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Literary elements of one flying over the cuckoo's nest
Analysis of one flew over the cuckoo nest
Literature as a reflection in society
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey The novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was written by Ken Kesey. The novel takes place in a mental institute. McMurphy is a man who tries to escape a work farm (prison) by saying he is not "straight in the head". McMurphy is sent to this mental institute to be examined. Here, McMurphy is the hero who sacrifice himself in order to teach others, the patients, to take control of there own lives. McMurphy is the good guy and Miss Ratched(or Big Nurse) is the bad guy. McMurphy influences the people of the ward to stick up for themselves. He does this by bringing women into their lives, and showing them how to be men and to act with confidence by sticking up for themselves. The movie portrays similar influences, but there are differences between the book and movie. The book is told through a (crazy)man named Chief Bromden who is also in this mental institute. He relays a story about life in a mental institute. Chief explains the severity and grouping of the different types of crazy people as well as who and how the institute is run. Mainly though, the story is about a new arrival to the institution, McMurphy. In the beginning, Chief Bromden talks about acutes and chronics. Acutes and chronics are types of mental illness. Acutes are people that have minor problems. They are basically normal people with a few screws loose. Chronics or "vegetables" are extremely messed up. Half of the chronics can't walk, eat, bath, think, or go to the bathroom by themselves. The other half are in their own world, talking and seeing things that aren't there. McMurphy comes to the institute and is questioned why he belongs there. He knows he doesn't belong, but he insists that he do... ... middle of paper ... ...show that McMurphy is the hero. McMurphy's battles with the Big Nurse taught others to take charge of their lives. Through his death McMurphy left a legacy in the independent actions of the patients especially Chief Bromden. McMurphy was the goose that flew over the cuckoo's nest and taught the cuckoos to fly. Bibliography: Horton, Andrew S. "Journal of Popular Culture" Detroit Michigan: Gale Research Co. 1976 clc vol 6 p 278 Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest New York: The Viking Press, 1962 Martin, Terence. Contemporary Literary Criticism vol 11 Indiana: Fiction studies, 1973 Moyahan, Julian. Contemporary Literary Criticism vol 16 New York: Saturday Review, 1964 Sullivan, Ruth. Big Mama Big Papa and Little Son in One Flew Over.... Detroit Michigan: Gale Research Co. 1976 clc vol 6 p 279
Randle McMurphy is in a constant battle within himself, he is portrayed as a sociopath. He does not base his actions off of whether they will affect those around him, instead does as he pleases. His actions are based off of what is best for himself. McMurphy was first introduced as a savior to the ward, He soon uses the patients for his own benefit, the patients look up to him as one of their new proclaimed leader. McMurphy inspires hope into them and make them want to stand up for themselves. This give
From the moment McMurphy enters the ward it is clear to all that he is different and hard to control. He’s seen as a figure the rest of the patients can look up to and he raises their hopes in taking back power from the big nurse. The other patients identify McMurphy as a leader when he first stands up to the nurse at her group therapy, saying that she has manipulated them all to become “a bunch of chickens at a pecking party”(Kesey 55). He tells the patients that they do not have to listen to Nurse Ratched and he confronts her tactics and motives. The patients see him as a leader at this point, but McMurphy does not see the need for him to be leading alone. McMurphy is a strong willed and opinionated man, so when he arrives at the ward he fails to comprehend why the men live in fear, until Harding explains it to him by
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story of Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a mental institution, and the way her patients respond to her harsh treatment. The story is told from the perspective of a large, Native-American patient named Bromden; he immediately introduces Randle McMurphy, a recently admitted patient, who is disturbed by the controlling and abusive way Ratched runs her ward. Through these feelings, McMurphy makes it his goal to undermine Ratched’s authority, while convincing the other patients to do the same. McMurphy becomes a symbol of rebellion through talking behind Ratched’s back, illegally playing cards, calling for votes, and leaving the ward for a fishing trip. His shenanigans cause his identity to be completely stolen through a lobotomy that puts him in a vegetative state. Bromden sees McMurphy in this condition and decides that the patients need to remember him as a symbol of individuality, not as a husk of a man destroyed by the
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...
