...In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Randle McMurphy struggles to free himself under the dominating power of Nurse Ratched. The power struggle between the two demonstrates the need for free will. When McMurphy enters the halls of the mental ward in Oregon, he finds a group of men beaten into obedience by the head nurse of the ward. Nurse Ratched’s power over the patients extends beyond their actions into their minds. She controls their every second from where they have to be at eight o’clock in the morning to what their beliefs are. McMurphy disrupts this routine by openly disregarding the rules that Nurse Ratched placed. Throughout the novel, McMurphy continuously attempts to eliminate Nurse Ratched’s power in the ward. The first thing that McMurphy does when he is placed in the ward is to introduce himself to every patient. This unusual behavior allows McMurphy to gain the trust of the other men. McMurphy helps to unite the men and works to become the leader. Through this turn of events, readers see the power struggle between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy begin. Nurse Ratched retains her power by hiding her...
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...The Fog in Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, symbolises PTSD and other trauma that has caused Chief Bromden to be put into the ward. The fog makes it so he can escape from the real world, but it also suffocates him and frightens him. As the fog dissipates, it symbolises how his emotions changed throughout the novel, making him a stronger person both physically and mentally. Throughout the novel Chief Bromden feels as though he is falling into a fog, that he is convinced is being pumped into the ward. Progressively getting lighter and lighter until it does not affect Bromden anymore, Kesey used the idea of the fog to represent the change bromden experiences in the entirety of the novel. With its many symbolic uses during the novel the fog can be seen as many different things both supporting and keeping bromden away from his goals. In the novel, Kesey points to the fact that Chief Bromden was a soldier in World War II, and during his time in battle, they used fog to hide the troops when they were under attack or surveillance by the enemy, this memory is instilled in Chief’s mind, causing him to fall back into the fog whenever he feels frightened or violated. The fog is not truly there, although, he has come to believe...
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...In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey, Randle McMurphy’s sanity is up for debate but it is clear that he has an antisocial personality disorder that attributes to his strange and curious actions he takes throughout the entire book...
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...Jazmariliz Perez ENL 336-01 6 November 2015 When reading a novel it is important to notice how the author chooses to have their characters stand out as their own kind of people. In Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” the characters all have their own way of expressing why they act the way they do. One character that stood out the most was of course the narrator and long-term patient in a psychiatric ward, Chief Bromden. In J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” the narrator and young teen Holden Caulfield is also someone who sticks out to readers as someone who wants us to figure him out. Throughout both novels we as readers get the opportunity to learn more about who Chief Bromden and Holden are and what makes them similar and different to each other. Kesey introduces us to Chief Bromden and takes us through his journey and his idea of what society and life is like through his mind and his crazy world. Because he is the narrator we know more about him than any of the characters do. We know that he pretends to be deaf and mute when he says “They don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb....
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...The protagonist is usually the main character, the one that tells the story from memory, but in some instances, like in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the main character is simply the narrator. Bromden is sometimes hard to understand,“Chief Bromden narrates, however, in ways that continually confuse the reader until he comes to appreciate how the logic of storytelling characteristic of a native point of view can manipulate different modes of discourse” The real protagonist was Randle McMurphy. Throughout the story, Chief Bromden describes the ward to the reader, but this only classifies him as the narrator. Randle McMurphy, a main character that came to the ward after pleading insanity, teaches the men how to find themselves. He shows them that they aren’t crazy and they could leave the ward when they were all ready, another lesson McMurphy taught the men. Nurse Ratched, an evil women that intimidates and mistreats the men, runs...
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...Peace, by John Knowles, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and the movie, Cool Hand Luke, include Christ Figures who positively alter the setting where they once existed. Commonly, a Christ Figure intentionally takes on suffering, such as Luke in Cool Hand Luke and McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Luke is a newly arrived inmate at a work prison who influences his fellow prisoners to fight against authority. Just like Luke, McMurphy is a newly admitted patient in a mental institute who influences the people around him to defy the authority...
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...Character: Chief Bromden (Chief Broom) is the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Attending for over ten years, he is the longest patient to stay the psychiatric hospital in Oregon. Bromden’s hallucinations brought him into the ward, in which he also gets paranoid and bullied. Because of these hallucinations, he must be medicated. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden reveals how the other patients believe he is deaf and cannot speak, however he is not. In the first chapter, Bromden writes, “They don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much” (Kesey 3). Bromden himself does not know if what he is seeing is true or not and lies to his inmates about his disabilities, proving how he is an unreliable narrator....
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...In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey focuses on how modern society oppresses those who do not fit into the mold of what is considered normal. In the mental ward that the book takes place in, Randle McMurphy continually rebels against the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, who symbolizes modern society in Kesey’s book. McMurphy, although unaware in the beginning of the horrible experiences the patients go through at the hands of Nurse Ratched, starts an uprising against Nurse Ratched and ends up sacrificing himself so his fellow patients can gain their freedom. Initially entering the asylum, McMurphy was not insane. He chose to go to the hospital instead of serving a six month sentence at a work camp because he thought it would be easier. In the beginning, McMurphy is immediately labeled as different; unlike the other patients who have been forced to repress their emotions due to Nurse Ratched, McMurphy is described as a big, vulgar, sexual, funny man whose loud laugh shocks the patients. This shows two things; one, McMurphy does not truly understand the pain or suffering that comes from being oppressed by a society yet, which leads to the second point. Because McMurphy is both not oppressed and still has his...
