One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Insanity Analysis

When people witness someone with unusual behavior, they are often quick to surmise and diagnose the bane of his or her actions with one daunting condition - insanity. For example, a man who mutters to himself or hallucinates wild, imaginative scenarios is vulnerable to the harsh judgments of others. Bystanders immediately call him “insane” or “crazy”. However, how can one be so sure his behavior is truly insane or crazy? What are the criteria that claims abnormal people are abnormal and normal people are normal? In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey poses such questions. Kesey scrutinizes the thin line between insanity and sanity and challenges those who draw that line. Through his depiction of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest and their lively experiences in a mental facility, Kesey reevaluates the typical definition of sanity and reveals that maybe “crazy” people are not so crazy after all.
Throughout the novel, sanity and what it means to be sane is thoroughly explored and critiqued. According to Ken Kesey, sane people conform to society, never stepping an inch out of line or swimming against the current. “I could see the signs of what the Combine had accomplished...things like...a string of full-grown men in mirrored suits and machined hats,...five thousand houses punched out identical,...five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullovers…” (204). Sanity, symbolized by the long, meticulous array of men, houses, and children, means compliance to the strict rigidity of rules and regulations.
Within the hospital, the only people who are viewed as mentally stable are the authority figures, such as Nurse Ratched and Doctor Spivey. These characters, especially the nurse, are supposedly quintessential paragons of the orderly, systematic world outside the ward. “‘Miss Ratched is a veritable angel of mercy…She even further serves mankind on her weekends off by doing generous volunteer work around town’” (58). In order to achieve the secure status of sanity and acquire jurisdiction in the ward, Nurse Ratched and her staff have blended in and contributed to society. As the people in charge, they not only assert a domineering control over the patients, but also perceive them as inferior and incompetent. “She wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hair-like wires too small for anybody’s eye but mine; I see her sit her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants” (30). The staff decides whether one is sane or insane and makes those decisions into reality, thereby obtaining control over the patients.
In direct contrast to sanity, insanity is exhibited through anomalies in society or disturbances of the customary and compulsory codes of conduct. People who are regarded as maniacal fail to bend accordingly to fit the definitive etiquette of their surrounding world; they are often caught stepping out of line or swimming against the current, as Ken Kesey suggests. “‘A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside world, because you refused to face up to them, because you tried to circumvent them and avoid them”’(171). Prevalent in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, insanity is a constrictive label for the people who stand out and interfere with the general peace of the public.
In the mental institute, every single patient is presumed to be mentally unstable and is therefore defined by their insanity.

Each individual is subjected to hospital residency and treatment for behavior that is regarded as strange or unethical by society, be it immaturity, violence, promiscuity, hallucination, or even homosexuality. As an example, Randle McMurphy is admitted on the premise of psychopathology. His symptoms are excessive sexual activity and violence. “‘I got in a couple of hassles at the work farm...and the court ruled that I’m a psychopath...Now they tell me a psychopath’s a guy fights too much and fucks too much…” (Kelsey 19). Additional examples include Chief Bromden, who suffers from paranoia and hallucinations; the lifeguard, a former professional football player who deludes wild fantasies of his past career; Dale Harding, a homosexual; and Billy Bibbit, a man with the innocence and the mind of a young child. For all their drawbacks and flaws, McMurphy, Chief, Harding, Billy, and all of the patients become the cull of society and are forced into the hospital for

treatment.
Illustrating primary aspects of both sanity and insanity, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest unveils key insight about the two terms. The characters, their thoughts, and their actions suggest that most abnormal people are only abnormal because of normal people’s narrow-mindedness. “There’s something bigger making all this mess...It’s the whole Combine, the nation-wide Combine that’s the really big force” (165). Because society is woven by tidy, organized rules and, people who do what is expected are considered sane, and people who do not do so are considered insane. When people refuse to comply with expectations, society hastily and perfunctorily forces them into a mental institution until they adhere. “The ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhood and in the schools and in the churches...” (40). Only when people learn to obey social standards do they become safe enough to be let into the public again. Kesey thus proposes that society applies the term “insanity” to not only people with mental defects, but also people who go against the norm.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest questions the validity of how society determines whether one is insane or sane. Insanity must not be a label thrown around arbitrarily; sometimes, people considered crazy are actually sensible, and people considered sensible are crazy. In the novel, Chief is considered "deaf and dumb" (27) yet is still arguably one of the sanest characters. He is capable of critical analysis of his surroundings and feigns deafness for his own benefits. Also, although McMurphy is deemed a psychopath for his bold autonomy and tendency for violence, he is simply a rebel with a strong personality. On the contrary, Nurse Ratched is known as a venerable, sane saint, but she is actually a power-hungry maniac. She exercises complete dominance over the ward and finds pleasure in McMurphy's pain. Her carefully detailed characterization gives her a facade of saneness, but it is connoted that she is equally insane as her patients, if not even more so. "If somebody'd of come in and take a look, men watching a blank TV, a 50 year old woman hollering...about discipline and order and recriminations, they'd of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons" (128). Exemplifying the nurse's madness and the patients' normality, the novel implies that society often misconstrues the sanity of a person.
In Ken Kesey’s eyes, the people who are accused of insanity deserve some sympathy. Kesey sheds light on the patients’ surprisingly relatable actions or thoughts. For example, they are shown as ordinary people when they gamble, play basketball, and socialize. Kesey also redirects the negativity that would typically face them towards the sane and authoritative characters. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a Machiavellian dictator, the aides are obnoxious and spiteful, and the Public Relations man is fat, bald, and superficial. For once, readers envision life from a new, different perspective - as a mental patient, where everyone is belittling them, abusing them, and telling them they are insane until they genuinely believe it and turn crazy. “There are some of us Chronics that the staff made a couple of mistakes on years back, some of us who were Acutes when we came in, and got changed over” (19). Kesey sides and empathizes with the misunderstood "lunatics" of society. He wants readers to see the inner, human side of them and not just the odd, unusual side that everyone points out and condemns.
According to Kesey, the therapy offered by hospitals to cure patients is detrimental.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the patients of the mental ward assemble a group meeting every week, which supposedly fosters social skills. "The group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place...Any little gripe...should be brought up before the group and discussed..." (48). Instead, the gatherings focus on the peer criticism of fellow patients. "They've been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends like he was a criminal..." (54). This therapy is only effective in lowering the patients' self-esteems and making them feel more insane. Kesey suggests that humor, however, is a more powerful healing. Laughter, brought to the ward by McMurphy, mitigates the painful reality faced by the characters. "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" (213). By the end, a "howl of laughter" resonates the halls, an unequivocal sign that the patients have opened up and that laughter is a more effective therapy than meetings

(263).
With Chief's tale of the mental hospital, Ken Kesey thoroughly investigates the criteria that define sanity and insanity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He concludes that society and its rules ultimately dictate a person's sanity. To be sane, one must follow the crowd; to be insane, one must deviate from the crowd. The term "insanity", however, is often too loose and arbitrary. Some abnormal people, like McMurphy, are in truth perfectly normal. Likewise, some normal people, like Nurse Ratched, are secretively abnormal. It is evident that Kasey sympathizes with people who are viewed as mentally ill, and he believes laughter is the best medicine for them. The thin line between sanity and insanity should be challenged and erased for everyone is both sane and insane in their own individual ways and misjudgments occur too often.