More handpicked essays just for you.
One flew over cuckoo's nest book character analysis slide show
Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
Summary: One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator, Chief Bromden, sees the world through a mechanical lens. He recognizes that what he sees may not be truthful, but does not provide us with another viewpoint. One of the key elements of his perspective is the fog. At first, it seems the fog is a safe haven, somewhere to hide, but as the book carries on, we learn the fog might mean something else entirely. The arrival of the protagonist, Randle McMurphy, mysteriously causes the fog to fade. Thus, we wonder: Is the fog real and why does it disappear? When Chief first introduces us to the fog, we presume it is an experiment or treatment that the hospital utilises. However,
Author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and attended 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. It first started out as a hallucination for Bromden to show how he portrays his current situations from a different perspective.
Popular perception of both the Sioux and Zulu peoples often imagines them as timeless and unchanging (at least before their ultimate demise at the hands of whites). To what extent does Gump's book challenge the similarities and differences between the Sioux and Zulu people?
1. Chapter 3, page 5, #3: “A little fog hung over the river so that as I neared it I felt myself becoming isolated from everything except the river and the few trees beside it. The wind was blowing more steadily here, and I was beginning to feel cold.”
Chief Bromden, who is presumably deaf and dumb, narrates the story in third person. Mr. McMurphy enters the ward all smiles and hearty laughter as his own personal medicine. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a story about patients in a psychiatric hospital, who are under the power of Nurse Ratched. Mrs. Ratched has control over all the patients except for Mr. McMurphy, who uses laughter to fight her power. According to Chief Bromden, McMurphy "...knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (212). Laughter is McMurphy's medicine and tool to get him and the rest of the patients through their endless days at the hospital. The author's theme throughout the novel is that laughter is the best medicine, and he shows this through McMurphy's static character. The story is made up of series of conflicts between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy becomes a hero, changing the lives of many of the inmates. In the end, though, he pays for his actions by suffering a lobotomy, which turned him into a vegetable. The story ends when Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow and escapes to freedom.
The "Fog" reveals, illuminates, widens, and intensifies; it gives sight. There is a pleasing poetic irony in Clampitt’s ability to render so present to the mind’s eye precisely what the eyes themselves cannot see at all. " A vagueness comes over everything, / as though proving color and contour / alike dispensable" (Clampitt 610). As things disappear, "the lighthouse extinct, / the islands’ spruce-tips drunk up like milk in the universal emulsion; / houses reverting into the lost and forgotten," the experience of the vanishing develops (610).
In the first half of the novel, Kesey uses a wonderful device to show oppression that makes the reader feel as if they themselves are going insane. Bromden describes it best. “She’s got the fog machine switched on…and the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in,” (Kesey 101). This fog is not literally there, but instead appears when Kesey wants to create an atmosphere that is disparaging. This dark tone is also emphasized through Bromden’s nightmares. In one of the dreams, the hospital turns into a hot industrial factory where the noise of cold, hard, unyielding machinery is almost deafening, (78-82). During the dream, one of the old Chronics, Blastic, is Hung on a hook and sent away into the machines. The strange thing is that he actually does die. Bromden’s dream is actually a metaphor for the quick disposal of those who do not survive the nurse’s treatment. It is as if she does not want any evidence that her patients are not recovering. So, the effect the reader is left with is one representative of how unceremoniously a death is dealt with in the hospital.
Contrast. Tone. Metaphors. These literary elements are all used in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s in relation to a larger theme in the novel – confidence. In the book, a man named McMurphy is put into a mental ward run by Nurse Ratched, who has complete power and control over the men. They all fear her and submit to her due to fear, suppressing their confidence and manhood. When McMurphy came, he was like a spark that ignites a roaring fire in the men; they gain back the confidence that they lost and become free. In one passage, McMurphy takes the men on a fishing trip where he helps them stray away from the Nurse’s power and learn to believe in themselves. Throughout the passage, the use of contrast, positive tone, and metaphors of
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” The father of transcendentalism, Emerson believed that people who resist change to be what is most natural, themselves, are the true heroes of the world. Ken Kesey, another popular writer, wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in a similar spirit. His novel takes place on the ward of a controlling army nurse at an Oregon mental institution in the late 1950s. The storyline mainly follows the interactions between Nurse Ratched, a manipulating representation of society, and Randle Patrick McMurphy, a patient, gambler, and renegade. Kesey echoes the transcendentalists and romantics in his work by
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest remarkably demonstrates the individual’s battle to maintain a sense of uniqueness from society. In the novel, McMurphy fought to save the patients of the asylum from the efforts of Nurse Ratched (society) to take their self-respect and force them to sacrifice their individuality. Life is full of contradictions and people who maliciously force ideas upon others of what is normal and acceptable. While McMurphy won the battle against Nurse Ratched, it was not the war; society still threatened the world in Kesey’s novel as it threatens the world of dreams and possibilities
raw to and a yellow fog, a filthy fog, evil smelling fog, a fog that
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is based largely through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy. Kesey explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity, ideas that were widely discussed at the time about psychiatric hospitals. The book is narrated by “Chief” Bromden, a gigantic and half- Native American patient who is thought to be deaf and mute. Bromden focuses on the antics of the rebellious Randle McMurphy, who is out to manipulate the system to his advantages. The head nurse, Mildred Ratched who is known as “Big Nurse” or “Nurse Ratched” by her patients; rules the ward with an iron fist and with little medical oversight. From the beginning McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines, leading to constant power struggle between the patient and the nurse. Through out the book Ken Kesey uses Randle McMurphy to represent the hero in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The American Dream has been a fantasy for many people around the world. It has
In the excerpt from Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the image of fog offers a sinister atmosphere with the use of sensory image. Mr. Utterson and the police officer are investigating the donnybrook between Mr. Hyde and Sir Danvers Carew, causing the death of Carew, and are on their way to a taxi to go to the suspects house, “the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors” (24). The fastidious use of verbs to describe the strength of the wind makes it almost plausible for the breeze to be felt upon the skin. The stream of air provides an eerie vibe because, along with the fog, it gives a cold troposphere that is often related with mysterious events. Along with touch, sight is used to describe the setting (complex sentence),
In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator, patient Chief Bromden, interprets reality through a mechanic’s perspective. The fog is on of the key elements of this perspective. At first, it seems the fog is a safe haven, somewhere to hide, but as the book carries on with the arrival of the protagonist Randle McMurphy, it begins to fade. The fog, although it provides safe haven, is unbeneficial to Chief and denies him his humanity.
“Bromden’s point-of-view is necessary to make the characters big enough to be equal to their job” (Kesey). The reliability of the narrator, Chief Bromden, in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been debated between different parties since the novel was published in 1962. It is unknown to most people whether to believe that everything Bromden states in his account is the truth or mere figments of his imagination. The author, Ken Kesey, purposely wrote Bromden as the narrator for a specific purpose. He did not want the narrator of this novel to be similar to any conventional novel written before its time. There are many arguments on both sides, but Bromden’s narration both highlights and detracts from his reliability at the same time.