...Ms. Latasha Keith HUMN401-1305B-01: Literature and Film Professor Bonnie Ronson January 19, 2014 Unit 2 Individual Project – Canonical Classics of Literature Section 1- Introduction Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is set at an Oregon asylum in the 1950s (NovelGuide.com). The book is a study in the institutional process of the human mind, a critique of Behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles while exploring themes of individuality and rebellion against socially imposed repression (NovelGuide.com; SparkNotes.com; CliffsNotes.com). These themes and ideas were the topic of discussion during the publication of this novel because the world was introduced to communism and totalitarian regimes. The novel was published in 1962 and received with immediate success (SparkNotes.com). Section 2 – Biographical Information La Junta, Colorado is the birthplace of novelist Ken Kesey. He was born in 1935 and grew up on a small farm in Oregon and Colorado with his family. He married his high school sweetheart in 1956 and they had three children together (Lone Star College). He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon where he participated in wrestling and theater in 1957 (Lone Star College; SparkNotes.com). In 1959, Kesey enrolled in a creative writing program at Stanford University, the same year where he began volunteering with the Stanford Psychology Department (CliffsNotes.com; Lone Star College). The Stanford Psychology...
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...Ken Kesey was born in 1935 in Colorado. In 1946, his family moved to Oregon, where he become champion in wrestling, both in high school and college (Ken Kesey Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography). He attended Stanford University and later in 1960 Kesey volunteered in the experiment organized by U.S army, in which he was using drugs such LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and then reporting on their effect. He also spent some time communicating with patients in the hospital's psychiatric ward. It was an experience which encouraged Ken Kesey to write his 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” (the book I’m reading right now), which examined the abuses of the system against the individuals and the theory that patients weren’t insane, but...
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...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as a Tool for Awareness and Education As violence and diseases such as mental illness detrimentally affect individuals across the world, topics like these that occur in literature are censored, and children are shielded from these "harsh," yet unavoidable, realities. Both violence and mental health are reoccurring themes throughout the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kessey, which is why is it often challenged by parents of high school students. Although some concerned parents believe that the violent treatments within One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are too disturbing and gruesome for adolescents, the book should be included in high school curriculums because it provides education and awareness...
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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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...Cynthia K. Nessmith Professor Shawana Stanford American Literature 2130 14 April 2013 Film adaptation of the American novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest novel was written by Ken Kesey in 1962. The film adaptation version was directed by Czech Milos Forman in 1975. My goal in this paper is not only to compare the film adaptation to the Novel but to also explain what I think the symbols represent, critic’s analysis, themes presented in this film, and the significance of the Novel. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest film’s setting begins with a police car driving down the road to people sleeping in bunk beds, ending with a glimpse of a drawing taped to the wall with a crazy face centered in it. A nurse enters a locked down facility, while another prepares medicine for the patients. The police car arrives at the facility with a prisoner in handcuffs that is released to the hospital staff. The characters in this film are as follows: Randall P. McMurphy played by Jack Nicholson, a rebellious convict with a loud mouth and a set of sexual playing cards. He’s courageous and challenges the staff/system of the mental hospital. Nurse Ratched played by Louise Fletcher is a calm, cold, well mannered, and soft spoken head nurse of the mental hospital that plays McMurphy’s enemy. Chief Bromdon played by Will Sampson is a big and tall Indian who is described as “deaf and dumb” (according to the character Billy). Billy Bibbit played by Brad Dourif is a young...
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...In the novel “One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” what sticks out to me the most is that the narrator is not the protagonist. You would think at first that Chief Bromden the one who is a “Chronic” would have a flawed mental state. However that is not the case because Bromden is adept at describing what he sees. He also sees the true intention of Nurse Ratched and pretends that he is deaf. What is surprising is that McMurphy the new admission is very happy to be in a hospital for the insane. I still don’t know whether it’s all a play to get on the other patient good side or part of his true character. He notices that Chief Bromden is not really deaf and winks to Bromden that he knows. This tells me that McMurphy is someone who is not easily fooled....
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...One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Many classic novels have been adapted into movies. However, to the avid reader, in many cases these movie adaptations often seem to fall short of the novel’s true meaning and depth, causing so many movie-goers to say, “The book is better.” Due to time constraints movies often cannot fit all of the detail that a book contains and can easily fall short of the expectations readers may carry seeing the film version of a favorite novel. In the case of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, some key differences are created by the director, Milos Forman, both in the interest of time and to create a more fast-paced feel for the movie viewer. While several differences exist, the three most significant are in that of the characters, the overall development of the ward in which these men live, and in the point of view created by the novel’s eyes and ears, Chief Bromden. Randle Patrick (R.P.) McMurphy shows up early in the story as a brash, large redheaded man, sporting curls under his cap and broadness in his frame. In the novel he is portrayed as a large, sun-kissed man who has spent his days on the work farm, serving a sentence for crimes committed. However, within the first minute of the movie the viewer is introduced to this same character in the form of Jack Nicholson, who holds almost none of these physical characteristics. There is minimal effect on the viewer however, as Nicholson portrays the role admirably, shining in a...
