A Clockwork Orange takes place in a futuristic city governed by a repressive, totalitarian super-State. In this society, ordinary citizens have fallen into a passive stupor of complacency, blind to the insidious growth of a rampant, violent youth culture. The protagonist of the story is Alex, a fifteen-year-old boy who narrates in a teenage slang called nadsat, which incorporates elements of Russian and Cockney English. Alex leads a small gang of teenage criminals - Dim, Pete, and Georgie - through the streets, robbing and beating men and raping women. Alex and his friends spend the rest of their time at the Korova Milkbar, an establishment that serves milk laced with drugs, and a bar called the Duke of New York. After a crime spree that goes wrong Alex gets caught by the police and is sentenced to prison for 14 years, where he is selected as the first candidate for an experimental treatment called Ludovico's Technique, a form of brainwashing that incorporates associative learning.