Looking Backward from A Clockwork Orange

UTOPIAN FANTASIES, OF A SOCIETY RADICALLY ALTERED FOR THE better or the worse, are recurrent in Western literature, with a tradition going back to Plato's Republic.1 The authors of these works are critics of the society in which they live. Over against it, they construct a more ideal community, or, as a cautionary tale, a satiric exaggeration of existing trends which they deplore. The ideal and satiric utopias have, as I shall try to show, many common features. They differ in showing various controls placed on human impulses as desirable or dangerous. They also differ in the views their authors take as to the basic constituents of human nature and as to the specific impulses that call for repression. In a recent satiric utopia, A Clockwork Orange, the basic urge subjected to inhibition is sadism, which can readily be seen as disruptive to social order. By contrast, earlier utopias repeatedly envisage romantic love as militated against by preventive and punitive measures. The question arises: why does this seemingly innocuous tendency fall under such a