Imagine being stuck in a mental hospital for twenty years where everyone thinks you are deaf and mute. This is what happened to Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Chief Bromden, or Chief, has lived in a mental hospital for over twenty years. He was admitted to the hospital after serving in the Second World War. He is a six-foot seven-inch tall schizophrenic Indian who has convinced the whole ward that he is deaf and mute, and he is the narrator of the story. He is not a very reliable narrator due to his schizophrenia, so some of the events are distorted. Throughout the story, Chief Bromden is reminded of events from his childhood, which reveal little bits and pieces about his character and his uncommon past. The ward he is on is controlled by the Big Nurse, who has emasculated everyone and has complete control over everything and everyone there. She requires everything to be done her way and like clockwork. That all changes when Randle Patrick McMurphy arrives. McMurphy, mandated to the mental hospital by the courts, starts challenging the rules made by the Big Nurse as soon as he arrives, to help improve the lives of all of the patients on the ward. McMurphy also takes some of the patients on wacky adventures. For example, he convinces the Big Nurse to let him and a few other patients go on a fishing trip with his aunt. Except, instead of his aunt, he hires a prostitute to take them in her place. He also starts a basketball league with all of the patients as a way to exercise, but that ends after the basketball breaks through the Big Nurse’s window multiple times. The patients are divided into two groups: the chronics, who have no hope of being cured, and the acutes, who are not nearly a...
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
McMurphy’s resistance against Nurse Ratched begins to awaken Bromden’s own ability to resist the grip of the nurse. Bromden slowly starts to see that he is an individual that possesses his own free will; in turn the fog begins to fade. Through Clarisse’s love of nature she begins to open Montag up to a world outside conformity. She see’s that Montag is not like everyone else and that he has the potential to become a free thinking individual. Clarisse is able to force Montag to confront his deeper issues with reality eventually making him realize his own potential.
Unable to see McMurphy imprisoned in a body that will go on living (under Nurse Ratched’s control) even though his spirit is gone, Chief smothers him to death that night. Then he escapes the hospital and leaves for Canada and a new life. We begin to see the different situations in which the patients struggle to overcome. Whether insane or not, the hospital is undeniably in control of the fates of its
When norms of society are unfair and seem set in stone, rebellion is bound to occur, ultimately bringing about change in the community. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest demonstrates the conflict of individuals who have to survive in an environment where they are pressured to cooperate. The hospital's atmosphere suppresses the patients' individuality through authority figures that mold the patients into their visions of perfection. The ward staff's ability to overpower the patients' free will is not questioned until a man named Randal McMurphy is committed to the mental institute. He rebels against what he perceives as a rigid, dehumanizing, and uncompassionate environment. His exposure of the flaws in the hospital's perfunctory rituals permits the other patients to form opinions and consequently their personalities surface. The patient's new behavior clashes with the medical personnel's main goal-to turn them into 'perfect' robots, creating havoc on the ward.
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
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
McMurphy is an individual who is challenging and rebelling against the system's rules and practices. He eventually teaches this practice of rebellion to the other patients who begin to realize that their lives are being controlled unfairly by the mental institution. When McMurphy first arrives at the institution, all of the other patients are afraid to express their thoughts to the Big Nurse. They are afraid to exercise their thoughts freely, and they believe that the Big Nurse will punish them if they question her authority. One patient, Harding, says, "All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees...We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place" (Kesey 62).
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution. As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior.
An exceptionally tall, Native American, Chief Bromden, trapped in the Oregon psychiatric ward, suffers from the psychological condition of paranoid schizophrenia. This fictional character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest struggles with extreme mental illness, but he also falls victim to the choking grasp of society, which worsens Bromden’s condition. Paranoid schizophrenia is a rare mental illness that leads to heavy delusions and hallucinations among other, less serious, symptoms. Through the love and compassion that Bromden’s inmate, Randle Patrick McMurphy, gives Chief Bromden, he is able to briefly overcome paranoid schizophrenia and escape the dehumanizing psychiatric ward that he is held prisoner in.
Even though McMurphy's own sacrifice of life is the price of his victory, he still attempts to push the ward patients to hold thier own personal opinions and fight for what is ethically right. For instinace, McMurphy states, "But I tried though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell id that much, now didn't I?" McMurphy strains to bring the 'fellas' courage and determination in a place full of inadequacy and "perfection." McMurphy obtains a lot of courage in maintaining his own sort of personal integrity, and trying to keep the guys' intergrity and optimistic hope up.