CLOCKWORK ORANGE POST 6

"They dragged me into this very bright-lit white-washed cantora, and it had a strong von that was a mixture of like sick and lavatories and beery rots and disinfectant, all coming from the barry places near by. Your could hear some of the plennies in their cells cursing and singing and I fancied I could slooshy one belting out:
'And i will go back to my darling, my darling,
When you, my darling, are gone.'
But there were the golosses of millicents telling them to shut it and you could evens looshy the avook of like somebody being tolchocked real horrowshow and going owwwwwwwww, and it was like the goloss of a drunken starry ptitsa, not a man. With me in this cantora were four millicents, all have a good loud peet of chai, a big pot of it being on the table and they sucking and belching away over the dirty bolshy mugs. They didn't offer me any. All they gave me, my brothes, was a crappy starry mirror to look into, and indeed i was not your handsome young Narrator any longer but a real strack of a sight, my rot swollen and my glazzies all red and my nose bumped a bit also.


This quote uses diction and imagery to set up a scene that is symbolic of Alex's loss of power after he is taken in by the police after his arrest. The jail is a dingy, dirty, pungent-smelling place; "lavatories", "beery rot" and "disinfectant" are combined to render what the smell of the building is like. Prisoners scream and sing from their cells, one in particular crying out like a woman; this could foreshadow the effects that jail will have on Alex, perhaps causing him to become less of a devious alphamale. The others in the room with Alex do not accept him and invite him to drink with them--they only offer him a "crapy starry" mirror. This is shocking for Alex, as he is used to being the ringleader of his friends, not being incarcerated in a place where he is intimidated and cannot take control. When he looks in the crappy mirror he recieves, he realizes that his face is swollen and beaten, different than his usual handsome ways. With lack of leadership, power, and his vanity, he is truly metaphorically incarcerated with no resources to act like his usual dominant self.