Existentialist Analysis of Burgess's Clockwork OrangeLiberty and liberalism are key words that appear frequently in philosophical and political rhetoric. A free man is able to choose his actions and his value system, express his opinions and develop his most authentic character. What this type of idealistic liberalism seems to forget, however, is that freedom does not mean a better society, a better life, or humanist values ​​such as equality and justice. In his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), Anthony Burgess depicts an ultimately free individual and shows how a society cannot cope with the freedom it so ardently seeks to promote in its rhetoric. Existentialism as a philosophical trend of the mid-20th century introduced the idea of ​​an absolutely free individual into the scheme of modern and postmodern individualism. A Clockwork Orange is a novel that raises a wide range of ethical questions from the definition of free choice and kindness to methods of punishment. Existentialism in the form presented by Jean-Paul Sartre and the German phenomenologists does not bring an ethical or psychological perspective to the novel. Applying “existentialist thinking” to the work of Anthony Burgess will, however, allow us to understand the narrator Alex as the case of a free individual who attempts to construct his world and relate to it in an authentic way. The main issue to examine, therefore, is the need for self-definition and the extent of one's discouragement in Alex's social environment. Alex is a 15-year-old boy immersed in a problematic future society. He is the only and domineering son of an ordinary working-class family. He attends correctional school by day and seeks violent pleasures with his droogs by night. As ...... middle of paper ...... postmodernist rhetoric, he designs a "new chapter" for its living history. In the eyes of abstract existentialism, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is an interesting exploration. The novel illustrates that the nature of society is the restriction of freedom. In the social contract, a certain human freedom is exchanged for social belonging, a construction. The societal problem, it seems, is the balance between rights and obligations within the contract. If the balance is not directed towards the individual but towards the State, society becomes the destroyer of authenticity. Such a society cannot cope with its inhabitants' natural sense of freedom, self-expression and authenticity. Bibliography Burgess Anthony 1962. A Clockwork Orange. Penguin Books 1996. Sartre Jean-Paul 1956. Being and nothingness. Washington Square Press 1992.