One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
“... one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”
•Children’s folk rhyme
The book starts out with Chief being terrified of the African-American assistants. Although he is scared of the assistants Chief is much more fearful of Nurse Ratched, the woman in power. Into the book, Randle McMurphy is brought into the ward. McMurphy is seen as a leader of the ward by the other patients until he decides to slow down a bit with the rebellion against Nurse Ratched. This does not last long; soon after McMurphy stops rebelling, he breaks a window to obtain cigarettes. Later on, the patients go on a fishing trip with Dr. Spivey and a prostitute that goes by the name of Candy Starr. McMurphy is
…show more content…
now seen as a hero to the ward, and Chief confesses he is able to speak to the other people in the ward. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey uses symbolism, imagery, and character foils to develop a larger meaning throughout the text. Kesey's use of symbolism, such as the fog machine, is used to suggest something bigger about society.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the fog symbolized how polluted our society has become and how it enables us to be able to see what is actually happening and what is wrong with it. In the book, the fog is referring to the fact that the patients are constantly on medications that put them in a ‘fog.’ This state of fog is a key idea in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because it keeps the patient from defying the orders Nurse Ratched gives them. This ‘fog’ also makes it so that the patients do not worry about their surroundings; which will keep them satisfied with their lives. The patients are also very content with being under this …show more content…
fog. In my eyes, the fog is symbolically lifted when the patients of the ward go on the fishing trip and come back with a new form of their own new identity. Kesey uses the element of imagery to further his idea of symbolism that is presented throughout the book.
Going back to the idea of the fog that was presented in the preceding paragraph; Kesey used the idea of fog to make you relate to how the patients in the ward feel. “When the fog clears to where I can see, I'm sitting in the day room. They didn't take me to the Shock Shop this time. I remember they took me out of the shaving room and locked me in Seclusion. I don't remember if I got breakfast or not. Probably not. I can call to mind some mornings locked in Seclusion the black boys keep bringing seconds of everything—supposed to be for me, but they eat it instead—till all three of them get breakfast while I lie there on that pee-stinking mattress, watching them wipe up egg with toast. I can smell the grease and hear them chew the toast. Other mornings they bring me cold mush and force me to eat it without it even being salted” (Kesey
8). Kesey uses McMurphy and Nurse Ratched as character foils to complete the plot of the book. These two characters can be seen as character foils because Nurse Ratched is a very power hungry person as if she is competing to be the most powerful person in the institution. Whereas Mcmurphy is the hero, he stimulates the other men in the ward to be individuals and to defy Nurse Ratched. When McMurphy comes into the ward, Nurse Ratched brings out his hatred towards authority figures, which in turn brings out Nurse Ratched's need of power even more. In retrospect, Kesey uses symbolism and imagery together to effectively convey the problems with today's society and relate it to everyday life. The reason that this combination of literary elements works so well together for Kesey is because he used his Imagery to fully support the symbolism he presented to the readers.
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.
After the introduction by the Chief, the story proceeds to a normal morning at the ward. The patients are sitting in the Day Room after their morning pills. Then a new patient, Randall McMurphy, checks in. McMurphy was a big redheaded man who loved to gamble and got transferred to the ward from a work farm. From the beginning, McMurphy had been hard to control. He refused any of the traditional check in routines that any new patient needed to follow including taking his admission shower. The Black Boys, the orderlies of the ward, went to get Nurse Ratched in attempt to put McMurphy in line.
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...
Power and control are the central ideas of Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are examples of physical, authoritative and mechanical power in the novel, as well as cases of self-control, and control over others. Nurse Ratched is the ultimate example of authoritative power and control over others but R.P. McMurphy refuses to acknowledge the Nurse’s power, and encourages others to challenge the status quo. The other patients begin powerless, but with McMurphy’s help, learn to control their own lives. Many symbols are also used to represent power and control in the book, such as the ‘Combine’, ‘fog’, and the imagery of machines.
Ken Kesey incorporates figurative language into his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, to illustrate the struggle to overcome the comfort of inaction, that ultimately results in the great benefit of standing up for one’s self. When McMurphy decides to stand up to Nurse Ratched, there is “no fog” (130). Kesey’s metaphor of the fog represents the haze of inaction that hovers over the patients of the ward. With the oppressive Nurse Ratched in charge, the patients are not able to stand up for themselves and are forced to be “sly” to avoid her vicious punishments (166). When the patients avoid confrontation with the Nurse, they are guaranteed safety by hiding in the fog, complaisant with their standing. The fog obscures the patient’s view of the ward and the farther they slip into it, the farther away they drift from reality.
