Possible Spoiler. Good can be as Pure as Evil

Rating: Null/10 (9 April 2002)

Good is Evil
A Clockwork Orange represents good and evil differently than other films by connecting elements of evil and innocence in one character.
I could not help but respect the purity Kubrick gave the protagonist Alex DeLarge. His color use, camera movements, and editing create a unique atmosphere where the audience hates the characters' actions, but respects his pure motivation.
Kubrick does this by using elements such as sound and color. The background music throughout the film implies innocence making this Alex's `rite of passage' story. Visually, Alex is presented as pure. He is introduced in all white, drinking milk in a white milk bar, surrounded by maternity statues. Kubrick incorporates a tracking shot slowly revealing Alex and his surroundings.
Ironically, milk blinds Alex during a night of `ultra-violence', allowing him to be captured. This starts his transformation into adulthood. He enters jail in a suit, appearing to be an adult. Using unusual methods, Alex is `reformed' into a man who gets sick when he hears Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, sees violence, and feels sexual urges. These things representing his innocence. Coincidentally, Alex always ended his gallivanting by listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
This song eventually drives Alex to attempt suicide. I viewed this event as Alex's rebirth into another physical and psychological transition. We symbolically see him completely abandon his childhood.
At last, Kubrick brings the audience into the hospital for the final scene. Alex emerges from his coma bandaged, once again in white, representing his restored innocence. During the scene, he rejects his real mother and symbolically takes on a new one. This mother ironically is Frederick, the same person who developed the treatment that reformed him. Frederick is telling Alex he will take care of his needs, while feeding him. Frederick feeding Alex parallels a mother breast feeding her child. The film ends in Alex's fantasy; two naked girls wrestling and Alex proclaiming,` I was cured'.
The beautiful thing about this movie is Alex's strange connection to the average adolescent male. He feels many of the same emotions such as sexual urges. However, he is depicted to be the opposite of the average male. Kubricks choice in linking the aspect just verify's that good can be as pure as evil.