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'A Clockwork Orange' is set in a dystopian future where law and orderis in decay. Alex, the violent main character and narrator of the novel,is the leader of a gang who engage in gang warfare and streetcrime (including,robbery, assault and rape).
However, when his friends betray him, Alex is arrested by the policeand himself becomes a victim of police brutality and psychological experimentation.
He is subjected to a sinister conditioning programme which makes hima law-abiding citizen, incapable of violence, but with no freewill and thereforeno humanity. (Making him the'Clockwork Orange' of the title, something thatlooks alive and healthy on the outside, but on the inside is merely mechanical.)
He is then released back into the community, where unable to defend himselfhe experiences what it is like to be a victim. After a savage beating heis taken care of by a writer, who was formerly one of his victims. The writerand his friends attempt to use Alex as a political tool in order to humiliatethe authoritarian government who conditioned him. However, they decide thathe would be of better use to their cause as a martyr and so attempt to exploitAlex's conditioning to make him attempt suicide.
This he does, and after jumping out of a high window he wakes up to findhis conditioning has been undone by the government in order to avoid a politicalscandal. He is then back to his normal violent self.
(The full English text also contains another additional chapter, in whichAlex eventually tires of this lifestyle and starts to think about settlingdown, and starting afresh, thereby making his own choice to behave morallyrather than having it forced upoun him.)