A Clockwork Orange

The new American edition of the novel A Clockwork Orange features a final chapter that was omitted from the original American edition against the author's preference. Anthony Burgess, the novel's author, provided for the new edition an introduction to explain not only the significance of the twenty-first chapter but also the purpose of the entire book which was the fundamental importance of moral choice. Burgess states that the twenty-first chapter was intended to show the …

…perfect ('a true Christian' as Dr. Brodsky said) so they shouldn't try. Attempts to do so will only result in a conditioned type of clockwork orange, a coerced goodness, and not a natural or chosen one. It is the mutual responsibility of God and the individual to reach moral perfection; the one giving moral freedom and removing original sin and the other rightly exercising that freedom to include acceptance of God's forgiveness for willful sin.