"A Clockwork Orange" is an intense movie based on a relatively simple idea discovered by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov research basically consisted of a dog's reaction to the sound of a bell with food and became known as "classical conditioning". In this particular study, the neutral stimulus of a bell and the unconditioned stimulus of food produced the dog to salivate automatically. He observed that eventually the dog began to associate the sound of a bell with food because the dog would salivate with only the sound of a bell, assuming he or she would receive food after the sound.
The doctors in the movie used the idea of classical conditioning to cure a murderer of his immoral past. In one specific scene in the movie, Alex, the young man who committed "the accidental killing of a person" is given medicine that will produce a feeling of nauseousness right before being exposed to dozens of brutal crime scenes including explicit rapes and murders. As seen in the image above, closing his eyes or avoiding the video is clearly impossible.
Just as the dog salivated every time a bell was rung, the reasoning behind this torture is so that Alex would throw up every time he witnessed violence. In a way his body was supposed to work like a clock (hence the movie title) and would literally not let him commit crimes or even watch them. This is certainly an interesting method to prevent crime however it does not solve the problem and in the end Alex must kill again.
Why is this? Why can't our bodies be adjusted and trained like a clock would be? I believe it is because of our natural free will which in essence defines us as human beings. After Alex is supposedly healed the chaplain asks a similar question which directly corresponds to this reasoning and to one of the movie's major themes:
"What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"
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