One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

McMurphy was idolized by certain people in the ward, making him a threat to Nurse Ratched. Throughout the novel, One who flew over the cuckoo's nest, there was several symbolic representations of religion. But, how does McMurphy become a Christ figure towards the patients in the ward? When McMurphy entered the ward, he created disruption in the Disturbed room; therefore, the patients would copy his disruptive behavior, by over throwing the Big Nurse. Although, Part one is the exposition of the novel, demonstrating the main characters, and setting of the novel.

The Big Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Milton from Office Space are similar in that they were both relatively quiet in the beginning of their respective stories, but eventually rebelled against the combine. Both characters started off as very quiet people, and became fed up with the unfair rules of the combine. These characters drastically changed their personalities from the beginning of the story and did things nobody would expect them to do as an act of rebellion against the combine.

The main purpose of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is undoubtedly successful when revealing the complexity of human nature. In the eyes of Chief Bromden, a half Native-American man who pretends to be deaf and dumb, he provides an unreliable narration revealing the true nature of the mental hospital. Chief Bromden's perspective enables us to see the corrupt nature of society through a metaphorical depiction of our world. Ken Kesey has not only allowed the reader to re-evaluate the social structure of the society we live in but he has also shown us that the sole cause of negativity in society is due to the normalcy of agency.

Analyse how the actions of a character influenced events or situations in the written text you have studied.

While Plath struggled with the “ardent feminist within her’’, she sought to “embrace the ideology of feminineness that had been indoctrinated into the women of her generation’’ leading to a “schizophrenic split within herself’’, a struggle not shared by McEwan and Kesey. Kesey described himself as ‘’comfortable with {his} identity and masculinity’’ as he understood he was "too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie’’ and so his experience with mental illness in association with insecurity about his gender came solely from his work in an asylum in his youth. Furthermore, McEwan comments that “people are divided by gender’’ and so are characters in “all novels” though he is “safe in understanding {his} place in society’’ . It is therefore evident that the writer’s perspectives on identity depend greatly on their gender, suggesting the two are intrinsically linked.

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962, was immediately a critical and popular success. Kesey establishes a first-person narrative through the eyes and mind of Chief Bromden, ironically a “deaf and dumb” (4) “six feet seven” indian, whom exposes the manipulative and corruptive inner workings of a ward in a state mental hospital in Oregon (22). According to Bromden, the inner workings of the ward are directly caused by “the Combine”, a term meaning a huge machine and metaphorically suggesting a kind of socio-economic conspiracy, which is slowly, but surely turning society into a dehumanized, un-individualistic culture and those who choose to rebel against this kind of conformity are locked away being classified as a criminal and/or insane. The ward is run by

Randall McMurphy is the loud, rebellious, and arrogant protagonist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy is sent to a mental institution from a prison work farm in hopes of having a more relaxed sentence. When he is there, the doctors try to determine if he is mentally ill, and he rebels against their controversial methods. While McMurphy shows most of the signs for Antisocial Personality Disorder, he does not show callousness, so he cannot be diagnosed with having Antisocial Personality Disorder.

"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is about a con named Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who fakes being insane and moves into a psychiatric hospital. He fakes his condition so he doesn’t have to go to jail. The only person stopping McMurphy from leaving the ward is Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who is determined to keep him in to cure him of his "illness". She did not really care about the patients and only cared about power. She insisted that everyone take their pills, which drugged them into submission. Ratched and McMurphy struggled for power over the ward. Later in the film, he meets a patient named Chief (Will Sampson), who is tall, quiet and deaf. McMurphy makes bets with the patients, who he calls the 'nuts', and cons them out of their money and cigarettes.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden is in a psychiatric ward which is ran by Nurse Ratched. Bromden also calls Nurse Ratched, Big Nurse. He is part Indian. He pretends to be deaf and dumb so he does not have to work. Due to pretending to be deaf, he hears everything that he is not suppose to hear. Nurse Ratched orders the black men in the ward to shave Bromden, which he hates. They give him medicine that makes him go to sleep so he will stop fighting the fact that he has to be shaved. When Bromden awakens, McMurphy arrives to the psychiatric ward and is in the day room. McMurphy mentally separates the day room from the Acutes, who are able to be cured, and the Chronics, who can not be cured. Bromden classifies himself as a chronic. Some of the Chronics at the hospital were Acutes when they arrived, but had brain surgery or excessive shock treatment. Nurse Ratched controls the ward with a schedule. During a meeting with the patients, Nurse Ratched talks about Harding’s relationship with his wife. As Nurse Ratched continues, McMurphy makes jokes and the nurse informs everyone of how McMurphy was arrested for statutory rape. He continues with stories about the 15-year-old girl. (Kesey, 1962).