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.
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.
Throughout the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief Bromden is stuck in the “fog” living in his past memories. Bromden views Nurse Ratched as the time keeper, able to speed up or slow down the clock in turn making time unbearable at times. The only escape he has is the “fog” where time does not exist (Kesey 75). These hallucinations of the fog have Bromden believe that the other patients are lost in the fog as well. These thoughts are delusional of Bromden; however, metaphorically they hold true. Nurse Ratched maintains a status quo that tends to dilute the patients senses and her routine makes the time seem to go by too fast or too slow. These situations are the reason Bromden uses the fog to escape; it provides him a haven and often times a happy place where he reminisces of the times he spent with his father. Although the fog helps Bromden escape it also sometimes brings back memories of the war and the sounds he heard when he was under attack. There’s a similarity between the enemies of war and Nurse Ratched in which he feels he can’t be harmed when he’s hiding in the fog.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey presents a situation which is a small scale and exaggerated model of modern society and its suppressive qualities. The story deals with the inmates of a psychiatric ward who are all under the control of Nurse Ratched, ‘Big Nurse’, whose name itself signifies the oppressive nature of her authority. She rules with an iron fist so that the ward can function smoothly in order to achieve the rehabilitation of patients with a variety of mental illnesses. Big Nurse is presented to the reader through the eyes of the Chief, the story’s narrator, and much of her control is represented through the Chief’s hallucinations. One of these most recurring elements is the fog, a metaphorical haze keeping the patients befuddled and controlled “The fog: then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everyone else” (Kesey 69). Another element of her control is the wires, though the Chief only brings this u...
Tradition, Honour, Discipline, Excellence; are the four pillars that are apparent in Dead Poets Society, Weir uses this symbol alongside the symbol of uniform to show how the students at Welton Academy are subject to conform to these rules. Similarly, in OFOTCN Kesey uses the fog that constantly surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward. Chief claims it is ‘made’ by Nurse Ratched. Because we know that Chief is schizophrenic and sees this that are not literally there, we recognize that the fog may be medically induced and is a fog of the mind rather than a literal fog. It keeps the patients from rising up in rebellion against Nurse Ratched but is also keeps them satisfied with their lives and prevent them ever thinking for themselves. The way Nurse Ratched controls the patients of her ward is very similar to the way Principle Nolan controls his students. Weir and Kesey use these characters and these symbols as tools or techniques to illustrate the difficulty around the struggle for independence. The uniform, pillars, and the fog are all symbols that help them live in that way but they prevents them from ever trying to improve their situations. As Chief says, “the men hide behind the fog because it is comfortable.” Weir and Kesey are using the symbols as a technique to explain the idea that you can live comfortably when dependent
Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a story about a band of patients in a mental ward who struggle to find their identity and get away from the wretched Nurse. As audiences read about the tale, many common events and items seen throughout the story actually represent symbols for the bigger themes of the story. Symbols like the fishing trip, Nurse, and electroshock therapy all emphasize the bigger themes of the story.
Ken Kesey the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues that plague the characters in his novel. Carl Jung disciple of Sigmund Fraud created “The Collective Unconscious” his theory based on how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present and even those that one is born with. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have mental issues from schizophrenia to repressed memories that are causing insanity. The nurses are seen as tyrants and actually worsens health of the patients turning some from acutes to chronics (incurable), while the patients are limited by their initial conditions or their developing conditions
The novel, which takes place in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, centers around the conflict between manipulative Nurse Ratched and her patients. Randle McMurphy, a transfer from Pendleton Work Farm, becomes a champion for the men’s cause as he sets out to overthrow the dictator-like nurse. Initially, the reader may doubt the economic implications of the novel. Yet, if one looks closer at the numerous textual references to power, production, and profit, he or she will begin to interpret Cuckoo’s Nest in a
As a result, McMurphy gains momentum and support from the other patients due to his courage, moving Chief to feel a rush of hope for himself as he often fears the fact of getting lost in the fog or in other words he has been given the key to repeal the Big Nurse “dictatorship” and feel that he has a say once again. Furthermore, after McMurphy lost the first voting for the World Series he one again brought it up in another meeting, however this time he got the majority after he stimulated Chief to raise his hand and the reasoning that “McMurphy did something to it...can’t stop it” as he got the confidence he has previously lacked and that last push from McMurphy to get him out of the fog and the rage of the Big Nurse as the other patients joined his