An exceptionally tall, Native American, Chief Bromden, trapped in the Oregon psychiatric ward, suffers from the psychological condition of paranoid schizophrenia. This fictional character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest struggles with extreme mental illness, but he also falls victim to the choking grasp of society, which worsens Bromden’s condition. Paranoid schizophrenia is a rare mental illness that leads to heavy delusions and hallucinations among other, less serious, symptoms. Through the love and compassion that Bromden’s inmate, Randle Patrick McMurphy, gives Chief Bromden, he is able to briefly overcome paranoid schizophrenia and escape the dehumanizing psychiatric ward that he is held prisoner in. The background of Chief Bromden’s life makes him a likely target for mental illness. Conflict that Chief’s father faced also negatively impacted Chief. His father was Chief Tee Ah Millatoona of the Umpqua tribe and his mother was a white woman. Chief’s father took his mother’s last name, “Her name is Bromden. He took her name” (214). This suggests her domination in the relationship, but it is made clear that her extreme belittling had negative psychological effects: “It wasn't just her that made him little. Everybody worked on him because he was big, and wouldn't give in, and did as he pleased... He fought it a long time until my mother made him too little to fight anymore and he gave up" (220). Just like his father, Chief was a big man crushed into a tiny man by the pressures of society. Chief grew up living a normal life, without schizophrenia, on the Columbia Gorge in an Umpqua village led by his father. The first memorable trigger of Chief’s schizophrenia came when government officials were inspecting his vil... ... middle of paper ... ...ic Attitudes, Personal Needs: A Survey on Schizophrenia by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Goodfriend, Wind. "Mental Hospitals in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”." "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Psychology Today, 22 May 2012. Web. 01 May 2014. The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1992. Print. "NAMI - The National Alliance on Mental Illness." NAMI. National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014. "Schizophrenia Interventions." Schizophrenia Interventions. News Medical, 29 Sept. 2009. Web. 01 May 2014. "Schizophrenia." NIMH RSS. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "Schizophrenia: Treatment & Care." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a catatonic half-Indian man whom everybody thinks is deaf and dumb. He often suffers from hallucinations in which he feels that the room is filled with fog. The institution is dominated by Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse), a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed 'gambling fool' who has just come from a work farm at Pendleton. He introduces himself to the other men on the ward, including Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year old man who stutters and appears very young. Nurse Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey presents a situation which is a small scale and exaggerated model of modern society and its suppressive qualities. The story deals with the inmates of a psychiatric ward who are all under the control of Nurse Ratched, ‘Big Nurse’, whose name itself signifies the oppressive nature of her authority. She rules with an iron fist so that the ward can function smoothly in order to achieve the rehabilitation of patients with a variety of mental illnesses. Big Nurse is presented to the reader through the eyes of the Chief, the story’s narrator, and much of her control is represented through the Chief’s hallucinations. One of these most recurring elements is the fog, a metaphorical haze keeping the patients befuddled and controlled “The fog: then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everyone else” (Kesey 69). Another element of her control is the wires, though the Chief only brings this u...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the idea of what it is like to be free or confined and most importantly on what basis can one define what freedom stands for, in the view of any individual. One of the novel’s most important features is that the psych ward, Nurse Ratched, and all the other people looking after the patients in the asylum who are portrayed as tools of “sanity” in the novel are, in fact, insane in their own way. For them, the meaning of freedom should be unknown to the patients and they shall be the ones confining them to the boundaries of freedom as known by them. This question of what should be the judging aspect of freedom and confinement becomes more relevant with the arrival of Randle McMurphy to the ward, a highly likely gambler who with all the possibility may have faked psychosis and pretended to be mentally unstable to get relocated to the asylum from a work camp. . The most easily noticeable themes are that of freedom and confinement discussed through the characters in the novel.
In the 1950’s, mental hospitals weren’t what they are now. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he shows how people in mental hospitals were treated at that time all through the eyes of an Indian man named Chief Bromden. Ken Kesey uses his personal experiences to add settings and even characters to show this in his writing. His life is clearly seen by McMurphy’s problem with authority which goes perfectly with his own and by the setting of a mental hospital, which Kesey once worked in.
The characters in this novel portray different levels of mental stability. Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest each of the main characters undergoes a notable shift in their mental states (Rutten). The schizophrenic narrator, Chief Bromden is indubitably insane in the beginning. As the narrator, he gives insight into the inner workings of the hospital. All of what he sees is stated as fact but, it cannot be taken literally since a portion of it is based off of hallucinations and paranoia (Waxler). He states early on "it's the truth even if it didn't happen" (Kesey, 8). He often takes looks back into his childhood. During these flashbacks he describes himself as small and his parents as large. In Chief's mind char...
"NAMI - The National Alliance on Mental Illness." NAMI. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2014.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ by Ken Kessey is a narrative of Chief Bromden, a severe schizophrenic in a psychiatric hospital. Chief is a Native American man who has habituated at the asylum the longest out of all the patients. He feigns to be deaf and dumb to prevent drawing attention to himself. According to Chief, the hospital is a giant machine referred to as the ‘Combine’, which is used to force the patients to abide by the rules. The hospital is visibly divided into two categories of patients, the ‘Acutes’ (curable) and the ‘Chronics’ (incurable). The men are dictated by the heinous Nurse Ratched, a cold and uncompassionate woman. This tale begins with the introduction of the Chief, Nurse Ratched and her aides. Chief often slips into the ‘fog’,
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
Duckworth M.D., Ken. “Schizophrenia.” NAMI.org. National Alliance on Mental Illness, Feb. 2007. Web. 28 March 2010.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
In the cinematic classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest expresses the idea that the inhibitory rights of freedom, sly manipulation, and misuse of power results in an oppressive authoritarian leader that misuses his/her own power in handling people. The setting is placed between the 1950’s and 1960’s in an insane asylum. The film challenges the view of what exactly determines someone to be “insane” or “sane” the main character sheds light onto the subject by showing how relative sanity can actually be. An exceedingly reckless, yet diligent individual named, Randle McMurphy, stands up to the oppressive leader known as Nurse Ratched in a rebellion to her repressive ways to stir up some “fun” in the mental ward. McMurphy intends to bring some life back into the patients who have been dehumanized by Nurse Ratched.
The sole purpose of a mental institution should be to aide an individual on his or her path to wellness, One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest represents quite the opposite. This classic 1962 film portrays mental intuitions as restrictive confinement centers, opposed to psychiatric hospitals. In the mid-1600s, there were not a lot of pharmaceutical treatments for mental illnesses, thus the number of patients in need of a place to live was massive. Thus, a Kirkbride Plan for mental hospitals was created. The Plan included spacious, clean buildings that provided fresh air, sunlight, gardens and comfortable rooms for patients. Oregon State Hospital in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest was built using the Kirkbride Plan was its foundation. This meant the patients were to be treated with a high level of ethical respect, opposed to the treatment patients received in the