It's Kind of a Funny Story tells the coming-of-age tale about 15-year old Craig, a boy with big eyes, a hesitant smile and a diffident, sensitive demeanor. The teen is beginning to crack under the academic pressure to succeed in fields that he is not interested in at an exclusive public high school for gifted students. Although Craig is fairly intelligent, he feels out of place among the other students. The boy is in a constant state of panic about his future, which makes him prone to fits of stress vomiting. Amid these despondencies, he falls in love with his best friend Aaron's girl Nia.
Craig feels that he is at the breaking point after he dreams about taking a leap off of the Brooklyn Bridge. Therefore the anxious and depressed teen begs
…show more content…
He believes that he made a mistake when he discovers that checking in is much easier than checking out. To make matters worse, the youth psychiatric ward is undergoing renovations, and he is forced to stay in the adult unit with patients who are more seriously disturbed.
The film portrays this mental hospital as a place of controlled chaos. Because of their mental instability, the patients' lives are unpredictable. Their psychiatric conditions make them incapable of fully interacting with other members of society. At the same time they are experiencing a sense of community in the hospital.
Craig interacts with a number of unique residents. First he befriends Bobby, a longtime patient and the "captain" of the floor. Although this new semi-mentor is depressed too, he takes the newcomer under his wing. Bobby urges the teen to seize the day even though has not been able to do the same with his own life. Craig develops a crush for Noelle, an artistically inclined teenager. She is prone to cutting herself. Therefore her inner wounds have become visible through scares on her face. Craig's depressed Egyptian roommate spends nearly every waking and sleeping hour curled up in
…show more content…
Infatuated with the boy's dark side, the girl visits him and attempts to seduce the boy in his hospital room. But things go wrong when the teenager's Moslem roommate discovers them and panics.
Although Craig's parents are well meaning, they are not able to give him the support and sympathy he needs during their hospital visits. When they learn in family therapy sessions that their son's condition was triggered by stress, his father is unable to let go of his ambition for the boy's academic future that was one reason for his son's breakdown in the first place.
In individual and group therapy, Craig comes to understand some of the roots of his problems. He also gains perspective and gleans life lessons from other goodhearted patients. In this process the teen undergoes a journey of self-discovery that results in an almost magical transformation.
Craig discovers that he is a talented artist. When he lets his imagination loose, he creates amazing drawings. As he experiments with his natural artistic abilities and explores his true feelings, he develops a closer bond with Noelle. They race through the halls of the hospital and wind up on the roof, where they express their affection for each
Chief Bromden states “The air is pressed in by the walls to tight to let loose and laugh.” Before Mcmurphy arrives it is true. After his presence is recognized by the patients Mrs. Ratcheds grip over the institution starts loosing its hold. The first thing the patients do to start breaking her hold is start the gambling. They gamble for money even though it’s against ward policy. Little by little the patients show improvement with themselves it is portrayed by the ability not just to laugh but laugh at their own qualities.
After the introduction by the Chief, the story proceeds to a normal morning at the ward. The patients are sitting in the Day Room after their morning pills. Then a new patient, Randall McMurphy, checks in. McMurphy was a big redheaded man who loved to gamble and got transferred to the ward from a work farm. From the beginning, McMurphy had been hard to control. He refused any of the traditional check in routines that any new patient needed to follow including taking his admission shower. The Black Boys, the orderlies of the ward, went to get Nurse Ratched in attempt to put McMurphy in line.
Growing up, Charlie faced two difficult loses that changed his life by getting him admitted in the hospital. As a young boy, he lost his aunt in a car accident, and in middle school, he lost his best friend who shot himself. That Fall, Charlie walks through the doors his first day of highschool, and he sees how all the people he used to talk to and hang out with treat him like he’s not there. While in English class, Mr. Anderson, Charlie’s English teacher, notices that Charlie knew the correct answer, but he did not want to speak up and let his voice be heard. As his first day went on, Charlie met two people that would change named Sam and Patrick who took Charlie in and helped him find himself. When his friends were leaving for college, they took one last ride together in the tunnel and played their favorite song. The movie ends with Charlie reading aloud his final letter to his friend, “This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story, you are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder, when you were listening to that song” (Chbosky). Ever since the first day, Charlie realized that his old friends and classmates conformed into the average high schooler and paid no attention to him. Sam and Patrick along with Mr. Anderson, changed his views on life and helped him come out of his shell. Charlie found a
... to walk out?...[they're] no crazier than the average asshole out walking around on the streets.” (pg. 26). MacMurphy believes that some of the patients are there like him, voluntarily, but that doesn;t change the fact that they are all confined in the ward unable to escape. The patients are also confined mentally. Bromden is stuck with memories of the war and parallels these to the asylum like comparing the war fog to the fog in the asylum. However, all of the patients are confined mentally since they have mental problems that they have no way of escaping.
Initially the ward is run as if it was a prison ward, but from the moment the brawling, gambling McMurphy sets foot on the ward it is identified that he is going to cause havoc and provide change for the patients. McMurphy becomes a leader, a Christ like figure and the other patients are his disciples. The person who is objective to listen to his teachings at first is Chief Bromden (often called Bromden), but then he realizes that he is there to save them and joins McMurphy and the Acutes (meaning that they have possibility for rehabilitation and release) in the protest against Nurse Ratched, a bureaucratic woman who is the protagonist of the story, and the `Combine' (or society).
She explains to the community that the current cycle that her father and the adults created is not going to work out forever. While under the current cycle, many outsiders snuck their way inside the community and stole money and food. Not only that, the watchers noticed that the thieves carried guns. She mentions to the crowd about her recurring nightmares where she is levitating and flies toward the door of her room.
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.
father “Your son was a ballplayer, wasn’t he? He didn’t have any missing parts, did he?” Mack sits on the edge of the roof as “The pain sat between them even as the rain beat down.” This demonstrates that Mack doesn’t think that he’ll ever heal and become the person he was before. Mack believes that he had let everyone down by not being the successful person he was before. He feels as if he will never reach people’s expectations of him now because of the tragedy.
As Jack and his family start trudging through the long winter in the hotel it becomes apparent that Jack starts to develop “cabin fever.” His writer’s block causes anxiety and anger towards his wife and son. Jack also starts to develop an obsessive compulsive behavior pers...
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.
And, as is commonly known, adolescents are the most prone to succumbing to peer pressure (Brown). Throughout his childhood, Tommy does all he can to create artwork; however, he cannot seem to accomplish anything particularly spectacular. The other children look down on him because of this, and go as far as excluding him from group activities because they are embarrassed to be seen with him. Of course, there is always a minority opinion; one day a guardian named Miss Lucy pulls him aside and tells him that it is “quite all right” for him to not be creative and that “he wasn’t to worry about it” (Ishiguro). As a result, Tommy gives up on being creative. Later on, Miss Lucy recants her statement and Tommy is unaware as to
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.
Because of the parties he attends with his new friends he has tried using some drugs. These new friends help Charlie see things with a positive perspective, and to be confident in himself. When his friends move away, Charlie experience isolation and has a mental crisis that leads him to be internalized in a clinic.
I think he learn the beauty of life and its beginning. Nick also learns that death is certain I think he tries to deny the fact by saying he isn 't going to die.
The other patients also thought about their own life when they are already living outside the hospital. Many patients who was awakened at the hospital felt excitement and joy, but some dealt with mourn and sadness, for their families left them for years and do not visit them, they thought they are alone. Leonards relationship with Dr. Sayers sank and he rebelled. Just for a while, the drug that he has been taken loses its effect. Mrs. Lowe wanted the treatment to stop for she thought his son is in