The novel is separated into three parts of seven chapters. Each part has a different setting or motive for the main character, but keeps to certain conventions across three parts. For example, each part begins with a character repeating the phrase “What’s it going to be then, eh?” The number of chapters is relevant to Western Civilization’s age of maturity, and as Burgess said in his introduction to later versions of the novel, “21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at age 21 you got to vote and assumed adult responsibility. Whatever its symbology, the number 21 was the number I started out with...that number has to mean something in human terms when they handle it.”
A Clockwork Orange is written in first person perspective from a seemingly biased and unreliable source. Alex never justifies his actions in the narration, giving a good sense that he is somewhat sincere; a narrator who, as unlikable as he may attempt to seem, evokes pity from the reader through the telling of his unending suffering and later through his realization that cycle will never end. Alex’s perspective is effective in that the way that he describes events is easy to relate to even if the situations themselves are not. He uses words that are common in speech as well as Nadsat, the speech of the younger generation.