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I chose to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey for my research novel and I’m currently on page 100. The story is told from the perspective of Chief Bromden-a cagey, half-Native American patient in a mental hospital-in a stream of consciousness style. Assumed to be deaf and incapable of speaking by the patients and hospital staff, Bromden exposes and details the deplorable abuse the patients of the hospital endure, which the public does not see. Thus far, Bromden describes how the newly admitted Randle McMurphy pulls antics such as resisting the hospital’s set time schedule, launching butter at a clock, and persuading Dr. Spivey to convince Nurse Ratched to hold a carnival for the patients in order to rebel against Nurse Ratched’s
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
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...
In the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the characters are in a mental hospital for various reasons. Narrated by Chief Bromden, a large Native American man, the story tells mainly of a newcomer to the hospital, Randle McMurphy, who is not actually mentally ill, but pretends to be to escape work detail. A much-feared middle-aged woman named Mildred Ratched runs the hospital. She runs the hospital like a concentration camp, with harsh rules, little change, and almost no medical oversight. The “prisoners” have a large amount of fear of Nurse Ratched, as she rules the place like she is a soulless dictator, the patients get no say in any decision made. This is exemplified when McMurphy brings up the World Series, and the patients take a vote on it. Though everyone wants to watch it, they have so much fear for Nurse Ratched that they are too afraid to speak out against her wishes.
Imagine being stuck in a mental hospital for twenty years where everyone thinks you are deaf and mute. This is what happened to Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Chief Bromden, or Chief, has lived in a mental hospital for over twenty years. He was admitted to the hospital after serving in the Second World War. He is a six-foot seven-inch tall schizophrenic Indian who has convinced the whole ward that he is deaf and mute, and he is the narrator of the story. He is not a very reliable narrator due to his schizophrenia, so some of the events are distorted. Throughout the story, Chief Bromden is reminded of events from his childhood, which reveal little bits and pieces about his character and his uncommon past. The ward he is on is controlled by the Big Nurse, who has emasculated everyone and has complete control over everything and everyone there. She requires everything to be done her way and like clockwork. That all changes when Randle Patrick McMurphy arrives. McMurphy, mandated to the mental hospital by the courts, starts challenging the rules made by the Big Nurse as soon as he arrives, to help improve the lives of all of the patients on the ward. McMurphy also takes some of the patients on wacky adventures. For example, he convinces the Big Nurse to let him and a few other patients go on a fishing trip with his aunt. Except, instead of his aunt, he hires a prostitute to take them in her place. He also starts a basketball league with all of the patients as a way to exercise, but that ends after the basketball breaks through the Big Nurse’s window multiple times. The patients are divided into two groups: the chronics, who have no hope of being cured, and the acutes, who are not nearly a...
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.
Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental hospital. The main character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to get out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of running the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out between reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures most influential stories. The dominant theme in this novel is that of conformity and it's pressure on today's society. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromden's mind a combine . To the Chief, the combine' depicts the conformist society of America, this is evident in one particular paragraph: This excerpt not only explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more poignantly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients are casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy represents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents nature and it's unregularity. Another key theme in Kesey's novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey proceeds to compare the male role to spontaneity, sexuality, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ...
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.
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.
Over the past few days, the class and I have watched a film titled One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Throughout the film, you began to see some parallels to the main character, McMurphy, and that of Jesus Christ. There are many references to the Christian religion within the film.
Fred Wright, Lauren's instructor for EN 132 (Life, Language, Literature), comments, "English 132 is an introduction to English studies, in which students learn about various areas in the discipline from linguistics to the study of popular culture. For the literature and literary criticism section of the course, students read a canonical work of literature and what scholars have said about the work over the years. This year, students read One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, a classic of American literature which dates from the 1960s counterculture. Popularized in a film version starring Jack Nicholson, which the class also watched in order to discuss film studies and adaptation, the novel became notable for its sympathetic portrayal of the mentally ill. For an essay about the novel, students were asked to choose a critical approach (such as feminist, formalist, psychological, and so forth) and interpret the novel using that approach, while also considering how their interpretation fit into the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the work. Lauren chose the challenge of applying a Marxist approach to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not only did she learn about critical approaches and how to apply one to a text, she wrote an excellent essay, which will help other readers understand the text better. In fact, if John Clark Pratt or another editor ever want to update the 1996 Viking Critical Library edition of the novel, then he or she might want to include Lauren's essay in the next edition!"
Synopsis: The movie is based on the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest written by Ken Kesey. Jack Nicholson stars as a prisoner, Randle McMurphy (Mac), sent to a mental institution for further evaluation of behavior during incarceration. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) takes on the challenge of treating Mac even though he does not exhibit signs of a mental illness. Through the experience of residing in a psychiatric institution, Mac forms a strong bond that is life-changing with another patient, Chief (Will Sampson).
In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest we seen many examples of the four characteristics of a controlled environment. The four characteristics are status hierarchy, depersonalization, adjustment, and institutionalized. The characteristic that stood out most to me in this movie was institutionalization.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey begins with a short introduction by the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden is a half Indian Chronic at the ward. Chronics are patients that have been in the ward for so long that people assume that they will never check out. During the time that Bromden was there, he acted as a dumb deaf mute without being caught by anyone. Though his condition does not seem as bad as some of the other Chronics—some were vegetables—it was evident that Bromden had problems with hallucinations and delusions from the final line of the first chapter, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”
As all movies are created based on a book, there always seems to be changes and conflicting ideas. However, they still have the same main idea to the story line. The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey and the movie directed by Miloš Forman deal with the main idea of society's control of natural impulses. The author/director want to prove that this control can be overcome. Although the movie and the book are very different from each other, they still have their similarities.