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Literary elements of one flying over the cuckoo's nest
Literary analysis one flew over the cuckoos nest
Literary analysis one flew over the cuckoos nest
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is as social commentary against mental institutions. Randle P. McMurphy acts as an agent against institutionalization throughout the novel. The novel tracks the events shared by Chief Bromden, a tall Native American man who pretends to be deaf and mute, Randle P. McMurphy and the patients within a psychiatric ward. Chief Bromden is deemed schizophrenic and is institutionalized for twenty years prior to McMurphy’s arrival. McMurphy instills hope and confidence into the patients which then allows the patients to truly re-evaluate their lives. Before McMurphy arrived, Bromden hides within a metaphorical fog along with the remaining patients. The fog provides the patients comfort and a place to hide …show more content…
from the Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched dominates all the patients and emasculates them. Nurse Ratched utilizes underhanded tactics such as a log book so that the patients can snitch on one another. McMurphy makes it his duty to rebel against Nurse Ratched for the freedom of the patients. In doing so, McMurphy sacrifices his freedom and eventually his own humanity for the sake of the others. Due to his sacrifice, Bromden is able to examine his past in order to understand why he pretended to be deaf in the first place. Another patient named Billy Bibbit is a thirty year old man with the demeanor of a teenage child. He is self destructive and had previously attempted suicide after a failed marriage proposal. McMurphy took this into account and decided to make a man out of Bibbit and had Bibbit sleep with a prostitute named Candy. McMurphy attempts to free Billy of his mother’s smothering love by having him finally become a man. McMurphy acts as an agent of reevaluation in the novel as he is the one person who helped bring light to the patients’ so called “insanity”. By applying Stephen Grosz’s theory of “The Examined Life” to Bromden and Bibbit’s life, it is evident that their traumatic past experiences and memories has manifested into their present day illnesses, hence why they are institutionalized in a psychiatric ward. Grosz’s theory of “The Examined Life” states that some issues are so deeply embedded within an individual that it may take an immense amount of time to pinpoint those issues. The theory of comprised of many ideas such as trauma manifestation, why human criticize one another and self sabotage. Grosz believes that an individual’s traumatic memories will express itself one way or another in the individual’s future. The trauma may take form as a quirk or even a habit as the individual ages. For instance, one of Grosz’s patients would not allow himself to be weak after being abused by his parents. As a result, the same patient cut himself in a church in an attempt to not feel inferior. In terms of the novel, Chief Bromden feigns being deaf and mute due to the lack of attention he received as a child.
When Bromden reflects on his past in his father’s tribe, he recalls a particular memory involving the sale of his father’s tribe land. Government workers paid a visit to Bromden’s house and demanded to meet with Bromden’s father, the Chieftain. After the men insult Bromden’s house, Bromden becomes upset and tell them off, but they disregarded every word he had said. “And I’m just about to go and tell them, how if they’ll come in…when I see that they don’t look like they’d heard me talk at all.” (Kesey). Furthermore, it is within Bromden’s childhood that he developed his low self-esteem. According to Bromden, his father “…fought it a long time till my mother made him too little to fight anymore and he gave up.” (Kesey) Witnessing the relationship between his mother and father results in Bromden believing that he is unable to rebel against women. Despite Bromden’s father being the chief of the tribe, his mother pressured his father so much so that Bromden’s father gave up his livelihood. These events manifested into Bromden’s present day inadequacy and lack of presence, and it is only until McMurphy lends an ear to Bromden that he is able to realize his own strength and voice, both physically and …show more content…
mentally. In addition to Bromden, Bibbit exhibits odd quirks and behavior due to his mother’s smothering love and unpleasant past.
