The novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, occurred in an Ohio mental institution during the 1950s. During this time, there were improvements in trying to combat mental health. However, these treatments were later found to be extremely painful and unsuccessful. The way society attempted to combat mental illness in the 1960s was significantly different and more harmful to patients than it is in modern times, they used tortuous techniques combined with fear that created more damage to the patients which in turn forced them to stay in the institution. One treatment developed during the early to mid-1900s and mentioned in the novel was Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Electroconvulsive therapy was first developed in the 1930s due to scientists …show more content…
Most people prescribed electroconvulsive therapy were diagnosed with depressive disorder or schizophrenia (Payne). Although it is inconclusive whether or not this treatment was beneficial, most people feared it. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched used the fear of this treatment to keep the patients in line and gain power and control: “Ellis is a Chronic. He came in an Acute and got fouled up bad when they overloaded him in that filthy brain-murdering room that the black boys call the "Shock Shop." Now he's nailed against the wall in the same condition they lifted him off the table for the last time, in the same shape, arms out, palms cupped, with the same horror on his face (Kesey 16)”. Ellis, a chronic, is held up in a crucified position to show what happens if people do not listen. The novel uses these therapies as punishments for the patients. Nurse Ratched also used these “punishments” as threats to McMurphy, which ultimately didn’t work. “‘And, my friend, if you continue to demonstrate such hostile tendencies, such as telling people to go to hell, you get lined up to go to the Shock Shop, perhaps even on to greater things, an operation, an- (Kesey …show more content…
McMurphy was left bedridden and Chief decided it was better to kill McMurphy than let him live. “I lay there on top of the body for what seemed like days. Until the thrashing stopped. Until it was still a while and had shuddered once and was still again. Then I rolled off. I lifted the pillow, and in the moonlight I saw the expression had changed from the blank, dead-end look the least bit, even under suffocation (Kesey 323).” Ken Kesey’s novel portrayed the horrors that the early psychological interventions created. People in the mid-1900s did not try to help people with mental illness, they either gave them treatment that made them worse or dropped them off at a mental institution. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, most patients were not forced to be in the ward but were outcasted from society. Nurse Ratched used their low self-confidence to manipulate the patients to be fearful and unable to leave: “‘Tell me why. You gripe, you bitch for weeks on end about how you can't stand this place, can't stand the nurse or anything about her, and all the time you ain't committed. I can understand it with some of those old guys on the
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.
I chose the subject about “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” written by Ken Kesey in 1962 for my research paper because my mother told me years ago of the accompanying film and how interesting it is. Two years ago a friend of mine came back from his exchange programme in the United States of America. He told me that he and his theatre group there had performed this novel. He was and still is very enthusiastic about the theme and about the way it is written. Although I started reading the novel, I didn’t manage to finish it till the day we had to choose our subjects at school. When I saw this subject on the list, which we were given by our English teacher Mr Schäfer, I was interested immediately. So I chose it.
Some people are what you may call "normal", some are depressed, some are mentally ill, and some are just plain old crazy. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey, the author shows how people can act so differently and have different ways of dealing with their problems. The story is narrated by Chief Bromden who is thought to be deaf and dumb. He tells of a man by the name of R. P. McMurphy, who was a con man, and was convicted of statutory rape. He told the officials that, "she was 18 and very willing if you know what I mean."( ) He was sent to a work farm, where he would spend some time, working off his crime. Since he was so lazy, he faked being insane and was transferred to a mental ward, somewhere near Portland, Oregon. On his arrival he finds some of the other members of the asylum to be almost "normal" and so he tries to make changes to the ward; even though the changes he is trying to make are all at his own expense. As time goes on he gets some of the other inmates to realize that they aren't so crazy and this gets under the skin of the head nurse. Nurse Ratched (the head nurse) and McMurphy have battle upon battle against each other to show who is the stronger of the two. He does many things to get the other guys to leave the ward. First he sets up a fishing trip for some of them, then sets up a basketball team, along with many smaller problems and distractions. Finally Nurse Ratched gives him all he can handle and he attacks her.
The ancient Romans were the first to use electricity to treat disease several thousand years ago; however, “electrical medicine” has improved and has been utilized in the forms predating ECT in a relatively short amount of time. In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, doctors began to notice that giving people camphor could “cure lunacy” (Abrams, 2002). The doctors noticed that when administering camphor orally, it caused seizures, and upon waking up, were “in a rational state” (Abrams, 2002). In fact, in 1798, a German scientist reported that 80% of manic patients that were treated with camphor and had seizures, were cured (Abrams, 2002). As medical and technological advances occurred, so did the use of inducing a seizure to cure mental illness. In 1934, a scientist was able to bring a schizophrenic patient, who had been on a hunger strike and had not moved in four years, to recovery through a seizure that had been brought on by camphor (Abrams, 2002). And, “thus, convulsive therapy was born” (Abrams, 2002). By the end of the year, this scientist published results of the same action given to twenty-six schizophrenics, ten patients were cured, thirteen had no re...
