Cuckoo's Nest Conformity

Through his efforts, he realized that in spite of his hatred of the Big Nurse, he would have to give in to her wishes for the situation to end up beneficial to his friends. McMurphy’s effort to help out the other patients-his closest friends- show how he is willing to risk everything and go against the system just to aid others. For instance, “McMurphy is protagonist and hero, and the viewer's sympathy is engaged by the character's roustabout charm and apparently sacrificial motive to "cure" the other patients of their respective ailments.” (Zubizarreta 1). Although Nurse Ratched has the power to strip McMurphy of who he is, he is willing to stand up for himself and others.

Merriam Webster defines conformity as- “action in accordance with some specified standard or authority”. As it is a type of influence that involves change in belief or behavior in order to fit into a group. Where in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, conformity is a matter of life or death. In the novel and in life, conformity is viewed as an easy way to shape into society's mold. Societal expectations are shaped by the so called “Combine” a mysterious and in the dark figure that is view as the puppeteer of the way society functions. In the Novel, Chief Bromden a long time patient at a psychiatric ward is the first to recognize the Combine and its powers. At the same time that this novel was written, the society of the 1950s was being challenged by a group known as the beat generation who wanted to reject and challenge the stringent norms that the majority deemed as appropriate and necessary. While many members of society supported the beliefs of conformity, in many ways the need for “societal-misfits” was vital to secure a community where all people would have a voice. While many did their best to challenge the Combine, in the end the Combine would prevail, but the ideas of those who spoke out would resonate with others. The Combine is an unstoppable force fueled by conformity, but Ken Kesey explains that the only way for progress in the novel (and society) is for a McMurphy type of character to challenge the Combine.

McMurphy walks to the Acute side, the ones whose illnesses are curable, and tries to strike a conversation with Harding, who is supposed to be the craziest man. Every man in the ward begins to ask the new patient many questions. Then Big Nurse comes to tell McMurphy that he needs to follow the rules and take a shower, but he refuses to listen. Miss Ratched is reminded of Mr. Taber, an intolerable ward manipulator, when she meets McMurphy. Bromden goes over the schedule he is forced to go through every day. Some mornings he hides to break the repetitive actions, but other days he finds it easier to move along with the routine like everyone else does. He compares it to being jerked around in a cartoon world. He too remembers how Taber was defiant before the Big Nurse put him through multiple shock treatments to control him. He now pays attention to what is happening around him, and he is in one of the nurse’s meetings. McMurphy makes the nurse agitated, so she brings up his charge of rape. He attempts to make the doctor laugh by saying he is an insane man. He succeeds, and then Doctor Spivey continues to tell him the theory of the Therapeutic

Nurse Ratched has an excellent keen ability of motivation. For example, Nurse Ratched uses her power as head nurse to ensure that McMurphy has Electroshock Therapy. Even though the narrator sees the unreasonable use of EST on McMurphy because he is another lazy person, Nurse Ratched exercises her power. It is unethical, but this type of decision making is seen to be wrong. This motivation characteristic encourages Bromden to suffocate McMurphy in the end of the novel.

With McMurphy’s continuous outburst or rebellion, Nurse Ratched sentenced him to receive Electroshock Therapy, the second worse punishment patients would receive for misbehaviour. Determined to put on a strong exterior “he insisted it wasn’t hurting him. He wouldn’t even take his capsules. But every time that loudspeaker called him to forgo breakfast and prepare to walk to Building One, the muscles in his jaw went taunt and his whole face drained of colour, looking thin and scared-” (Kesey 241). Enduring the excruciating experience of Electroshock therapy only heightened the image the other men upheld for McMurphy and contributed to his heroism. Through the fight with the black boys and his fight to stay strong through Electroshock Therapy, McMurphy’s determination was evident to the other patients of the ward.

During their time in the electro shock chamber McMurphy was not only able to continue “growing bigger” (Kesey 305) in the eyes of the patients, but Bromden was able to resist the fog that had been caused by the electro shock exposure so many times before and regain his individuality along with his sense of size again. By returning Bromden’s individuality to him and gravely injuring Ratched upon his return to the ward McMurphy had finally dealt a crippling blow to Ratched’s iron grip of control over the ward that he had been loosening since his arrival. For McMurphy’s attack he was turned into a vegetable, but adding insult to injury even in a severely weakened state McMurphy had i taken away Ratched’s biggest symbol of power over the ward in Bromden. Bromden was her symbol of power because for so long Ratched was able to control Bromden making a patient who towered over her physically feel small and powerless under the constant oppression of Ratched as she made him nothing more than a metaphorical slave through her tight control of the ward’s schedule. Now with no symbol of power the patients McMurphy risked so much helping took away both her control of the ward and their fear of her.

The film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, produced by Milos Forman, contains many similarities to the novel, however the differences are numerous to the extent that the story, written by Ken Kesey, is overlooked by anyone who only saw the film. Ken Kesey wrote the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, after experimenting with drugs and working on a psychiatric ward in 1960 and the novel was published in 1962. “Kesey became a night attendant on the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital psychiatric ward so that he could concentrate on his writing.” (Magill 1528) Kesey’s rebellious novel explores the world of mental patients struggling against authority and society through

In the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest there is a balance that everyone needs in the hospital. And that’s a balance of social control and that social control uses the four basic ways to maintain a controlled environment: status hierarchy, institutionalized, Adjustments, and depersonalization.

McMurphy acts as a mentor and teaches Bromden how to become more rebellious and express himself. With the help of McMurphy, Bromden also develops friendships with other patients at the ward, who all plot against one enemy, known as Nurse Ratched. Bromden describes Nurse Ratched as a woman whose “color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it can’t tell which” (4). Before, many patients do not attempt to go against Nurse Ratched because she controls the ward; she can send patients to get an electrical treatment if they are reluctant to listen. But now, all the patients in the ward unite with one another to fight and stand up against the ward’s policies.

All of us are constantly changing, often at the hand of our environment. Traces of our experiences, opinions, and circumstances are seen in anything we make or do, including our writing. Ken Kesey is the author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, and while writing this novel, he was affected by the environment he was in. This is very reflected in his writing. The time period he was living in, as well as his own personal experiences likely caused Ken Kesey to give true and upsetting information about the mental institutions and asylums of the time, and to either glorify or involve the use of drugs.

Throughout early 20th century, many Americans gained a feeling of superiority by being a part of the majority and by conforming to the customs and standards of the more powerful and wealthy majority, which happened to be the white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant people at the time. This conformist attitude that lasted throughout the mid-20th century not only had an effect on just the white majority; it also had an effect on minorities such as the African-American community and, as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko have illustrated, the conformist attitudes of the mid-20th century have even affected the Native Americans and not in a positive way, as both novels had negative attitudes towards conformity and both novels showed how Native American communities were affected in the early 20th century by the conformist trend.

In the 1960’s, one author, Kevin Kesey, tried to show the truth behind these institutions. That task alone is difficult, but Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest from the perspective of a

Don’t be a conformist. Don’t be common. Be an individual. Conformity, although prevalent in society past and present, is never the answer. As individuals, we were made to be unique. Our insight alone is greater than the elementary principles of the crowd. However, if we conform to societal beliefs, as many of the racists did in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Harper Lee), then what are we? Uneducated, crowd-pleasing citizens who won’t form our own values. The inability to form our own values causes everyone to cast the same vote. No one expresses different opinions, every white man downgrades African Americans, every male is “superior” to every female, and every child is of lesser value to adults. So, by being an individual, although one may be yelled

The answer is explicable. People who normally live in freezing temperatures develop something called brown fat cells which allow their bodies to convert any blood sugar that is delivered to them into heat. Therefore, our diabetic ancestors who lived through the Younger Dryas would have blood sugar levels high enough to be converted into heat that should help them sustain through the freezing temperatures. Some may ask how it can be taken for granted that people from nearly thirteen thousand years ago had high blood sugar levels given that there were numbers of people dying from starvation itself. However, in Survival of the Sickest, a seasonal blood test done on over a quarter million veterans evidently showed that naturally “blood sugar levels

When McMurphy finds out that he is one of two patients that are involuntarily committed to the hospital, it makes him realize that he alone is fighting for his freedom, and the others have been repressed by Ratched to the point of being afraid to rebel against her or simply leave. McMurphy fights until the end to free these men of their emasculation even if it