Bibbit’s childish demeanor can be attributed directly to his mother’s relationship with him. Instead of a typical mother son relationship, Bibbit’s mother treats him almost like a lover. Bromden overheard Bibbit and Bibbit’s mother conversation going as follows “’Sweetheart you still have scads of time for things like that. Your whole life is ahead of you’’Mother I’m th-th-thirty one years old!” (Kesey) Despite being in his thirty’s, Bibbit is unable to escape his mother’s love, and as a result Nurse Ratched uses it to her advantage. Furthermore, when Bibbit attempted to step into adulthood by proposing to a woman, he failed. Billy Bibbit says “And even when I proposed, I flubbed it. I said “Huh-honey will you muh-muh-muh-muh-muh…till the girl broke out laughing.”(Kesey). The combination of Bibbit’s failed marriage proposal and his mother’s suffocating love for him causes Bibbit to develop a childish attitude. He is unable to step into the world of adulthood without the fear of losing his mother’s love for him, a love which has babied him for over thirty years. When Bibbit was discovered by Nurse Ratched after sleeping with Candy, he feared that his mother may no longer love him, so he commits suicide. Stepping into adulthood would mean that he would no longer be the child that his mother loves so
much. In the film, The Lion King, Simba is unable to live as the king of the pride lands due to his lack of self confidence in himself. At the beginning of the film, Simba is a young lion cub who is able to frolic freely anywhere in the pride lands except for the elephant graveyard, where Mufasa’s evil brother Scar resides. Full of curiosity Simba foolishly treads the elephant graveyard, not knowing that Scar was plotting the death of Mufasa. At the peak of a cliff, Scar drops Mufasa into a stampede of wildebeests as Simba watches in horror. Scar tells Simba to flee, to which he obliges. Simba is discovered in a desolate, desert area swarmed by vultures. The experience traumatizes Simba so much so that he is unable to accept himself as the heir to the throne. When Nala discovers Simba, Nala requests that Simba take his place as the king of pride rock, to which Simba refuses. According to Grosz, Simba’s behavior can be explained by his father’s death. Not only was Simba the intial reason for being on the cliff, but Simba could only watch in horror as Mufasa fell out of power by falling off the cliff. Before Mufasa’s death, Simba is full of life and spunk but when Timon and Pumbaa find him, his near death and in the middle of the desert, thus representing the death of his pride as a lion. He is only able to take the title of king after speaking to his father in the sky. After his momentary conversation with his father, Simba regains his former pride and returns to rule the pride lands. Without his pride, he is unable to reside in the pride lands as king. Simba’s self inadequacy was spurred by his inability to save his father, which caused him to ultimately belive that he cannot save his homeland.
The novel that Kesey wrote is focused on how Bromden’s past memories should not let him down, but to gather his strength and let go of the past to start anew. Kesey builds up the encouragement through the help on McMurphy in order for Bromden to face reality with the hallucinations, to Nurse Ratched’s authorities, and the use of symbolism.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey begins with a short introduction by the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden is a half Indian Chronic at the ward. Chronics are patients that have been in the ward for so long that people assume that they will never check out. During the time that Bromden was there, he acted as a dumb deaf mute without being caught by anyone. Though his condition does not seem as bad as some of the other Chronics—some were vegetables—it was evident that Bromden had problems with hallucinations and delusions from the final line of the first chapter, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”
Chief Bromden is a six foot seven tall Native American (half) who feels very small and weak even though by physical description, he is very big and strong. Chief does not have enough self-confidence and he is not independent. That is what makes him so small and weak. When Randle McMurphy, the new inmate in the asylum comes in, Chief is reminded of what his father used to be: strong, independent, confident and big. "He talks a little the way papa used to, voice loud and full of hell " (16) McMurphy helps Chief gains back his self-confidence and teaches him to be independent.
