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Mojtaba M.Ahani
'' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest "
A novel by Ken kassie, an American writer in 1962. The novel goes through a psychiatric hospital in the state of Oregon, USA, and includes a look at the structures of power in organizations. The novel also criticizes the psychology school of behaviorism and commends human principles. The author had spent some time as a mental health worker at Menlo Park, California, and felt sympathy for the mentally ill. The novel originally appeared in 1963, but the most famous impression was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" , which was created in 1975, directed by Miloseau Forman and Jack Nicholson based on this story. The film won five Oscars. The story is narrated from the language of the
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On the trip, a friend of McMurfy, a prostitute, "Candy," will help her take patients from the hospital to the harbor and travel with patients on the trip. The trip is successful and a patient, George George Sorensen, who is a fisherman and skilled captain, helps the patients to successfully fish in the harbor. In this case, one of the inmates, Billy Bibit, who is a shy man with stuttering, and a low experience with women, tells McMurffy that he likes Kennedy. After that, McMurphy plans to re-launch Kennedy to the sanatorium and even ignores somewhere in the run to run the program. On the day he was offered, Kennedy, along with a friend of his daughter, came to the sanatorium. McMurphy brings these women to the sanitarium by bribing the night caregiver, organizing a grand celebration in a nursing home. Billy Bibit will be provided with "Kennedy", and Billy will lose her plumage. The next morning, the "great nurse" finds out the story of the night before, including interrogating Billy Bibit, Billy speaks for the first time without stuttering, but the "big nurse" overlooks this improvement and threatens He will inform Mike Billy of the night before. Bailey, who is counting on her mother, is committing suicide. McMurfy's great nurse is responsible for John Bailey and loses control of McMurray's control and goes to the big nurse and tore her uniform and tries to smash her throat. A large nurse returns to the nursing home after a while, but the damage done to her lance has reduced the power of her word. Another nurse is not taken seriously by the patients and has to compromise with the patients who have been treated with it. Many of the patients who voluntarily left the area leave and return to the
Kesey, Ken. One flew over the cuckoo's nest, a novel. New York: Viking Press, 1962. Print.
From the moment McMurphy enters the ward it is clear to all that he is different and hard to control. He’s seen as a figure the rest of the patients can look up to and he raises their hopes in taking back power from the big nurse. The other patients identify McMurphy as a leader when he first stands up to the nurse at her group therapy, saying that she has manipulated them all to become “a bunch of chickens at a pecking party”(Kesey 55). He tells the patients that they do not have to listen to Nurse Ratched and he confronts her tactics and motives. The patients see him as a leader at this point, but McMurphy does not see the need for him to be leading alone. McMurphy is a strong willed and opinionated man, so when he arrives at the ward he fails to comprehend why the men live in fear, until Harding explains it to him by
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Toronto, Ontario Canada: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1962.
When Billy Bibbit was caught by Nurse Ratched with candy the prostitute he blamed McMurphy for forcing him to do that because he was scared the nurse would tell his mother." What worries me, Billy,” she said I could hear the change in her voice-”is how your mother is going to take this.” (Kesey pg.301) ”Duh-duh-don’t t-tell, M-M-M-Miss Ratched. Duh-duh-duh-----””Billy, I have to tell. I hate to believe you would behave like this, but, really, what else can I think? I find you alone, on a mattress, with this sort of woman.” ”No! I d-d-didn’t. I was--” (Kesey pg.301) “Billy this girl could not have pulled you in here forcibly.” She shook her head. “Understand, I would like to believe something else--for your poor mother’s sake.” (pg.302) “She d-did.” He looked around him. “And M-M-McMurphy! He did And Harding! And the-the-the rest! They t-t-teased me, called me things!”(Kesey pg. 302) “They m-m-made me! Please, M-Miss Ratched, they may-may-May---!”(Kesey pg.302)
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.
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.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Viking Press. New York. 1973. Page 188.
In the novel, Kesey suggests that a healthy expression of sexuality is a key component of sanity and that repression of sexuality leads directly to insanity. For example; by treating him like an infant and not allowing him to develop sexually, Billy Bibbet's mother causes him to lose his sanity. Missing from the halls of the mental hospital are healthy, natural expression of sexuality between two people. Perverted sexual expressions are said to take place in the ward; for example; Bromden describes the aides as "black boys in white suites committing sex acts in the hall" (p.9). The aides engage in illicit "sex acts" that nobody witnesses, and on several occasions it is suggested that they rape the patients, such as Taber. Nurse Ratched implicitly permits this to happen, symbolized by the jar of Vaseline she leaves the aides. This shows how she condones the sexual violation of the patients, because she gains control from their oppression. McMurphy's sanity is symbolized by his bold and open insertion of sexuality which gives him great confidence and individuality. This stands in contrast to what Kesey implies, ironically and tragically, represents the institution.
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
McMurphy is an individual who is challenging and rebelling against the system's rules and practices. He eventually teaches this practice of rebellion to the other patients who begin to realize that their lives are being controlled unfairly by the mental institution. When McMurphy first arrives at the institution, all of the other patients are afraid to express their thoughts to the Big Nurse. They are afraid to exercise their thoughts freely, and they believe that the Big Nurse will punish them if they question her authority. One patient, Harding, says, "All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees...We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place" (Kesey 62).
As he tries to conform to the ways of the hospital, he actually becomes more like the patients that he detests. In one last attempt to escape from the hospital, McMurphy uses his cunning wit and skills as a con man to persuade the orderly into opening a window to allow two women into the ward. As the nigh progresses and he has the perfect opportunity to flee he realizes the hospital is the only safe place to stay. Due to Randal McMurphy rebellious ways and non-conformist ideas, the hospital performs a lobotomy, which during the time of this movie, w...
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1996. Print. Viking Critical Library.
Even though McMurphy's own sacrifice of life is the price of his victory, he still attempts to push the ward patients to hold thier own personal opinions and fight for what is ethically right. For instinace, McMurphy states, "But I tried though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell id that much, now didn't I?" McMurphy strains to bring the 'fellas' courage and determination in a place full of inadequacy and "perfection." McMurphy obtains a lot of courage in maintaining his own sort of personal integrity, and trying to keep the guys' intergrity and optimistic hope up.
In this novel Kesey has used narrative structure, foreshadowing and symbolism to create the tragic form and to show he downfall of McMurphy throughout the novel. As the down fall of McMurphy progresses throughout the novel his ideas got stronger and at the end of the novel his death reinforced his ideas even more, defeating the Big Nurse due to patients signing out form the ward for freedom. Her control over the ward was shattered when the Chief used the control panel to escape from the ward. The electroshock therapy table was one of the major reason of McMurphy not able to escape the ward.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a Novel. New York: Viking, 1962. Print.