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Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
One flew over the cuckoo's nest literary analysis
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1. Discuss the control devices used by Big Nurse on the ward and by the Combine in general. Within the novel ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Nurse Ratched (the Big Nurse) uses various control devices as to maintain order in the ward. Nurse Ratched has created her society through the utilization of manipulation; this done most obviously through the logbook, which is dedicated wholly to patients documenting their peer’s secrets. Through this, the Big Nurse instils fear and distrust within the men aimed towards each other, rather than at herself. This consequently allows the Big Nurse to use the shame brought upon each man to maintain submission. Although, this shame is only insinuated by the Big Nurse, as she “has a genius for insinuation.” This insinuation is another form of control which is employed by both the Big Nurse and the Combine. The Big Nurse in conjunction the Combine manipulate through group intervention as to expose those who go against …show more content…
the norm. The intensity of the manipulation used cause Chief Bromden to view their combined powers of manipulation as omnipotent, with Bromden believing that their manipulation extends to the control of time. 2. Discuss how McMurphy can be understood as a tragic hero. A tragic hero is defined as a flawed literary character who makes an error of judgement which prompts their inevitable destruction; however, does Randle Patrick McMurphy really make an error of judgement? Within the novel, McMurphy chooses to continue his fight against the Combine despite various threatening forces acting against him and his freedom; this choice inevitably leading to his destruction. McMurphy is presented with a group of men who he feels without his aid will forever continue to live a life dominated by the matriarchal society in which they live, and promptly decides to sacrifice his freedom for theirs. This decision was made by McMurphy within the novel whilst he reflected. McMurphy chose to do as he did to give hope to those around him, despite having the knowledge that his decision would ultimately cause his destruction. Therefore, McMurphy can be understood as your ordinary, selfless hero, rather than a tragic one. 3. Highlight Ken Kesey’s characterisation of ONE of the following: Chief Broom, Randle Patrick McMurphy or Nurse Ratched AND explain the ways in which the reader is positioned to condone or condemn. Within the novel, Randle Patrick McMurphy is conveyed as being the emblem of sanity within the ward, bringing laughter and rational thought processing to men who have been allowing themselves to be repressed for many years.
McMurphy is characterised by Ken Kesey as being a red-haired, rumbustious Irish-American man, who before being in the ward, was sentenced to a work camp due to a long history of brawling, drunkenness, assault and battery, disturbing the peace, gambling and, most disturbingly, rape. The reader, despite having a general feeling of disgust towards rape and rapists, somewhat dismisses this charge and condones McMurphy’s actions. These actions are condoned due to the positive light through which Chief Bromden discusses McMurphy. Through the eyes of Broom, McMurphy is a saviour who is comparable to Jesus Christ and through this, McMurphy is conveyed as to not truly being able to do something condemnable. Therefore, all condemnable actions performed by McMurphy are not perceived to be true by the
reader. 4. Briefly discuss how Ken Kesey asserts notions connected with the power of emasculation and the methods of a matriarchy? Ken Kesey asserts notions connected with the power of emasculation and the methods of the matriarchy in numerous ways within the novel. This assertion is made especially apparent through the characterisation of the women within the novel; with the majority having one true aim in life-to emasculate the men around them. These women are described within the novel as to being “ball-cutter[s].” This phrase truly epitomising the emasculation of the men within the ward. “The best way to [remove one’s power,] to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst,” and where it hurts the most is a man’s masculinity. The methods of the matriarchy are conveyed within the text by Kesey through the reversal of gender roles. This reversal of gender roles flipping the societal system norm into being one run by the matriarchy rather than patriarchy, causing one to notice immediately the power of emasculation used by the women on the ward, and in the patient’s lives. Nurse Ratched - the female commander of the ward, not only strips the men of their masculinity, she seemingly feeds off of it, drawing power from stealing masculinity and reflecting it in her actions. With both Harding’s wife and Bibbit’s mother through the denial of the men in their lives natural impulses. This denial consequently resulting in the suicide of Bibbit. 5. Briefly outline the importance of Kesey’s use of two or more of the following: b. symbolism c. allusion Within the novel, Kesey uses multiple literary techniques as to give a deeper meaning to the text. The most intriguing technique used throughout being the frequent allusion to Christianity, referenced to predominately through Randle Patrick McMurphy. This occurs most obviously through the mirroring of actions within the text to those within the New Testament. Initially, this allusion is made increasingly obvious through the comparison of the electroconvulsive therapy table,"a table, shaped, ironically, like a cross, with a crown of electric sparks in place of thorns," to the crucifix. This allusion is explored once more through the fishing trip - with there being twelve participants of the trip, emulating the number of Christ’s disciples. The final supper is then reflected on through the party scene, with Billy Bibbit’s suicide mimicking that of Judas’. Both Judas and Bibbit commit suicide as they feel may never reconcile their shame. Kesey then uses the fog Chief Bromden experiences as to symbolize two differing things. This fog may simply symbolize the takeover of Broom’s psychosis, whilst the fog could also symbolize the waste that both the combine and human-kind create. This belief can be re-enforced through the arrival of McMurphy; the fog is a byproduct of the Combine, and as McMurphy fights the combine throughout the text, the fog progressively gets lighter and less frequent.
