For as much as the human race seeks to learn, the same lessons seem to be taught over and over again. Recurring elements fill key voids within society and the things that society creates, specifically art. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one such literary work. On a surface level, Kesey’s work recaptures the classic outlaw tale in a mid 20th century mental institutional as the setting, but draws from literary canon to complete the tale. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest weaves the rebel hero, the initiates, and the perverse mother figure to direct its narrative. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focuses on its, in many ways, unorthodox protagonist. Randle McMurphy epitomizes the concept of the rebel hero. The novel begins with McMurphy conning his way into the mental hospital in hopes that life there will seem equivocal to luxury when compared with the work farm he previously called home, “What happened, you see, was I got in a couple of hassles at the work farm, to tell the pure truth, and the court ruled that I’m a psychopath. And do you think I’m gonna argue with the …show more content…
court?” Upon his arrival, however he becomes aware of the chokingly tight ship run by Nurse Ratched, including with the restrictions on toothpaste as he sarcastically quips, “And, lordy, can you imagine? Teeth bein’ brushed at six-thirty, sixtwenty - who can tell? maybe even six o’clock. Yeah, I can see your point.” This experience begins to turn the initially self-absorbed McMurphy towards a path of hedonistic selflessness. Over time, he erodes the supports the hold up the ironclad machine, leading his fellow patients to remember what life is like when it is thoroughly enjoyed. He has his flaws, and he is not the kind of person one should look to as a role model, but McMurphy does admirable enough work to be considered heroic. Following McMurphy are his disciples, the patients. A hospital cannot be complete without those it espouses to help, though the novel makes it clear that Nurse Ratched is more Hannibal Lecter (the latter’s cannibalism excluded) than Gregory House. The mistreatment the patients receive makes them receptive to his teachings. One of the first instances of this is when Charlie Cheswick begins to publicly question Nurse Ratched’s rationing of cigarettes, “Then what about our cigarettes, Miss Ratched?” The challenges of the patients usually get dismissed, but they have a culminating effect, similar to withdrawn questions in a courtroom. When the denouement of the novel happens, the ending does not seem surprising if all the previous foreshadowing is taken into account. These initiates coalesces to form one, loud strong opposition to the rigid system. The mother figure is one of literature’s most ubiquitous tropes, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest turns that concept on its head.
Nurse Ratched fills that role, but only in the most wicked and cruel manner imaginable. The “mother and child” dynamic is taken to extremes as the Nurse belittles grown men into acting like five year-olds. For example, every group meeting leads the chosen target to be ridiculed for their problems instead of them solved, including McMurphy’s first experience with the therapeutic meetings. Though she encourages other patients to tear into their colleagues, she in effect is doing it herself as McMurphy surmises, “Is this the usual pro-cedure for these Group Ther’py shindigs? Bunch of chickens at a peckin’ party?” As she encourages them of their impotence and feebleness, she reasserts her dominance both as the one in charge and as the mother figure of the
story. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest draws on many literary elements to construct is plot, notwithstanding those of the rebel hero, initiates, and mother figure. These archetypes draw outlines for the novel to follow and etch it into history as another great construct of literature, taking facets of the past and reimagining them for now and into the future.
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.
Kesey through changing the structure of power in a society showed the similarity between the oppressed and the oppressor. This was a demonstration of the corruption of power, and a push back to the era. It symbolized an era of radical thinking of changing the power structure, but he advocated making all equal. In addition it exemplified the communist views of the era and the oppressive regime of those with absolute control. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest advocates the quest for equality in a time where disparity in power was great.
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 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
During the first therapy meeting that McMurphy attends, Nurse Ratched begins by examining Harding's difficulties with his wife. McMurphy tells that he was arrested for statutory rape, although he thought that the girl was of legal age, and Dr. Spivey, the main doctor for the ward, questions whether McMurphy is feigning insanity to get out of doing hard labor at the work farm. After the meeting, McMurphy confronts Harding on the way that the meetings are run. He compares it to a 'pecking-party' in which each of the patients turn on each other. Harding pretends to defend Nurse Ratched, but then admits that all of the patients and even Dr. Spivey are afraid of Nurse Ratched. He tells McMurphy that the patients are rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need Nurse Ratched to show them their place. McMurphy then bets him that he can get Nurse Ratched to crack within a week.
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
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.
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
Throughout the novel ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ written by Ken Kesey, and the poem ‘Advice to Young Ladies’ crafted by A.D. Hope, there is evidence to suggest that the discourses represented by the characters in the novel and poem unveil the ways discourses of conformity underpin the characters’ actions, perceptions and motives, as well as inviting and silencing beliefs, attitudes and values. The author and poet are able to strongly convey their beliefs to the reader from their personal experiences. The four dominant discourses that both the novel and poem share and represents: conformity, sexuality and religious. These will be analysed and compared.
Author Ken Kesey effectively reflects the social climate of the 1960s in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By creating a fictitious mental institution, he creates an accurate and eye-opening mirror image of repressive modern day society. While its’ both a microcosm and exaggeration of modern day society, Kesey stresses society’s obsession with conformity, while demonstrating that those individuals who reject societal pressure and conformity are simply deemed insane. However, Kesey infuses the power of the individual in his portrayal of the charismatic outlaw Randall McMurphy, and proves that it only takes one to defeat the restrictions of a repressive society.
...sage against conformity, it is only fitting that this novel’s significance be challenged. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest strikes a balance between amusing and admonishing examples creates its indisputable literary merit. Ken Kesey’s commentary on the perception of insanity is not only a story, but also a symbol for the beauty in being unconventional.
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.
Throughout the sixties , America- involved in the Cold War at this time- suffered from extreme fear of communism. This caused numerous severe changes in society ranging from corrupt political oppression, to the twisted treatment of the minority. Published in 1962, Ken Kesey ’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , manages to capture these changes in the variety of ways. Kesey’s novel incorporates some of the main issues that affected the United States during the early and mid 60s. The government had no limits and was cruel to those who did not fit into society, including the mentally ill. The wrongful treatment of the people caused an eruption of rebellion and protest- thus the Beatnik era was born. The novel, written during this movement, sheds light on Kesey’s personal opinion on this chaotic period in US history . The treatment of mentally ill patients, the oppressive government, and uprising in the 1960s inspired Kesey while writing his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1996. Print. Viking Critical Library.
“That she even further services mankind on her weekends off by doing generous volunteer work about town. Preparing a rich array of charity” (pg.61). When McMurphy was put in the ward he made everyone realize that Nurse Ratched was more interested in control and punishment than therapy. “We are victims of a matriarchy here, my friend, and the doctor is just as helpless against it as we are. He knows that all Ratched has to do is pick up that phone you see sitting at her elbow and call the supervisor” (pg.63). In Nurse Ratched's case power/control is what fills her void. She doesn’t need love or meaning in her life she just needs