ll and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing koshkas, and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milk-bar) turning and turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers.Eric Swenson, Stanley Kubrick and a number of critics have found this last chapter too blandly optimistic: to end with Alexs cynical return to his violent ways (I was cured all right) is, they say, tougher and more realistic. But this is to ignore the continuing pessimism that qualifies Burgesss happy ending. Alex may reach maturity, but his son will later have to pass through adolescence and all the mayhem in entails-And so I would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round. There is no callow triumphalism here. Alex will have his descendants, and Burgess sees no means of stopping the cycle of adolescent violence, except with methods, whether aversion therapy, eugenics or other forms of socio-psychological programming, which are dehumanising, morally unacceptable and a usurption of God. 5. CHARACTERS AND INTERPRETATIONAlex, the narrator and hero of the novella, is too brutal to be wholly sympathetic and too strong to be a victim. But like many rebel-hero, he exudes diabolic charm. One of Alexs charms is his love of music, which he plays full blast in his typically teenage bedroom. What distinguishes Alex from most teenagers is that his tastes in music are classical: Bach, Mozart, above all Beethoven, whose Ninth Symphony becomes the novels dominant motif. It may reflect Burgesss own prejudices that, feeling some affection for his hero, he could not permit him to be a devotee of pop.Burgess even works himself into the story in the form o...
