Alex's Narcissism In A Clockwork Orange

Within this passage, the narcissistic nature of Alex’s character becomes clear. Specifically, just as narcissism is the “excessive interest in oneself,” Alex’s thoughts are driven by internal desires (OED). For instance, rather than being able to appreciate external and worldly objects, or concepts such as, the talks given on beetles or the Milky Way, he manipulates these topics back from a broader picture to the those that most interest or concern himself like committing acts of violence. This is further seen through Alex’s apparent lack of empathy. Notably, when learning of the death of his so called “droog,” or friend Georgie, Alex is incapable of expressing any “awareness and sensitivity” towards him. Instead, he once again turns inward by creating sympathy for his own misfortunes by paralleling his description of the event to the injustice of his own incarceration.

For instance, despite the states attempt to indoctrinate Alex into adulthood by exposing him to intellectual thoughts and the values of work, these lessons do not succeed in providing “edification” or, “moral and intellectual instruction.” Instead, Alex refers to his time in prison not as generating a growth of self but rather a reduction of it. Indication of this is the through recurring images of dehumanization. For instance, he refers to the prison as a “human zoo” and describes the action of working within the prison through the verb “to rabbit.” Thereby, just as dehumanization is “the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities,” Alex’s descriptions suggest that state ideologies are a weakness just as a rabbit is prey, that he is less than a human figure by adhering to them, and that only through following his own youthful values built around violence is he able to escape being contained and displayed like livestock to otherwise be “happy and