well, but instead it mends Alex’s mind and destroys him which shows its complete lack of morals and lacking capability to do good for its people; Similarly to how the survivors in The Road cannot sustain any kind of society to the flaws the people have.

 Lastly, there are a few differences between the two dystopic worlds. The main one is obviously government vs. lack of government. Even if the government does not do well at its job, it is better than nothing. Unlike in The Road, the world is functioning, just not as well as it could be… There is violence in both pieces, but they both result to different things. In The Road, it occurs left and right because violence is the key to living in this world. You have no choice but to use it to survive.  However, in A Clockwork Orange, crime (murder, rape, etc) is risky, and results in nothing beneficial or rational, just lack of morals. It CAN lead to the destruction of a person as it did with Alex after his gang left him to be put away and ultimately destroyed his life; even if his previous life consisted of immorality and dire wrong-doings… that was his life. This also contrasts with The Road because the two protagonists are the moral ones who are thrown into a world of immoral people with only a few people like him, whereas in A Clockwork Orange the protagonist is the immoral one as opposed to most others. In both cases, I cannot neglect my pathos for all three protagonists…

Dystopic Comparison

The essentially quite different in their respective pots, I feel the film adaptation of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and McCarthy’s The Road have many similarities characteristic of dystopic works. The primary similarity I found was the lack of sympathy for any protagonist, even when placed in harsh and cruel situations. As I’ve expressed in all my previous posts, the two protagonists in The Road are weak and irresponsible trough their selflessness, thus no pathos is created for them. Similarly, in A Clockwork Orange, hatred and general dislike is felt toward the protagonist. Though the narrator is exposed to some pretty severe punishment after his won climactic point, the viewer can find solace in the fact that his transformation and treatment will benefit the majority of society. One also notes that a few broken bones and sick feelings are nothing when compared to the mental and physical anguish he causes through his raping and murder. Burgess and McCarthy themselves make juxtaposing comments on the sympathy (or lack of) felt toward the characters. While A Clockwork Orange’s protagonist is hateful due to his selfish actions, the father in The Road is loathsome when he reaches out to others, sacrificing his, and his son’s food. All protagonists in the two works develop toward a selfless attitude, and the eventual degradation of them displays how society must essentially follow a Darwinist reality of each individual struggling for their own ends.
Matt has a made wonderful connection of sex in A Clockwork Orange and The Road. While A Clockwork Orange displays no connection between sex and love/intimacy, through the mother McCarthy backs this by displaying how trivial and useless love is. The mother clearly has abandoned most emotions felt toward her son, and expresses how she would kill him if the father were not preventing it. As it is obvious to anyone that a dual homicide-suicide would be the best means of escape for the protagonists, one sees how love simply stands on the way of reality and proper decision making. The father is undone and weak due to the love of his son, and McCarthy wonderfully displays how we should abandon such emotions in order to secure our continued happiness. When A Clockwork Orange presents to us the horrible scenes of rape, and that zany and disturbing threesome, it is not a lack of love that causes this, but a lack of morality. The mother in The Road was moral and just due to her abandonment of love, while the narrator in A Clockwork Orange is immoral and unjust through his psychotic mind and love of his status.
Both authors make similar comments about natural innocence, contradicting all ‘tabula rosa’ theories. One sees in both works how the people causing most of the problems are the young generation. McCarthy and Burgess clearly state how innocence is developed through harsh conditioning, and punishment of youth is ideal and necessary in order to better society. One sees in The Road how the young protagonist nearly destroys his father and himself through his senseless selflessness. Only through the father refusing to help people, such as the man struck by lightning, is the boy conditioned to reality and true innocence (that being thoughtful of yourself and all held dear). Just so, the young protagonist in A Clockwork Orange must be conditioned through prison and by doctors. As the boy in The Road continues to care for others, asking about the wellness of ‘the little boy’, and the narrator in a A Clockwork Orange never becomes fully resolved with the world, the reader/viewer realizes that for some weak-spirited individuals death may be the only form of conditioning capable of correcting society as a whole.
The primary contrasting aspect between A Clockwork Orange and The Road is the comment on general human mentality. While A Clockwork Orange displays the somewhat unrealistic view that the majority of society is good-hearted with a few immoral people, The Road provides the more realistic view of the natural world and the two good-hearted protagonists in constant competition. The only characters that cause any problem in A Clockwork Orange are the protagonist ,his retrograde friends, and another equally detestable gang. The majority of society is pitted against these individuals and one gains the false hope that the world is generally good. In The Road there are at most five lovable characters, and the rest of the human world is against them. Similar to today’s society, competition among individuals dictates that man should look out and care for only himself. McCarthy also embodies another theme in the Road not present in A Clockwork Orange, that of man pitted against mother nature. While the video of A Clockwork Orange employs pathetic fallacy at some some points, the natural landscape in The Road is inhospitable and conducive to starvation and depression. McCarthy make evident man’s natural struggle to defeat mother nature, and comments on ho unless we explore nature’s destruction now it may turn against us.

