A common theme of literature is conflict one has with one’s self. Often the solution to the main external conflict shines light upon the solution to the internal conflict of a character. In both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Their Eyes Were Watching God the central character is oppressed by their surroundings and trapped in situations of internal and external distress. However, both Bromden and Janie become strong throughout their story despite their marginalization. In these novels it is their internal strength that gives them the ability to overcome their external conflict. This springs from the common theme of dehumanization in both novels. Dehumanization is a tool of oppression that is used against minority groups across history and around the world to repress their …show more content…
accurate representation and image to the general community. Dehumanization means to treat or make someone look or feel less human and is only done with malicious intent of the oppressor. The readings show two different parallels of dehumanization and the ways that different people find inner strength and security. The central characters of both of the readings, Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God begin their stories with dependence on others for personal security and peace. This dependence is detrimental to both characters and becomes an internal conflict of the story. Janie looks to her various partners for happiness, but continues finds herself uncontent with the reality of her life. Bromden is institutionalized and relies on the abusive staff of the hospital to care for him, his misconceptions of himself brought on by a lifetime of oppression and cruelty have led him to truly believe he is weak, dumb, and worthless. These characters’ dependency makes them easy targets for their marginalization and eventual dehumanization. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Bromden and the other patients are powerless against the staff of the hospital.
The threat of electroshock therapy is one that goes uncontested by the patients who have all seen the results of the therapy and have seen the brave and defiant patients like McMurphy, who are not subdued by marginalization like most of the patients, fall compliant or vegetative to the cruel control of the hospital. The amount of control and fear that is wielded against the patients makes them defenseless to dehumanization, which is experienced to extremes in the hospital. Bromden is even more vulnerable and targeted due to racism against Native Americans and Bromden’s facade of being deaf and dumb. The black boys in the hospital question how Bromden could’ve been signed up for the trip saying “Inniuns ain't able to write... What makes you think Inniuns able to read?” (Kesey 191). The dehumanization he experiences through racism is what roots and grows the idea in his mind that he is very weak and defenseless, so he could not resist or fight the oppression being held over him by the hospital similarly to how he couldn't fight the oppression or racism he faced out in the
world. Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God is opressed very differently than Bromden. Janie is dehumanized by the patriarchy’s role for women along with institutionalized racism in the United States. Janie is held back by each of her partner’ opinions on what a woman’s role and value is. She is dehumanized by the opinion that women are less and objectified by the standards created by the patriarchy. “Mah wife don't know nothin’ ‘bout speech-makin’... She’s uh woman and her place is in de home,” (Hurston, 43) says Jody when Janie is asked to speak as Mrs. Mayor to the town. Despite his love and affection for her, it is bred into men that their place is above a women’s in all ways. Like Bromden’s inability to escape the hospital staff and the stigma of his mental illness, Janie is trapped in dependence and oppression with her partners because the patriarchal ideas bred into them. Both of the novels come to a close with the focus characters, Janie and Bromden, breaking free of their dependance and what was holding them back. While neither can escape racism or societal prejudices, they can and do escape many of the ways it affects them. Janie returns to Eatonville strong, confident, and independant. Her closure comes when she finds herself at peace with her own identity, even though it's not the idea that society or the people in her life think that she should have. “Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out out about livin’ fuh theyselves,” (Hurston 192) This quote shows how Janie has grown to have the experiences she needed to find out about living by herself and finding the peace and harmony that she witnesses under the tree at the beginning of her story that begins her quest. What Bromden overcomes is also similarly internal but it affects him physically and it’s his physical strength that breaks him free of the hospital.“‘If you got big again, could you still lift it?’ I told him I thought so.” (Kesey 189) Even without his strength, which he only lost as a result of his mental state brought on by abuse and oppression, Bromden recognized all that he could do with it. Bromden begins showing that he is dynamic character and provides signs of change and progression around this time. Four pages earlier he speaks for the first time, a show of mental and relationship progression in the novel. Bromden’s resolution at the end of the book comes from regaining the strength inside him and the confidence that lets him be reassured that he should not be subject to the cruel ways of the hospital. When he breaks the window and leaves the hospital, it is symbolic of him breaking free of his internal struggles as well, because he has recovered much of his mental state since the start of the novel. Each of the novels conclude with the main characters’ overcoming much of the dehumanization that they face by developing a greater self-worth and independence. While it is much less realistic for them to overcome societal oppression, such as racism, sexism, and stigma of mental illness, both Janie and Bromden’s changes of internal oppression sets them free from many of the effects that these institutions leave on them. It is the common theme of internal growth that really stuck out to me in these novels because of all the oppression from societal institutions based on both characters. These characters growth away towards indepen
The author, Ken Kessey, in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, depicts how cruel and dehumanizing oppression can be. Kessey’s purpose is to reveal that there are better ways to live than to let others control every aspect of a person’s life. He adopts a reflective tone and by using the techniques of imagery and symbolism, he encourages readers, especially those who may see or face oppression on a regular basis, to realize how atrocious it can be and even take action against it.
The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory.
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...
Within the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, two of the main themes are borders and marginalization. These themes are found within the various characters within this story, which lead to readers being able to clearly see the effects of this marginalization. Throughout the story, readers see a female-tyrant rule over those below her in a hierarchical setup. This leads to a clear separation of male and female characters. In this novel, the author is able to convey a sense of separation as well as slight misogyny with his use of borders and margins.
In the story Night by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization occurs through the loss of religious belief. While in the concentration camps, Elie's friends and family suffer each and every day. He prays to God every night but he soon questions why God has not helped even one time through the suffering.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
When a community attempts to promote social order by ridding society of controversial ideas and making every citizen equal to every other, the community becomes dystopian. Although dystopian societies intend to improve life, the manipulation of thoughts and actions, even when it is done out of the interest of citizens, often leads to the dehumanization of people. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the main character, lives in a dystopian society that has been so overly simplified and homogenized, in order to promote social order, that the citizens exist as thoughtless beings. The lack of individual thinking, deficit of depth and knowledge, and the loss of true living is what has transformed Montag’s city into a dystopia and made the
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.
The main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is brought to a state mental institution from a state prison to be studied to see if he has a mental illness. McMurphy has a history of serving time in prison for assault, and seems to take no responsibility for his actions. McMurphy is very outgoing, loud, rugged, a leader, and a rebel. McMurphy also seems to get pleasure out of fighting the system. McMurphy relishes in challenging the authority of Nurse Ratchett who seems to have a strong hold over the other patients in the ward. He enters into a power struggle with Nurse Ratchett when he finds out that he cannot leave the hospital until the staff, which primarily means her, considers him cured.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
In 1984, George Orwell presents an overly controlled society that is run by Big Brother. The protagonist, Winston, attempts to “stay human” in the face of a dehumanizing, totalitarian regime. Big Brother possesses so much control over these people that even the most natural thoughts such as love and sex are considered taboo and are punishable. Big Brother has taken this society and turned each individual against one another. Parents distrust their own offspring, husband and wife turn on one another, and some people turn on their own selves entirely. The people of Oceania become brainwashed by Big Brother. Punishment for any uprising rebellions is punishable harshly.
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
Sometimes things that seem crazy actually make sense. A good example is the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Bromden. He appears to be an insane patient at a mental hospital who hallucinates about irrational mechanical people and a thick fog that permeates the hospital ward where he lives. In reality, Bromden's hallucinations provide valuable insight into the dehumanization that Bromden and the other ward patients are subjected to. Ken Kesey, in his writing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest brings out his racism in the novel.