In today's world we have immensely progressed in both technology and knowledge, increasing by the minute as we further our research of the unknown in our world. One of those mysteries is the human brain, how the human brain is capable of altering our reality and fantasies. Psychology has taken many forms throughout history in search for the answers to the mystery of the human brain, but we are still left with questions as to what leads to certain traumas and psychological behaviors. It took many years to get to where our new knowledge is and even then, psychologists are well aware that it is nowhere close to knowing all the answers to cure certain traumas. Yet it is still a relief to know how much things have changed for the better, removing all or most harmful strategies that were once believed to "cure" patients. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a movie that greatly reflects this idea and gives the perspective of what these techniques resembled and affected patients. This paper will thoroughly explain the abnormality of the situation and how instead of what was believed to cure patients actually backfired and made their experience all more traumatizing.

In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a story is told through the eyes of a large Columbian Indian who is a patient at a mental institution. His story explains all that has happened since he has been there. The key to his success is that no one seems to acknowledge his existence and would not hide secrets around him because he was thought to be deaf and dumb. He finds a way to learn everything that has happened, and he will eventually meet a revolutionary man who will change both his life and the ward forever. The story also has a very common theme involving the women within it. Kesey makes most of the women in the story manipulative and overbearing. Mrs. Bromden and Mrs. Bibbit are two examples of the women who have handicapped men in their lives. Comparing these two and what they did will give a better perspective on how Chief and Billy turned out the way they did. Through the power these women had over the men in their lives, it is clear to the audience now why Chief, his father, and Billy all turned out the way they did based upon the way they were belittled and manipulated by Mrs. Bromden and Mrs. Bibbit.

As a kid with autism, I understand what people who are looked upon as different have to go through. I understand that sometime society tries to make people who are different into something they consider as “Normal.” One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shows us what happened to some who did not quite fit in with society in the early 1970s. During this time period, many people who could be considered different were evaluated to have a mental illness. The movie points out to the public how difficult it is to determine who was considered crazy and what was done to these people. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest helped to change the mental health industry by exposing some of the problems within the institutions.

In today’s society we often do not take into consideration the severities of people with different conditions, especially mental illnesses. We also forget to recognize how privileged we are in terms of physical health, mental health, and the environments we live in.  The lack of regard for mental health issues is not new in society, this has been a recurrent problem for decades. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest  brings to light mental illness in the early sixties where psychological medicine was improving and the practice of  psychology was becoming more prominent and referred to by doctors.

While reading a novel, the main characters of the story are often the ones that stick out the most. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey highlights the thinking of people in the late 1950s and early 1960s through the characters he creates. Nurse Ratched, the controller and boss of the ward, symbolizes the different beliefs of women that circulated society at this time. During this time, women were joining the workforce but had to deal with getting paid less than men and losing their careers to men after the war ended. After World War II had ended in 1945, servicemen had come back and taken the jobs that women once held, causing them to be pushed back as housewives. However, during the late 1950’s, women were working to come back to work. Nurse Ratched is the perfect example of this, as she tries to maintain order amongst her staff and patients. As a main character, Nurse Ratched plays a significant role in revealing the assumptions and moral values about women and mental patients that were prevalent in this time period.

Throughout the Novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the source of power is used in many different forms and methods. Characteristics of a totalitarian government is shown, with their being a dictatorship on top of the patients. Ken Kesey shows how little power the patients have, also showing what the social circumstances were back then. The greatest conflict in the Novel is the conflict of power and manipulation, which are recurring themes throughout the novel. Though Nurse Ratched seems to be the dictator of the ward, ultimately, the patients start to detach from her control, becoming free at last.