-Daniel

CLockwork/Road

I found that there were a few similarities in The Road and in A Clockwork Orange. The first of which is the common violence. There is a lot of violence in The Road, not necessarily seen taking place but implied. For example the People that are trapped in the cellar being used for food, the enslavement of people etc. In Clockwork orange at the start the beating of people and raping of women was just a good night out for the group. Even the murder of the one women wasn’t a big deal to them.
In The Road people killed for food and supplies, they were cannibalistic and they enslaved people just because they could. Whenever the father and son found people on the road they were almost always forced to hide from them because if they didn’t they would be killed. The army that they saw was a large army that had many slaves, they would beat or kill a person just because they came across them and then they would take all of their meager supplies and possibly eat the person.
Another similarity between the two was the disconnection between love and sex. In A clockwork orange, people simply have sex and raped people for a good time. There was no thought of love. It was just primal urges that drove them and it was very insignificant. This is evident in the threesome that the main character has, as well as the rape scene with the women, where since the boys had never met her it was obviously only for enjoyment. In The road there isn’t much contact with women but with what little contact their was is filled with the implication of rape. The mother who killed her self did so out of two fears, one of which was the fact that if she was captured she would be raped. So it is evident that people in both pieces use sex for cheap thrills. The other thing that sex is used for is to make children that were then eaten. People simply had sex for entertainment and food. Though babies are never eaten in clockwork orange it is clear that there isn’t any love involved in sex.
The main difference that I noticed in the two pieces, other than the obvious fact that in one the world had been destroyed was the difference between the kids. Though there was a significant age difference. In A clockwork orange it was the “kid” that was doing all of the horrible acts. I believe I heard it say that he was 17 at the time and was killing and raping people. In The Road the protection of the innocence of the child was the father main concern. The son is always trying to help people throughout the novel. He cries every time he is confronted with the idea of his father killing someone and always tries to stop him. Opposed to clockwork orange where he got enjoyment out of the beating and killing of people.
The other difference that I saw was the lack of parenting in A Clockwork Orange. His parents didn’t pay any attention to what he was doing. When they asked why he was out so late they were content with the response that was basically “You know this and that.” Whereas in The Road the son is the only thing that father cares about. Everything he does he does to keep his son safe. This seems to reflect the importance of having good parents that is so predominate in even today’s society. – Greer

Compare/ Contrast dystopic movie and novel.

VS

When I first viewed Clockwork Orange I was unsure how it fit into the dystopic novel, The Road, which I had read. However once I got over the nudity, rape and murders of the movie I found some connections. In both A Clockwork Orange and The Road a young man is trying to find his way. I find the two can both be linked to a coming of age story. The Road has a young character left unnamed; the son, who it forced to mature at a very young age in order to deal with all that is going on around him. In a Clockwork Orange Alex the main character is taken to jail and after two years put into treatment which forces him to mature and become a respectable citizen. The two are both forced to change their natural selves in order to adjust to their surroundings. As well both the boy and Alex are left helpless at points. Alex is helpless and weak after his treatment, leaving society to take advantage of him. The boy would be just as helpless as Alex was if he did not have his father or their gun to protect him. They are two very lost and weak characters in my eyes.

The Road and A Clockwork Orange are very different in many ways. The boy and his father are not violent people naturally like Alex is but they are forced to become violent throughout the duration of the novel. They try to avoid others and escape violent people who may murder them while Alex (at least at the beginning) searches for violence and evil deeds which include rape and murder. He enjoys these things which makes his character extremely different from the boy and his father in The Road. Alex is also very reckless in his actions. He was not very concerned with getting caught for what he did wrong. Although he wore a mask to hide himself he did not mind barely missing the police or hanging around to torture people more. This behaviour is much different than the father and son duo in The Road who were very careful about where they slept, walked and what they ate.

In A Clockwork Orange Alex is impacted by the government in a very strong way. The people around him at the beginning of the film left no impact on him at all and he walked all over them however as the movie went on the government was able to alter his personality leaving a huge affect on him which made him weak and suicidal. The Road did not have any government to impact them although people who they saw would cause them to change location, their route or loose food. Could it be that while both stories were impacted by others in different ways it lead to both of their downfalls? I think so.

Science Fiction linked to the road?

