[At] its most profound level, "A Clockwork Orange" is an odyssey of the human personality, a statement on what it is to be fully human. Alex's adventures are, in one sense, the adventures of the id itself. Alex embodies all of man's anarchic impulses. Shorn of his individuality in the penitentiary and of his fantasy life in the conditioning program, he ceases to be a human being in any real sense. His resurrection at the end, as he regains his ability to act out his lusts and aggressions, represents an ironic triumph of the human psyche over the forces that seek to control or diminish it.
Control has been a continuing theme in Kubrick's movies: control of time and the environment by the gangsters who must rob a racetrack within the limits of a single race in "The Killing"; control of the men in the trenches by the officers in the chateau in "Paths of Glory"; Lolita's control of Humbert, Humbert's battle to control his passions and Quilty's playful manipulation of Humbert in "Lolita"; control of nuclear weaponry in "Dr. Strangelove"; the battle for control of the spaceship in "2001"; and, in "A Clockwork Orange," control of the human personality itself. (pp. 29-30)
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