Editing A Clockwork Orange (novel) (section)

===Part 1: Alex's world===
[[Alex (A Clockwork Orange)|Alex]] is a 15-year-old gang leader living in a near-future dystopian city. His friends ("droogs" in the novel's Anglo-Russian [[slang]], "[[Nadsat]]") and fellow gang members are Dim, a slow-witted bruiser, who is the gang's muscle; Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command; and Pete, who mostly plays along as the droogs indulge their taste for "ultra-violence" (random, violent mayhem). Characterised as a [[antisocial personality disorder|sociopath]] and hardened juvenile delinquent, Alex is also intelligent, quick-witted, and enjoys [[classical music]]; he is particularly fond of [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], whom he calls "Lovely Ludwig Van".

The droogs sit in their favourite hangout, the Korova Milk Bar, drinking "milk-plus" (milk laced with the customer's drug of choice) to prepare for a night of ultra-violence. They assault a scholar walking home from the public library; rob a shop, leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious; beat up a beggar; then scuffle with a rival gang. [[Joyride (crime)|Joyriding]] through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and terrorise the young couple living there, beating the husband and [[gang-rape|gang-raping]] his wife. The husband is a writer working on a manuscript entitled ''A Clockwork Orange'', and Alex contemptuously reads out a paragraph that states the novel's main theme before shredding the manuscript. At the Korova, Alex strikes Dim for his crude response to a woman's singing of an operatic passage, and strains within the gang become apparent. At home in his parents' flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume, which he describes as giving him orgasmic bliss before falling asleep.

Alex feigns illness to his parents to stay out of school the next day. Following an unexpected visit from P. R. Deltoid, his "post-corrective adviser", Alex visits a record store, where he meets two pre-teen girls. He invites them back to the flat, where he drugs and rapes them. That night after a nap, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood, waiting downstairs in the torn-up and graffitied lobby. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they focus on higher-value targets in their robberies. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting with Georgie, then soothes the gang by agreeing to Georgie's plan to rob the home of a wealthy elderly woman. Alex breaks in and knocks the woman unconscious, but when he hears sirens and opens the door to flee, Dim strikes him as revenge for the earlier fight. The gang abandons Alex on the front step to be arrested by the police; while in custody, he learns that the woman has died from her injuries.