One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

Silence is not a factor of significance. A man who never speaks is not an insignificant one. Chief Bromden watches quietly, he knows all the ins and outs of his prison. He is easily the sanest and most knowledgeable patient in the ward. That is until McMurphy comes along and stirs everything up. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader hears Bromden’s thoughts and opinions of how terrible the ward and the people within it. The film adaptation directed by Milos Forman, Forman makes the choice to focus on the protagonist of the story, Randle McMurphy. Chief Bromden is hardly present in the film, thus leaving the true characterization of many main characters underdeveloped. It is difficult for the viewer to truly get a sense of significance for key events in the film if the narrator of the original story is cut out.

In this book written by Ken Kesey, the main character is a man named R.P. McMurphy who tricks people into thinking that he is a psychopath. To McMurphy, the asylum is a get out of jail free card, which quickly turns out to be something else entirely. However, one vital aspect of this book is the way in which it addresses and provides insight upon several contemporary issues relating to the American healthcare system, by illustrating the ways in which our modern healthcare system has improved and grown in the last five decades. This includes the following areas of healthcare: the need for a healthcare reform, the lack of healthy doctor-patient relationships, and the murky definition of mental illness.

"This world belongs to the strong, my friend...The rabbit accept its role on the Earth and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes frightened and elusive and dig holes and hides when the wolf about. It knows its place. It most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf"(Excerpt from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey). In the book Speak the author uses a bunny rabbit to symbolize how vulnerable Melinda is throughout the book and a wolf to symbolize how Andy is a grim beast in Melinda's eyes. Melinda uses a bunnyrabbit to describe how she feels whenever Andy encounters her. Andy is described like a wolf all throughout the book by

As one is experiencing a life of alienation and loneliness, they may being to act uncontrollable while rebelling against their surroundings, one loses themselves as they feel different than everyone present. Alienation can force an individual to spiral into an abyss of nothingness, nonetheless if one allows others to reach out and inspire than it is possible to break away from the alienation and loneliness. Chief Bromden from the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, is an Indian who was institutionalized for insanity and is considered a chronic in the ward as he is “too far gone” to be healed. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D Salinger is a lying, rebellious teenager sent away by his parents to a private school as they are unable to handle Holden’s behaviour. It is evident both experience alienation as their stories progress and actions taken, however the individuals present in their lives motivate changes in the outcomes of these dynamic characters.

1. Passage: “You are strapped to a table, shaped, ironically, like a cross, with a crown of electric sparks in place of thorns.” (Page 69)

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.

Does the use of power to control others truly work in an environment where there is no respect for authority? Throughout the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, power and control has been a main focus primarily on two characters, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy. Nurse Ratched tries to maintain power and control over the patients over the course of the story, and McMurphy made it his goal to undermine her authority and make her fold. Up until the very end, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy went head to head against each other, waiting to see who would give in first. McMurphy was the embodiment of pride and rebellion, while Nurse Ratched held up her own title of the boss and led the institution staying high and mighty until the very end.

“A success, they say, but I say he’s just another robot for the Combine and might be better off as a failure…”(17).

Kesey highlights two distinctions between the roles of women in his novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. He places women in two categories, the ‘Ballcutters’ and ‘Whores’ . The ‘Ballcutters’ are presented to have a dominant role over the men within the ‘Combine’ and challenges their masculinity, resulting in them being personified as machines. This is demonstrated when Bromden describes the ‘tip of each finger the same colour as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron’ of Nurse Ratched. Bromden compares the complexion of her fingers and lips with a metal iron, suggesting not only is she machine like, but also has the physical appearance of a metal machine. The ‘Whores’ are Candy and Sandy who are submissive and this stems from the introduction of the contraceptive pill, as ‘feminists encouraged sexual exploitation with multiple partners and claimed sexual pleasure as a woman’s right’, Thus, resulting into them being presented as sexual beings fulfilling the sexual appetite of men.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the climax occurs when Nurse Ratched, the antagonist, forces the men who return from the boating trip to shower, causing a violent melee that leads to the book’s resolution. McMurphy, one of the protagonists in the story, arranges a special boating trip to let the other men in the ward have a sense of happiness and independence. As Nurse Ratched discovers that the men interact with a prostitute, she furiously demands the men to cleanse their bodies. George expresses his disapproval of the nurse’s demand due to his phobia of cleanliness, and McMurphy and Chief Bromden physically fight the nurses as a part of their protest. In the end McMurphy and Chief Bromden relocate to the Disturbed Ward for their extreme behavior: “They kept talking like that, to cheer us up and make us feel better, about what a fight, what a victory—as the Big Nurse helped the aides from Disturbed adjust those soft leather cuffs to fit our arms” (234). The main theme of the novel, the overthrowing of authority comes to a close, and Nurse Ratched finally captures McMurphy, the man who encourages the rest of the patients to resist her oppression. This climatic scene contributes to the resolution: the weaker party, or the patients, win by proving their point of intolerance towards authority, yet Nurse Ratched remains the ultimate person in control. Shortly after the incident, Nurse Ratched metaphorically and literally sucks the life out of McMurphy with

Characters like Billy Bibbit, who is too timid, with a speech impediment and Harding who is a closet homosexual and was less avert in sexuality were seen as having mental problems, and were committed to the asylum. McMurphy demonstrated the treating of these patients like normal people, helped them to become more in line with society then Nurse Ratched’s rules and group therapy meetings, or pecking party as Chief Bromden would call it. Chief Bromden was a Native American and wasn’t insane until he was institutionalized and withdrew himself from everyone else pretending he was deaf and dumb to protect himself. Ken Kesey’s message here with Chief Bromdens silence, was to portray the natives of the time having no voice in the country and to show the controlling and manipulative manner of Nurse Ratched that emasculated and de-socialised these grown men.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, R.P. McMurphy is portrayed as an anti-hero, as he chose to live his mortal life the way he wanted to on his own terms, opposed to sticking by the rules of society. The excessive pride and self-confidence that McMurphy possessed, knowing that no one could stop him, lead to his eventual downfall, similar to the life of Achilles. At times it seemed as though McMurphy and Achilles were immortal, yet what made them human was the certainty that they would one day die. McMurphy was able to escape a Chinese prison and eventually break Nurse Ratched, and Achilles was one of the greatest warriors making them seem unstoppable, but in the end, they were both conquered by death, although both seemingly for a cause. Achilles

In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the lead protagonist, Randle McMurphy, changes over the course of the novel because of the characters that he meets and the effects they have on him. Originally, McMurphy was selfish, disrespectful, and inconsiderate, but then he forms closer bonds with the other characters and they change him and the way he views other people. The characters in the mental hospital struggle with conforming to the dictator in the ward, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy comes into the hospital as a way out of a prison sentence and tries to teach the patients that they need to stand up for themselves and do what they believe is right.

The author of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Keasey, received his inspiration for the book while volunteering at a veteran's hospital. This is where he was first introduced to LSD. The moment he tried it, he became addicted, and began experimenting on himself with the drugs, observing the effects. The novel deals with the tyrannical rule of head Nurse Ratched in a mental hospital somewhere in Oregon. She runs all business and daily life in the asylum to her every whim and rules the ward by fear and manipulation. This has gone on for as long as the narrator, Chief Bromden, can remember. However a new patient, Randle McMurphy, enters the hospital and begins to wreak havoc upon the system