Theme Of Laughter In One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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Sean O’Casey once said that, “Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” Without laughing, man is not living fully. For the men in the novel, One Who Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, they are in a mental institution and are repressed by their head nurse until a new patient, McMurphy, comes in laughing an changing the way everything is ran, turning the insane sane. In the novel, laughter is a symbol of sanity and it helps a person grow stronger, so when the men laugh they grow more confident and obtain the ability to overcome the Nurses’ power. In the beginning of the novel, the men are experiencing laughter for the first time, setting them off guard, and it already starts to make an impact on them. When the men are in the day room waiting for the new patient to arrive, they are shocked to see R.P. McMurphy walk in laughing and having a good time. Then men were taken back a few steps and once McMurphy got acquainted with them they started talking about the Big Nurse and how she runs the ward like a pecking party. McMurphy listens and takes note that every man on the ward is scared and Cheswick says that he is not, however McMurphy responds by saying, “But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door. Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing” (70). McMurphy is arguably the most sane person on the ward, and by laughing and joking around it reminds Chief of how good it would feel and how much happier a person would be if they laughed every once and a while. What McMurphy is saying is that when a person is not laughing, they are n... ... middle of paper ... ...she could no longer take it. When the men found laughter, they healed and began to live their life to the fullest no longer allowing the Nurse to get in the way. They have been set free and no longer believe that the combine is out to get them and they no longer let the nurse bring them down. In the end, laughter is proven as the best medicine by what it has done for the men on the ward; they have grown stronger and more confident, finally overtaking the Nurse for good. In the beginning they were weak and willing to do anything the Nurse told them to do, and even though laughter on the ward set them off guard, it made and impact on them immediately. Laughing for the men shows that they are sane and allow them to be happy. For as Sean O’ Casey said, laughter makes life worth living, and for the men, laughter made them stronger and allowed them to finally be free.

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