The Perplexing Choice in Existence Predicament: An Existential Interpretation of Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange explores human being’s predicament of freedom—the contradiction between Libertarianism and Totalitarianism. The issues Burgess explores in this fiction share affinities with what Sartrean existentialism elucidate. The focus of this article is “Choice and Responsibility” according to the basic Sartrean principles such as freedom, choice, responsibility to probe into the profound social significance contained in the novel: the authentic freedom is the freedom to choose.