Critical Criticism Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Since its first publication is 1962, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has endured both an extensive range and wide audience for criticism. Despite being published over 50 years ago, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has managed to maintain a firm readership due to its adjuration to both high and low literary audiences. While displaying a number of critical literary theories, this shows that Kesey’s novel remains open to a pop culture, yet at the same time provides sophisticated readers with a complex layer to dig beneath. By thoroughly studying One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and carefully examining the major criticism such as psychoanalytic, cultural, and formalist, one can reveal a new meaning and understanding that may have previously

The beats were intellectuals, writers, and artists who were alienated from and did not conform to the conventions of their days. Their vision of the 1950s America as a repressive, conformist society that persecuted the individual was taken up by Kesey in portraying society as a mental hospital that overpowers and controls its citizen-inmates.”
Throughout the rest of his article, Rosenwein hammers away in saying that the American culture is characterized through Kesey’s eyes as a mental institution. It is only through the Beats, or in this case McMurphy, that there is a chance for society to find recovery and independence as Bromden does in the ending chapters of Cuckoo’s

These critics are labeled as New Critics for they exam the novel and works of the writer through a new criticism, or formalist, perspective. New criticism literary theory is the theory that believes a novel or poem or any work of art should solely be studied by itself. This means it looks at the theme, symbolism, language, and style of the piece. No additional information connected with the author’s life is necessary to know in order to understand its true meaning. Take for example how the main character’s actual name is Bromden, yet he is referred to as “Chief Broom” by the nurses and Ratchet throughout the novel. This almost seems to define Bromden both as an Indian and as just a mere “object to the staff”. One other aspect of new criticism that is shown would be that of imaginary and reality features. These features are presented during Bromden’s dreams in that he knows the reality that he faces, yet he still imagines that his reality could be better. Bromden often times tries to escape from his reality through the forms of flashbacks and images from his childhood and young adulthood. Perhaps it can infer that Bromden’s escape from reality is the underlying reason in which enables him to suffocate McMurphy and finally escape the asylum. All of these specific