Since all three of my group members talked about the juxtaposition of characters I decided to focus more on the link between the novel The Road and science fiction. The novel has no flying cars or space travel in it, in fact instead of the future being full of new inventions and new ways of life, it is full of darkness and distrustion.  The characters are not full of knowledge that we today do not have.  They are left scared and alone, afraid of their own reflections.  The two characters are left to wander the road and hope they will survive until… what? They find someone like them who is also about to die of starvation and malnutrition. Instead of a strong society leading them to a better world, there is nothing. The road seems to be a novel in a time before a great development. In Anthem they talk about the “Unmentionable Times”. The present day could be leading to the “Unmentionable Times” and The Road could speak of the destruction those times caused. If Cormac McCarthy wrote a sequel to The Road it could probably be more about the progression society has taken in order to become more successful thus making its more if a science fiction novel and giving hope for tomorrow.

Though the novel takes place in the future, it is not clear how far or how close this “future” is. With the testing of atom bombs it could be next year or it could be in a hundred years. The Road has a dark view of what is to come for the world. Though all the novels that were read are twisted into some evil unwanted future (by most) The Road seems to be the worst. At least in all the others there is a society and there is life. The Road leaves the reader with the realization that it all may end and when it does there will not be anything to help us.

The Road is linked to the science fiction genre by McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic view into the future. Unlike many science fiction novel where society and the earth has developed through knowledge, social structure or ideas, The Road talks about the few people left in a vanishing world, as tree collapse and ash fills the lakes and ocean. A world full of technology and change fade into the ash or break down and the characters are left helpless and alone.

“He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would be lost.  Like the dying world the newly blind inhabited, all of it slowly fading from memory.”

The father in the road has no hope for the world or mankind. He feels like the past is fading away and the future is dying as well. McCarthy’s view of the science fiction genre may seem  different from many other novels but it still speaks of the future he has imagined.

- Sam

Juxtaposition of Characters: The Father, The Boy and Equality

I’d like to contradict Matt’s comment about the son being the good-hearted innocent child while the father is the cold and somewhat cruel adult. In my (not so humble) opinion, McCarthy juxtaposes the father and son simply to display how naive youth can be. The father is the realistic, thoughtful and caring individual looking out for his son, as seen in his frequent unequal dividing of rations. It is essential for both protagonists’ survival that their few rations and commodities be spared for themselves. While the father is immature not to kill his son, especially when his son voices his wish for death (pg. 114), if their journey and survival is to be explored, the father remains the stern and realistic adult, while the underdeveloped child has yet to learn the realities of the world. McCarthy displays the degeneration of both characters, as at one point the father grants his son’s desire to give food to an old man they find. McCarthy here displays how two seemingly different characters can degenerate to the same level, and the reader has no sympathy for the protagonists when they are starving soon after.
Many parallels can be drawn to the young boy in The Road and Equality in Anthem. Just as the boy in McCarthy’ novel appears underdeveloped and unrealistic, so Equality appears immature in his wanderings and explorations. Equality seems even more immature than McCarthy’s protagonist as he tells of how, “We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. (3)”, (he refers to himself as ‘we’ ”). Equality’s underdevelopment is further displayed in his dismissal of society’s general rules;

“We are one in all and all in one.
There are no men but only the great WE,
One, indivisible and forever.”

A more mature individual than Equality should have realized that what benefits society is all that matters, just as the father in The Road realized that in helping an already condemned individual all three of them may die.

- Daniel Wisnicki

The apple falls far from the tree

Matt Greer
There is a lot of juxtaposition of character between the father and son in the road. As Tyler said part of this is seen in the bravery of the two as well as strength etc. I also think that the most juxtaposition is shown through their feelings towards people, mostly good people. The son is nice, moral and helpful; he wants to do anything that he can to help anyone that needs it. The father on the other hand is not, he is rational and realistic, he sees that they are in a them or me situation and acts on that fact. The son doesn’t see that fact that if they help this person, him and his father could die. “And I’d give that little boy half my food. Stop it we cant. He was cying again.” (McCarthy, 86) His father only sees that someone is in trouble and his father has the means to help.
Juxtaposition is also seen in the behavior towards their situation. The son is not as naive as the father seems to think he is. He knows that they could die and he sees the evilness in the world. The son is trying to grow up as his situation requires that he does, but his father is trying to maintain his innocence “And we’re carrying the fire” (Page, 129). This is just one example of the father trying to keep the son innocent. There is of course no fire, this is just the fathers way of instilling hope into his child, by coming up with an imaginary reason that they can’t give up. He tries to shelter his son from the harshness of the world but his son wants to see it.
Juxtaposition is also seen in the mother and father of the boy. The mother feels that death is their only course of action. She doesn’t feel that the father will be able to look after them and that they will not last in the world. This I very different from the father point of view. He doesn’t know what is coming but all he knows is that he will keep his son safe and alive. Even after the suicide of his wife, he carries on in hopes of something better. I think that this juxtaposition reflects the attitudes of most of the other people that were in the world. The mothers actions seem to be similar to the majority of the ‘moral’ people in the world. Other than the father and son their doesn’t appear to be any good people left. Everyone that they have come into contact with has been murderers, thieves or cannibals. One would assume that they are perhaps the last of a dying breed.

