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Chapter 1

• The narrator (Alex) begins this chapter, and the book, with an outright statement of how obsessed he was with his mother when he was a child.

• He contrasts his two parents, describing his perpetually constipated, ambitious, disappointed, disappointing, increasingly embittered father.
• Alex then refers to his superficially perfect, image-obsessed, subconsciously racist, socially competitive mother.

• He also comments on how she would lock him out of the house every time he did something serious that she did not like.
• As he narrates his story his words reveal that he is thirty-three years old and an Orthodox Jew.

• His words also reveal that he is speaking to a doctor, that he is highly educated with a large vocabulary, and that he is speaking from a deeply ironic well of bitterness, confusion, and frustration with his family.

Chapter 2

• This chapter introduces Alex's principal concern--his obsession with masturbation.

• He describes in...

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