Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

The madman is the perfect enigma: misunderstood, irrational, and outcast. If so, what could the sane glean from the not-so-sane, especially about the very society they reject? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, may provide a telling answer. By narrating from the perspective of a mental ward patient and exposing the pitfalls of psychiatric care, Kesey’s masterwork proves compelling for this aspiring Psychology student.

The cuckoo will instinctively lay its egg in another’s nest, whence the otherling chick will throw out the nest’s natives to assert dominance. Chief Bromden, a Native American driven to insanity by the destruction of his tribe, lives in a place remarkably similar to the cuckoo’s nest: the mental asylum. Bromden explains

how the ward’s boss, Head Nurse Ratched, “dreams of […] a world of precision efficiency and tidiness like a pocket watch with a glass black, a place where the schedule is unbreakable, and all the patients who aren’t Outside[…] are wheelchair Chronics.” (Page 29). The Head Nurse, a former army doctor, mechanically manipulates her ward to fit her vision of morality by dehumanizing her patients, just as the cuckoo casts away the inhabitants of the nest it invades. In fact, her name suggests that she operates like a ratchet, only able to turn patients, like gears, in a single direction: to her liking.
In this sense, Bromden offers a metaphorical perspective on society – he sees the outside world as the “Combine”, a “huge organization that aims to adjust the Outside as well as […] the Inside.” (Pg.

28). Bromden’s viewpoint, wherein the Combine (a large machine) seeks to inure humanity to collectivism with the assistance of tools like Nurse Ratched, shows how a mentally ill person could perceive outside society. Furthermore, it shows how the therapy attempted by the ward does not attempt to cure mental illness, but instead is used as a tool to force people to have vetted and socially-acceptable personalities. As McMurphy eloquently puts it: “You're no crazier than the average asshole walking around on the streets!” (Pg 65). This is reflective of the society at the time: not only were schizophrenics locked up in the madhouse, so were homosexuals and other types considered sane today. Despite that some of these patients are obviously capable of functioning, such as OCD-stricken “Rub-a-dub” George and the scholarly but homosexual Harding, Nurse Ratched continues to view them as insane and subjects them to the same treatment as the looniest nuts in the ward. By narrating through the perspective of a mental ward patient, Kesey shows how Bromden’s world is not unintelligible but is in fact logical, idiosyncratic though it may

be.
Of all its themes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s most significant is how seeing from the eyes of a mentally ill person can reveal flaws in society. Kesey’s work functions not only as a critique of the conformist culture of his time, but as a way for this future Psychology student to understand what drives the mentally ill to reject society, and even envision better treatment for them. After all, what is a mental asylum if not a political prison for the socially unorthodox? Dystopian authors should take a page from Kesey’s book: a world that sends dissidents to a special facility to be “fixed” would be excellent writing material - if only it was fictional.