In the cinematic classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest expresses the ideal that the inhibitory rights of freedom, sly manipulation, and misuse of power results in an oppressive authoritarian leader that misuses his/her own power in handling people. The setting is placed in between the 1950’s and 1960’s in an insane asylum. The film challenges the view of what exactly determines someone to be “insane” or “sane” the main character sheds light onto the subject by showing how relative sanity can actually be. An exceedingly reckless, yet diligent individual named, Randle McMurphy, stands up to the oppressive leader who is known as Nurse Ratched in a rebellion to her repressive ways to stir up some “fun” in the mental ward. McMurphy intends to bring some life back into the patients who have been dehumanized by Nurse Ratched. The shallow and pedantic view that Nurse Ratched illustrates is the idea that these men have to relinquish their state of individuality in order to become normalized in society. Unfortunately, Nurse Ratched misuses her power and forced McMurphy to go under a lobotomy which causes him to lose part of his brain by severing the prefrontal cortex and all of his whole-hearted spirit.
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 Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a lively con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rambunctious antics and sporadic bouts with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for themselves, to challenge conformity to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man R.P. McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy revitalizes the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's stranglehold on the ward, and, in a way, represents the feelings of the author on society at the time.
Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental hospital. The main character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to get out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of running the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out between reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures most influential stories. The dominant theme in this novel is that of conformity and it's pressure on today's society. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromden's mind a combine . To the Chief, the combine' depicts the conformist society of America, this is evident in one particular paragraph: This excerpt not only explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more poignantly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients are casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy represents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents nature and it's unregularity. Another key theme in Kesey's novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey proceeds to compare the male role to spontaneity, sexuality, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ...
Barbaric treatments for mental patients such as lobotomies and electric shock therapy were often used in mid-twentieth century psychiatric wards. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set in one of these wards, is a fictional novel about committed mental patient R. P. McMurphy and his power struggle with the emasculating Nurse Ratched. The mastermind behind this novel, Ken Kesey, was a prominent figure in American counter-culture who struggled with figures of power during his lifetime as well. Ken Kesey reflects his life in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in various ways including the setting and the hallucinogenic experiences he shares with the narrator.
In the 1960’s Ken Kesey, a student of the university of Oregon and Stanford University, became interested in alternative medicine and mental health after participating in a US Military psychedelic drug study. Kesey proceed to work for this same institution. For him it was important to take notes on the individuals in this ward, to draw them even! Kesey had an urge to get to know them, even to understand their story and this is precisely what lead him to his current perspective on society and the conformity which it expects of those who are a part of it. It is in this spirit which he wrote one flew over the Cuckoo’s nest and made a brilliant example of counter culture which to this day stands as a strong criticism to the way which mental health professions can become so corrupt and out of control.
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
The original use of electricity as a cure for “insanity” dates back to the beginning of the 16th century when electric fish were used to treat headaches. Electroconvulsive therapy on humans originates from research in the 1930’s into the effects of camphor-induced seizures in people with schizophrenia (Guttmacher, 1994). In 1938, two Italian researchers, Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, were the first to use an electric current to induce a seizure in a delusional, hallucinating, schizophrenic man. The man fully recovered after eleven treatments. This led to a rapid spread of the use of ECT as a way to induce therapeutic convulsions in the mentally ill. Lothar Kalinowsky, Renato Almansi, and Victor Gonda are further responsible in spreading ECT from Italy to North America (Endler, 1988). Although there is some confusion as to who exactly is credited for administering the first ECT in America, it is known that it occurred in the early 1940.
Several strides have been made in the medical field in regards to electroconvulsive therapy. The treatment is defined as “a medical procedure in which a brief electrical stimulus is used to induce a cerebral seizure under controlled conditions” (Enns, Reiss & Chan, 2010). It is used for a handful of mental illnesses, such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, but when it was introduced in 1938 by Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bin, its main use was to treat schizophrenia (Enns, Reiss & Chan, 2010). ECT can indeed be effective for schizophrenia, but the best results are when the “… duration of [the] illness is relatively brief or when catatonic or affective symptoms are prominent” (Enns, Reiss & Chan, 2010). Unlike schizophrenia, the best results from ECT have come from treatments with patients who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and alternative methods are no longer working...
"Milos Forman's 1975 masterwork, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, is a towering achievement in film storytelling; especially within the scope of mental health. Anchored by Jack Nicholson's riveting portrayal as Randle Patrick McMurphy, the film delves into the turbulent world of a mental institution, where rebellion and conformity collide with devastating consequences. It's a compelling examination of individualism, authority, and the thin border between sanity and madness. Inspired by Ken Kesey's novel, the story is brought to life by a diverse group of characters who embody different aspects of society. The hospital functions as a microcosm within the film, representing and examining larger societal concerns, including the challenges faced in asserting one's individuality and the criticism of authority
Societal influence can often lead one to the misconception of personal mental instability, this is evident in both two works by Ken Kesey and James Mangold. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey a charismatic criminal, Randle McMurphy is forcefully admitted to a state asylum despite his perfectly healthy mind. His minimal interaction with a supervising doctor reveals the complicated attitude the film takes towards mental illness. Throughout the film, the mental state of McMurphy continues to be questioned as he rebellion escalates with hospital authorities. Similarly, in a Girl, Interrupted directed by James Mangold, a conclusion is made upon Susanna Kaysen after she is interviewed for only 20 minutes. These 20 minutes resulted in her stay in a mental asylum for two years. She finds herself stuck between choosing the inside world or facing the reality on the outside. After facing numerous criticisms, both resources showcase a different point of view for readers. One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest