One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

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Ken Keasey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was inspired to write his book while volunteering at a veterans mental institution. In the hospital he was introduced to LSD, and he was soon addicted to it and began experimenting with himself to observe its effects. He wrote this eye-opening novel in order for people to understand the hidden things that were going on in mental institutions. In his novel, he focuses on Nurse Ratched’s tyrannical rule over a mental hospital in Oregon. Nurse Ratched runs the hospital by abusing its patients with electroshock therapy and lobotomy, utilizing fear tactics, and manipulating her patients to take away their individuality as,“Conformity and fear are interrelated, feeding on each other and producing …show more content…

The WWASP is the WorldWide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools based out of Utah for teen behavior modification where troubled teens are sent and teens with mental disorders. These programs were similarly traumatizing to the institution in the novel. Residents of the program were taken in the middle of the night by two large men who would take them the easy way or the hard way. Upon arrival Chelsea Filer, a survivor of the program, recalls being “strip searched” and being held in the “restriction room” for a week where if she cried or made noises she was “restrained” (Robert, p. 1). These programs were strictly run similarly to a prison where inmates were not allowed to look outside or speak. Both the institute in the novel and the WWASP program were run by adults who abused their power stripping individuals of any sense of humanity in order to control them. If it weren’t for Filer’s friend, who refused to conform like McMurphy, she would have never made it out of the program. Individuals like McMurphy are able to assist in freeing others from the constraints the mental institutions put on them so they are able to express themselves freely without the fear of being

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