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...Gender Roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest The 1950’s was a decade characterized by traditional gender roles of women as homemakers downgraded to the domestic sphere and men as economic providers. With the arrival of the 1960’s, however, stereotypical gender roles were challenged and the American society underwent a variety of social transformations. American writers, such as Ken Kesey, responded to the change through writing. Kesey’s response to the times was his 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is not only a social commentary about mental illness, but also a response to changing gender roles. By demonizing powerful women and uplifting powerful men, his novel promotes sexism and ultimately holds the misogynistic stance that powerful women must be subjugated. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the female characters can be divided into two extreme categories: "ball-cutters" and whores. The negative portrayal of powerful women can be seen in the problematic relationships that the male patients have with their mothers. Bromden, the half Native-American narrator, has a mother who constantly undermines his father, the chief of the Columbia Gorge tribe and a once-powerful man. Bromden’s mother dominates her husband and her son by acting in non-traditional ways, such as using her maiden name for the family’s last name rather than using her husband’s, which convinces Bromden’s father that he is weak and helpless. Because she herself is white, she is ashamed...
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...nature to hope for the best in future situations and to always embellish our memories of the past. I think that this is our way of coping with the present. If we can convince ourselves that things were better at one point and therefore will be better at some point, then the present never seems too awful. This being said, it came as a surprise to me that such a fundamental mannerism of humans drove me so near insane. Novel after novel, I found that the characters who I actively despised were the ones who pretended that their lives were always perfect in order to escape the present. Take Blanche DuBois, from A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams. At one point in the play, Blanche cries, “I don’t want realism. I want magic!” and pardon my informality, but I HATED her for saying so. If only she had faced reality for one measly minute, she would have been able to see that the only way to fix her situation was to fight her plagued present. If...
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...Roles of Domineering and Passive Women Sometimes our expectation of what is good and what is evil can be surprisingly reversed. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is an example of this. Prior to the women’s rights movement in the 1970’s, men considered women to have limited roles in society. Men felt that the woman’s place was in the home. Women in the workforce were often looked upon as threats to manhood because they could take jobs and promotions away from men, who were typically the main source of a family’s income. This sentiment is reflected in Kesey’s novel. The majority of women in the book hold positions of authority. These women are portrayed as dominating and abusive with the intent to emasculate the male patients. The only other role of women in the novel is that of prostitutes who are portrayed as good because they allow men to be masculine. The prostitutes help the male patients with “women in authority” issues overcome their anxieties. In his novel, Kesey portrays nurses as threats to male patients in order to illustrate that, in general, women in authority can only result in the emasculation of men, while passive women can help restore the confidence of manhood. The principle authority figure, Nurse Ratched, is ruthless in her mission to dominate and control her male patients. She has the power to intimidate the staff into complying with her demands. When patients do not comply, she manipulates the doctor into ordering shock treatments and even...
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...When looking at a tragic hero, the first thing that comes to mind is a type of character that starts as a low key person, and then becomes relevant person within society. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the mail McMurphy is a god like human in the minds of the other patients and gives them life as his time dwindles at the institution. Someone in my mind that reminds me of McMurphy is Barry Bonds. In his life, he started his career as a one of the most looked at players until he was tested positive for steriods. Randall McMurphy and Barry Bonds share the character traits of determination, arrogance, and isolation. To begin, the up forth of R.P McMurphy and Barry Bonds’s glory came to be from the determination they have to be the best at what they do. McMurphy, along the road for his rise amongst the patients at the home, could not have happened if it was not for the lack of enthusiasm he saw in the faces of the people he was with every day of his life at the institution. “Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don’t look so crazy to me” (Kesey 19). McMurphy knows these men have been dragged down for being in the institution and believes in himself to help them. One way he gets them to see how his personality is, is by loosening them up and trying to me them feel better about themselves. In comparison to Barry Bonds, the way he went up in the ladder was by playing the game of baseball how every American loved to watch it be played, with lots of...
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...Throughout Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one can see the book in many ways. He uses the book to express many of his believes, some of which are quite obviously drug induced. Kesey, like other authors at the time was looking at the world from the outside. He was part of the end of the beats movement. A common belief amongst beats movement writers was the idea of not conforming to the society that went against everything they believed. Ken Kesey hinted at his beats generation views all throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by reversing gender and race roles inside the mental hospital the book takes place in. Kesey also exploits the idea of conforming to, and being controlled by society norms. Early and all through One Flew...
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...McMurphy initially arrived at the psychiatric ward, with his laugh reverberating against the walls, uncertainty of his agenda reciprocated throughout the minds of the other patients. This uncertainty gradually evaporated once the patients realized that McMurphy only possessed one objective: to address the individual needs of the patients, regardless of the punishment. Through the previously mentioned quote, we viewed the expansion of Chief Bromden’s thinking beyond consequence. Before the presence of McMurphy on the ward, Bromden shriveled at the mention of pain and hardship. Nonetheless, McMurphy installed a sense of strength and acknowledgement within Bromden....
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...nurse throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey reveals Nurse Ratched’s authoritative demeanor she holds throughout the ward. The ward runs on a policy-based system that Nurse Ratched has created to ensure the floor works like a machine. But, now that McMurphy has become a part of the ward, he is determined to mess up, even the littlest bit, of Nurse Ratcheds system. Specifically, when Nurse Ratched walks into the ward she finds McMurphy standing in nothing but his towel with his toothbrush in his hand. Nurse Ratched is becoming “madder and more frustrated than ever” because she expected an aid to have “[issue] a change of greens” to McMurphy (89). Here, Kesey has brought...
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