Juxtaposition of Character in The Road

Juxtaposition of Character in The Road

By: Tyler Croll

Well, the two main characters in The Road are obviously the father and son. The father does not really want to live anymore, but he knows that he must for his son. The son wants so much to be with his mother, and he knows he must kill himself to do so, but is convinced by the father that they must go on; even when he wants the same (representing hope). His wife left him alone to take care of their child and since he is the only parent left, he stays in this pulverized world for the sole purpose of taking care of and protecting his son. With saying this, he does not want anything to happen to his son and would even rather his son kill himself than to be captured and tortured by the “bad guys”. The son takes the gun as his father tells him to, in case he needs it, which shows how courageous he is, for it takes a lot to be able to kill yourself, especially at such a young age. Even when the situation looks almost unwinnable, the father doesn’t give up hope and keeps on trying, which I think is the biggest similarity between the two of them. Neither of them is willing to give up without a fight, even when all it takes to get out of this nightmare is the two bullets they have in that gun. They are both extremely courageous and take a lot of risks to try to survive (such as entering a house in search of food with God knows what is inside). When the father encounter’s a “bad guy”, he shows no sign of fear and does what he needs to do to get him and his son away safely; he even holds a “bad guy” hostage at one point which symbolizes morals fighting back against the immoral world, and the immoral people are the home team and the moral people are the minority. The father is so incredibly smart, thinking so rationally all the time to find food and escape danger (ex. making fake bullets of wood to make his gun seem fully loaded); and so is his boy even (so curious; asks a lot of questions). I think that the son symbolizes what is left of morality with all the people he helps/wants to help as they venture across America. First off, when they pass the man sure to die, who got struck by lightning, he felt extremely guilty for not helping him and had to be convinced that there was nothing they could do to help him, by his father, in order to be satisfied and move on. This shows that the father represents strength and power and the son represents morality and hope. Also, when the son sees a little boy across the road, he tells his father that he wants the boy to come with them (assuming he was all alone), and then also when they come across that old man; the son demands they give him food and the father listens, even when he feels like the old man doesn’t really deserve it. With the father asking of a “thank you” from the man it shows his connection with his son and how, to them, morality is still important in this world.

Lack of Government Control in McCarthy’s The Road

In The Road McCarthy displays a common theme in most post-apocalyptic works; the detrimental aspects of no government control.  As the novel progresses it becomes evident to the reader how much the destruction of centralized governments and nationality effects life in the world.  McCarthy makes the statement that a centralized and powerful government is paramount to rations and those commodities requisite for survival.  The reader finds that all problems arising from food (or lack thereof) &c. are frequently overcome, yet the life threatening issues arise from no external and commonly excersized control, such as when the groups go around raping and eating others.  To the realistic reader, the groups that have placed themselves as those able to excersize control, eating others for their own survival, seem almost like a government figure.  One can draw many connections to these groups and the primates of our world many millenia ago.  Thus, while their society may not be perfect, it will evolve and incoperate some type of government system, just as homonids of our world have evolved and formed our current society & government.

Note: Adam informs me my last comment didn’t post, so my apologies if this is somewhat belated, or if a comment like this appears twice.

Government Control (the lack of it)

Government Control (the lack of it)

By: Tyler Croll

 

The novel “The Road” depicts the place the world will become after its civilization and more importantly government control is destroyed. Now that there is no kind of project to keep the world tamed, the world has become a very immoral, dangerous, and scary place. Finding food is a struggle making surviving extremely difficult, and people are killing other people freely, showing the demoralization of society. Also, due to the desperation for food, sickness, and lack of mental well-being, cannibalism has had its toll on these people, along with burning a baby. This just shows that without some sort of control over them, people think they can do whatever they want and don’t guilt over anything. People need government control or they are going to think anything is OK, and it will lead to the demoralization and insanity of humans and the world. So, without government control upon the world, people hide from each other and kill each other instead of doing anything productive; it is as if the whole world is at war with each other until the last one survives…and then what?…the world dies. People don’t have any sort of structure holding them together; to rebuild society. Without government control; without security and safety; the world cannot function. There are no rules, so it is like a human is just another animal who fends for itself and its family (that’s it), a carnivore even, until the animal is extinct…