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Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
Explain what Ken Kesey wanted the readers to learn as a result of reading One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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Recommended: Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle Patrick McMurphy is the patients’ savior. By definition a savior is an individual who saves someone or something from danger, and who is regarded with the veneration of a religious figure. A savior either directly or indirectly gives faith to his followers in hopes of them continuing their fight against oppression. Upon his arrival to the ward McMurphy is quick to adapt the role of a Christ-figure as he helps the patients reach salvation from the societal restraints of the combine. Christ, however, is the ultimate savior. According to the bible Christ performed countless miracles to spiritually heal and inspire his followers. Christ’s most renowned act of miracle healing is when …show more content…
Kesey’s biblical allusion to Lazarus’s resurrection suggests, that the emotional strength McMurphy gives to the men is the key to overthrowing the combine. As a savior McMurphy supplies the patient’s with the necessary faith and apparatuses to combat their oppression. McMurphy cannot single-handedly liberate each man from the combine rather he inspires and educates the men on how to rise up and free themselves. Moreover, Kesey parallels McMurphy’s last hoorah to Christ’s Last Supper. The Last Supper is the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his betrayal and crucifixion. McMurphy’s less dignified Last Supper was an attempt to bring a sample of manly life to the patients. After a wild night full of alcohol, drugs, and prostitutes McMurphy and his disciples fall asleep and the day shifters find them the next morning among the aftermath of the party. Nurse Ratched finds Billy Bibbit with the prostitute; when questioned Billy immediately blames McMurphy and the other men for his doings, “They m-m-made me! Please, M-Miss Ratched, they may-may-MAY—!”
McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest and Luke from Cool hand Luke. Are both men that are similar to each other and that both can be used as examples of someone being a christ figure. The two of them in there own way we're able to be leaders of there peers and to have the trust from them, and to do it in a non violent way. Luke and McMurphy both get there men to stand up against the Boss and Big Nurse to do what is good for them. They both died while suffering. Just like Christ did.
Randle McMurphy is in a constant battle within himself, he is portrayed as a sociopath. He does not base his actions off of whether they will affect those around him, instead does as he pleases. His actions are based off of what is best for himself. McMurphy was first introduced as a savior to the ward, He soon uses the patients for his own benefit, the patients look up to him as one of their new proclaimed leader. McMurphy inspires hope into them and make them want to stand up for themselves. This give
In "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," McMurphy is successfully perceived as a heroic Christ figure. Kesey uses foreshadowing and images, the fishing trip, actions and feelings of other characters to develop this character.
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
In the story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, patients live locked up in a restricted domain, everyday taking orders from the dictator, Nurse Ratched. Once McMurphy enters this asylum, he starts to rally everyone up and acting like this hospital is a competitive game between him and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy promotes negative behavior, such as, gambling and going against the rules, to mess around with the nurses and so he can be the leader that everyone looks up to. McMurphy soon learns that he might not be in control after all. Nurse Ratched decides who will be let out and when. After realizing why no one has stood up to Nurse Ratched before, he starts to follow rules and obey the nurses. This changes the whole mood of the hospital,
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...
Literary fiction is littered with references to Christianity. It is very obviously a large and influential force in the western world so it is hardly surprising that a novel such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is so questioning of our society and moral values, should be so full of references to what is arguably the basis of these values. What the question asks, however, is if the character of McMurphy is portrayed as a Christ figure. A Christ figure being a reflection of the New Testament messiah within the characters actions, beliefs and effect on those around him. The figure will then redeem his followers, lead them to salvation, be martyred and resurrected.
McMurphy is shown as a martyr like Jesus was because the patients really don’t become free until he dies. Before the treatment is administered to him McMurphy “climbs on the table without help and spreads his arms out to hit the shadow. A switch snaps the clasps on his wrists, ankles, clamping him into the shadow” (Kesey pg. 272) When the graphite salve is put on his temples and they tell him its a conductant he says “Anointest my head with conductant.
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.
McMurphy and proctor eventually become heroes. In the end the men choose to do what is right, defending others, giving their lives in the process. In Kesey’s novel, McMurphy defends George, a patient afraid of dirt and the hospital soap that an orderly tries to force George to use. He tries to defend George by reasoning with the orderlies but this does not work so he fights them (Kesey 272-275). He later tries, partially succeeding, to choke Nurse Ratched and destroy her and her power. He is lobotomized for his actions so, to end his suffering, Chief smothers him (Kesey 319, 321, 323). Proctor chooses to die instead of confessing to a crime he didn’t commit (Miller 149-150). Both men’s deaths cause them to become martyrs, saving both the ward and Salem from complete and total destruction. Proctor and McMurphy’s martyrdom shows them to have grown to become heroes rather than selfish.
The nurse-patient relationship is one that is built on a mutual trust and respect that fosters hope and assists in a harmonious healing process. A nurse has the professional duty to the patient to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual care to avoid injury. Any negligence in rendering care to the patient is direct disregard and results in malpractice. This is the crux of the problem with Nurse Ratched. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched is guilty of malpractice due to the cruel medical treatments she practiced, mental anguish inflicted by her on the patients, as well as the undue authority she had in the hospital that she consistently misused.
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
To the nurse, that was the final act of disobedience that sentenced him to pay for the others’ freedom. They had been living as machines under the Combine’s influence for too long, and McMurphy was the one they condemned. Kesey did this to characterize the condemnation of a martyr who needed to free the others. The Combine needed another gear to fill the empty spaces left behind by the freed patients, so Kesey personified McMurphy as the gear to fit those slots. Nurse Ratched had taken McMurphy away for several weeks and when he returned, he had been stripped of his spirit and the Combine had fit him into its mechanical devices, “The black boys wheeled in this gurney with a chart…that said in heavy black letters, ‘MCMURPHY, RANDLE P. POST-OPERATIVE.’ And below this was, ‘LOBOTOMY.’…the other end at the head…a swirl of red hair over a face milk white…” (321). Here Kesey uses imagery to depict McMurphy as a hollow shell of a man who finally lost the battle against the system. Nurse Ratched had triumphed over McMurphy, but he had already freed the patients from the absolute control of the Combine. Kesey also uses McMurphy’s submission as a metaphor which states that in order to become truly free of the mechanical workings of the Combine, someone else must make the ultimate sacrifice and fully succumb to it. However, McMurphy knew he had to make this
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
Another important element is that makes this film is the manner in which the prose has been sharply drawn. It is also readily comprehensible. The theme of self-respect as well as self-reliance has been well expressed. These two themes show McMurpghy as a Christ figure. It can be seen that McMurphay is crucified on a table that have the shape of a table. He then undergoes electric shock. The party that he held on the last day of his stay in the hospital can be seen the last supper. The pill and the codeine resemble the bread that they took. Candy acts as Magdalene in the Bible. Billy in the film is acting just the same way Judas behaved. Nurse Ratched and the hospital staff act like the Pharisees while the twelve people that he took fishing