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.
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
People often find themselves as part of a collective, following society's norms and may find oneself in places where feeling constrained by the rules and will act out to be unconstrained, as a result people are branded as nuisances or troublemakers. In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the author Ken Kesey conveys the attempt McMurphy makes to live unconstrained by the authority of Nurse Ratched. The story is very one sided and helps create an understanding for those troublemakers who are look down on in hopes of shifting ingrained ideals. The Significance of McMurphy's struggles lies in the importance placed on individuality and liberty. If McMurphy had not opposed fear and autocratic authority of Nurse Ratched nothing would have gotten better on the ward the men would still feel fear. and unnerved by a possibility of freedom. “...Then, just as she's rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine ... holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! ” In the novel McMurphy shows little signs like this to combat thee Nurse. His defiance of her system included
When they first come to the Island Philip is dependent of timothy and doesn’t want to work because he is blind stated by him in the novel. ”I just wanted to sit and think. I didn’t want to work. I said timothy I can’t work I’m blind”. Page 70 in the novel. Then when Timothy almost died of malaria so Timothy trained him to to rely on himself. Phillip starts being independent of Timothy when he carves a crane for philip so he can move around the island and also attaches vines to each side of the island so philip can walk back and forth from the hut.In chapter eleven is when philip says ” Timothy fashioned a cane for me and I was now using it to feel my way around the island ”.” I was starting to be less dependent on the vine ”. While still dependent on timothy he started to be less being able to walk without him and the vines. To test if Philip was now independent of Timothy he had to climb a tree blind. When he first went up to it he had stop and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written by Ken Kesey. The book is about a guy named Randle Patrick McMurphy. It all starts out where he goes to a mental hospital and is introduced to to Chief Bromden, who is also the half- indian narrator of the book. He has been in the hospital for ten years, he suffers from hallucinations and delusions. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb to be unnoticed, but he is six feet seven inches tall. It made it quite hard for him to be hidden from anything being the odd person out of everyone there because he just stuck out like a sore thumb. All of the mental patients are males and are divided into acutes who are curable, and chronics who can not be cured. Nurse Ratched is a nurse who runs the ward and everyone
Ratched is depicted as the embodiment of these social standards because she controls the definition of insanity just as the standards do. For example, McMurphy’s defiance is nearly halted when “the Big Nurse” explains that she can hold him in the ward until she deems him sane. McMurphy, however, is able to interrupt Ratched’s plans, and therefore the expectations, by rebelling and empowering the other patients.
Both novels describe societies in which those in power utilize manipulation to maintain control. Nurse Ratched, or “Big Nurse,” rules the asylum with an iron fist--continuously demoralizing the male patients.
