Analysis Of The Rabbit Hunt

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The Rabbit Hunt At the mental hospital ward, Nurse Ratched hosts a group meeting between the patients to discuss problems she notices. The patients, however, see the meetings as superfluous and McMurphy vocally expresses his discontent at the meeting. Eventually, McMurphy and Harding get into a heated argument regarding their theories about Nurse Ratched and the purpose of the group meetings at the mental hospital. Kesey examines the stratification of society into the powerful and the weak and its consequences through Harding’s argument with McMurphy, Chief’s childhood, the patients’ experience at a gas station. Harding establishes his theory about the dichotomy between the weak and the powerful while emphasizing the self-perpetuating nature …show more content…

Concluding his wolf-rabbit metaphor, Harding analyzes the rabbit as he argues, “And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat” (64). Utilizing anaphora, Harding starts a series of consecutive sentences with the word “he”, referring to the rabbit. The use of anaphora emphasizes through repetition the submissiveness of the rabbit. Having built the foundations of his comparison between the patients and the rabbits, Harding makes it very easy for his listeners to imagine themselves as the defenseless rabbits, inspiring them to make a call for change and rebellion. Harding further encourages this defiance through his rhetorical questioning as he asks, “Now, would that be wise? Would it?” (64). By asking a rhetorical question and repeating it, Harding presses his listeners to answer his question while alluding to the answer he wants: “No”. This subtle persuasion allows listeners to feel as though they have the jurisdiction to formulate their own opinions; as a result, listeners feel as though their desire to break out of submission are their own, despite being influenced by Harding’s rhetorical …show more content…

Harding separates people into two groups in his speech: the rabbits and the wolves, or the weak and the strong, respectively. The prevalence of the divide between weak and powerful occurs on multiple occasions throughout the novel. For example, Chief often refers back to his childhood, during which his Native American father was influenced to sell tribal lands for the construction of a hydroelectric dam. The subversion of Chief’s village came as a result of submitting to the powerful force of industrialization, overwhelming the weaker Native American tribes. In another instance, during the ward patients’ fishing trip, several gas station workers, assuming the vulnerability of the mental hospital patients, attempt to scam the patients out of their money; however, this time the patients fight back against the power of the gas station workers through intimidation, winning themselves a discount on the gas. Through fighting back against the classification into strong and weak imposed by society, the patients are able to empower

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