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...Kesey and Weir both explore the struggle for independence by enforcing similar settings and contrasting characterisation in their two individual texts, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dead Poet’s Society. At first glance, many would argue that there could not be two settings more dissimilar than a men’s mental institution, and a boy’s private school. However, both texts are set in heavily instituonalised arenas, where the individuals within the communities have had their independence and freedom stolen by overpowering figures of authority. Although the setting of the two institutions is contradictory in various ways; the warm, bricked and neat academy against the blinding white hospital walls; the oppression and rigidity between the two is evident. Both pieces introduce an...
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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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...the ‘60s and ‘70s belonged to Ken Kesey. Being a novelist in this time period, Kesey had close affiliations with the counterculture that dominated the decade. In its own way One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the twentieth-century Romantic manifesto, a ululation for the death of the individual before this rebellion went out of style and individualism along with it. This book verbalized what many where thinking: that the truly crazy in the world were the ones who wanted power while the truly sane were the ones who sought to be individuals and rebelled against authority. Because of this pronounced effect on society the book was a major contributor to the backlash against the entire psychiatric system in the early 1960s. As a result, state institutions began reducing their resident numbers and granting admitted patients more rights within the institutions. In addition to this change in the system, the book also pushed the development of more effective anti-psychotic drugs, thus allowing more patients to be treated within their own homes and live normal lives. Yet for many health professionals the book also had a profound negative effect, consequently changing the overall...
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...STAGE 2 ENGLISH STUDIES One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey “In what ways has Kesey portrayed R.P McMurphy as an anti-hero?” One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an acclaimed novel written by author Ken Kesey detailing the fictional events surrounding patients within a mental institution. The novel features protagonist R.P. McMurphy and his battle against Nurse Ratched and “the Combine”— Chief Bromden’s word to describe the system that governs the institution and the rest of the world. Through analysing the character of McMurphy, it can be seen that although he lacks conventional hero qualities, his behaviour fits into a subcategory of the hero called the antihero. The personality of an antihero can be described as a devil on the side...
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...“I had to keep reminding myself that it had truly happened, that we had made it happen. We had just unlocked a window and let it in like you let in the fresh air. Maybe the Combine wasn’t all-powerful.” (Kesey, 305). A prominent theme throughout Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is social conformity. The narrator of the novel is a man known simply as Chief Bromden, a half-Indian who has been a patient at an Oregon psychiatric hospital for approximately ten years. He suffers frequently from hallucinations and delusions and his fear of what he calls the Combine, which controls society and forces people into conformity. In order to deal with this, Chief pretends that he is deaf and mute. The ward divides the each of the patients into...
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...One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest The book that my book club discussed was "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest." In the first book club meeting, we discussed the characters and our initial impressions of them. The start of the novel doesn’t really get that interesting till later on. The story is narrated through the story of Chief Bromden, who is in the insane asylum because he suffers from hallucinations and paranoia. At first I found the part in the book where Bromden first describes the fog machine hard to understand. There was no clear indication that Bromden is hallucinating but it’s up to the reader to figure it out themselves. Matt helped me understand the scene by explaining that Bromden believes that the people running the ward like Nurse Rached have a fog machine and that they turn it on in order to make the patients lose themselves, but really the fog machine is Bromdens own hallucinations. "Before noontime they're at the fog machine again but they haven't got it turned up full; it's not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I'll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other chronics have." (Kesey 37) The main character of the book McMurphy arrives being a very charismatic individual with the other inmates, and even laughs, which Bromden describes as not seeing for years. "This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it's the first real laugh I've heard in years. He stands looking at...
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...I believe that this book, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, will be read 100 years from now as it provides an example of what our mental health care system may be like as of now. The events of this book are negative, the hierarchy of the future can use this as a manual on what to do and what not to do with regards to running a mental health care ward. One of the main themes of this book is emasculation by a head female figure and this is happening more often in today’s society though not much light is shed on it as most men are embarrassed by this. Nurse Ratched represents a kind of dictatorship in which the ward uses fear, suppression of their sexuality and their own personal insecurities to keep them in check. During their group therapy sessions she even turns them against each other by choosing one patient and having the others, what McMurphy calls, “peck at him”....
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...writings. Each gender has, at some point, had to fight the repression brought upon by the other. Most examples involve men as the dominate force over women in a patriarchal society. Less than a hundred years have passed since women gained the right to vote in the United States and just a few years ago women in Saudi Arabia were finally allowed the same right. The theme of a “battle of the sexes” has been around in literature for hundreds, even thousands of years in works such as Shakespeare’s comedies to various mythology. In the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken...
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