"It gave voice, gave life, to a basic distrust of the way in which psychiatry was being used for society's purposes, rather than the purposes of the people who had mental illness," Dr Pittman told The Discovery Channel. In this quote Dr. Pittman is expressing that the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey wrongly defined the use of ECT as a punishment instead of a cure for people who have severe mental illnesses. Throughout Ken Kesey's novel the patients in the mental hospital are often silenced by the power hungry Nurse Ratched. The patients are mentally and physically abused when they disobey any order from the nurses. Nurse Ratched constantly uses her power to administer ECT as a punishment for patients that rebel against her. These scenes in the book causes society to have a falsified view on Electroconvulsive Therapy. Ergo, the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey diminishes any hope of
unrealistic to true life. The ‘Big Nurse’ sees life through a lens of restraint and sameness and she wishes to get the mental ward patients to adapt to this mindset by enforcing harsh and totalitarian control over them. It is important to reflect on the ignorance of Nurse Ratched’s own state. She believes that a prime example of trouble is McMurphy because he is a manipulator but she herself fits this description. Nurse Ratched believes McMurphy is “ a ‘manipulator’… a man who will use everyone and everything to his own ends.” Nurse Ratched is unaware that she too makes the patients reveal their innermost secrets and turn on each other with her manipulation to get her own gains. Nurse Ratched represents a microcosm of how society in the 1950’s desired people to be: they desired order and effectiveness. The Red Scare led everyone to want “normalcy” and so differences were widely
This is the first sign of the reversal, the majority of the population is male, yet they do
Through the addled perspective of the patients, Ken Kesey portrays Nurse Ratched as a callous, despotic matriarch who oversees her mental institution with an iron-fist concealed by a sickeningly sweet persona within the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Significantly, Kesey manifests the nurse’s cold, mechanical demeanor through Chief Bromden’s schizophrenic projections. For instance, Bromden introduces the “Big Nurse” as “[sitting] in the center of [a] web of wires like a watchful robot, [tending] her network with mechanical skill”(30). By comparing the nurse to a vicious arachnid, Kesey demonstrates her lethality as a predator who, upon ensnaring her victims, promptly drains the life from them. Additionally, Kesey juxtaposes the nurse’s insect-like qualities with artificial, mechanical traits.
Her presence and control over the ward can be shown by the way she makes her first appearance; ‘with a gust of cold’ (7). However, underneath the Big Nurse’s mechanical nature and her stiff uniform, she does possess a human feature in her breasts. By introducing McMurphy, a redhead gambler who fakes his diagnosis as a psychopath, the entire system of the ward have been disturbed. McMurphy’s character contrasts with that of Nurse Ratched as he symbolises freedom and self-determination. Even though Nurse Ratched has suspicions that McMurphy is not actually “insane”, she treats him as insane in order to maintain authority and control over him. This very act can be considered insane as the ward who is meant to help cure the patients, is trying to exercise control over a sane man by the mere belief of Nurse Ratched that he is insane. In addition, Kesey’s depiction of the character prompts the reader to question the line between normal and insane. There is no doubt that the
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey delves into the predominate theme of power, and how it is used to manipulate and coerce to the point in which one individual rules over all others. This relationship is embodied in the power struggle between Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy. Before McMurphy arrives at the hospital, Nurse Ratched's strict routine works to maintain order within the hospital. However, with the introduction of McMurphy into the ward, chaos and change ensues. Mcmurphy’s blatant sexuality and individuality undermines the authority of Nurse Ratched, and in turn, the patients begin to discern their own power. Consequently, the pressure of the expectations of those around him ultimately forces McMurphy to forfeit
Twigs surrounded the building with fragments of deceased worms embedded within them. The structure of a nest was dangling on a tree, on the verge of collapsing. Minute leaves glue the twigs together, allowing the fragile structure to remain intact. In the middle of this structure was to be found the smallest of schools. Inside was a defeated writer who had been forced to settle to teaching Creative Writing.
Nurse Ratched is the overwhelming force over the hospital; she controls the hospital with a stern fist. She shows no compassions towards any of the patients or any of her co-workers. Dr. Spivey, who you would think would have more "say" over a Nurse because of his qualifications as a doctor, but has none compared to the "Big Nurse". "The doctor talks about his theory until the Big Nurse finally decides he's used up time enough and asks him to hush so they can get on to Harding, ..." (47). This reflects on the 60's idea that men should hold all controlling positions, and women should stay home and be housewives and shouldn't work. Ken Kesey wanted this effect that there is an opposing woman in charge, but has the strict manners of a man.