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story of Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a mental institution, and the way her patients respond to her harsh treatment. The story is told from the perspective of a large, Native-American patient named Bromden; he immediately introduces Randle McMurphy, a recently admitted patient, who is disturbed by the controlling and abusive way Ratched runs her ward. Through these feelings, McMurphy makes it his goal to undermine Ratched’s authority, while convincing the other patients to do the same. McMurphy becomes a symbol of rebellion through talking behind Ratched’s back, illegally playing cards, calling for votes, and leaving the ward for a fishing trip. His shenanigans cause his identity to be completely stolen through a lobotomy that puts him in a vegetative state. Bromden sees McMurphy in this condition and decides that the patients need to remember him as a symbol of individuality, not as a husk of a man destroyed by the
Chief Bromden, who is presumably deaf and dumb, narrates the story in third person. Mr. McMurphy enters the ward all smiles and hearty laughter as his own personal medicine. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a story about patients in a psychiatric hospital, who are under the power of Nurse Ratched. Mrs. Ratched has control over all the patients except for Mr. McMurphy, who uses laughter to fight her power. According to Chief Bromden, McMurphy "...knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (212). Laughter is McMurphy's medicine and tool to get him and the rest of the patients through their endless days at the hospital. The author's theme throughout the novel is that laughter is the best medicine, and he shows this through McMurphy's static character. The story is made up of series of conflicts between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy becomes a hero, changing the lives of many of the inmates. In the end, though, he pays for his actions by suffering a lobotomy, which turned him into a vegetable. The story ends when Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow and escapes to freedom.
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a catatonic half-Indian man whom everybody thinks is deaf and dumb. He often suffers from hallucinations in which he feels that the room is filled with fog. The institution is dominated by Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse), a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed 'gambling fool' who has just come from a work farm at Pendleton. He introduces himself to the other men on the ward, including Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year old man who stutters and appears very young. Nurse Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
Chief Bromden, a tall American-Indian mute is the central character that symbolizes the change throughout the text and also throughout society. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest uses this character that is subject to change as the narrator event though his perceptions cannot be fully trusted.
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
When norms of society are unfair and seem set in stone, rebellion is bound to occur, ultimately bringing about change in the community. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest demonstrates the conflict of individuals who have to survive in an environment where they are pressured to cooperate. The hospital's atmosphere suppresses the patients' individuality through authority figures that mold the patients into their visions of perfection. The ward staff's ability to overpower the patients' free will is not questioned until a man named Randal McMurphy is committed to the mental institute. He rebels against what he perceives as a rigid, dehumanizing, and uncompassionate environment. His exposure of the flaws in the hospital's perfunctory rituals permits the other patients to form opinions and consequently their personalities surface. The patient's new behavior clashes with the medical personnel's main goal-to turn them into 'perfect' robots, creating havoc on the ward.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution. As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior.
Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a story about a band of patients in a mental ward who struggle to find their identity and get away from the wretched Nurse. As audiences read about the tale, many common events and items seen throughout the story actually represent symbols for the bigger themes of the story. Symbols like the fishing trip, Nurse, and electroshock therapy all emphasize the bigger themes of the story. The biggest theme of the story is oppression. Throughout the course of the story, patients are suppressed and fight to find who they really are.
The background of Chief Bromden’s life makes him a likely target for mental illness. Conflict that Chief’s father faced also negatively impacted Chief. His father was Chief Tee Ah Millatoona of the Umpqua tribe and his mother was a white woman. Chief’s father took his mother’s last name, “Her name is Bromden. He took her name” (214). This suggests her domination in the relationship, but it is made clear that her extreme belittling had negative psychological effects: “It wasn't just her that made him little. Everybody worked on him because he was big, and wouldn't give in, and did as he pleased... He fought it a long time until my mother made him too little to fight anymore and he gave up" (220). Just like his father, Chief was a big man crushed into a tiny man by the pressures of society. Chief grew up living a normal life, without schizophrenia, on the Columbia Gorge in an Umpqua village led by his father. The first memorable trigger of Chief’s schizophrenia came when government officials were inspecting his vil...
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions
Many critics say the novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, R.P. McMurphy is the protagonist who created suspense but I believe Chief Bromden, a “deaf” patient, is the hero who gained the ability to step out of his comfort zone and escape the mental institute. After meeting Mac, Chief’s daily routine had changed due to observing Mac and gaining determination. Although Chief faced many obstacles, using what Mac taught him helped him overcome them.