Hospital Recovery and Government Reconciliation

Alex wakes up in a hospital, badly injured but alive. He is visited by his parents, who apologize and ask him to come home. He is also visited by the Minister of the Interior, who offers him a job and a new stereo as a reward for his cooperation. The government has used Alex's suicide attempt to discredit the opposition. Alex is given a new identity as a success story of the state's rehabilitation program. He signs a document without reading it and is left alone to listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To his relief, the music no longer makes him sick. He is 'cured' of his conditioning, but the implications are ambiguous: has he been restored to his old self, or has he simply been reconditioned to serve the state?