Similarities Between Dead Poets Society And One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Dead Poet’s Society, by Peter Weir, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, both contain characters who struggle for independence, but explore it with a wide variety of techniques. Dead Poet’s Society was shown in a time when young people in middle-upper class families were being pressured into doing perfectly in school and forced into futures without their input, and explores independent living in school life. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest also explores a life without independence and both texts use contrasting points of view, symbolism and narrative structure to explore ideas.

Both texts have similarities in the narrative structure and this can be used to showcase how they explore the struggle for independence. Many characters

Kesey uses symbolism mainly to represent despotism, while Weir uses symbols of independance. Kesey uses machinery to symbolize what normal society seems like in Bromden’s mind. Bromden often sees the process of someone being made fit for society as the process of a machine: “Sometimes a guy goes over for an installation, all mean and mad and snapping at the whole world and comes back a few weeks later with black-and-blue eyes like he’d been in a fist fight, and he’s the sweetest, nicest, best-behaved thing you ever saw…but I say he’s just another robot for the Combine”. “Robot” in this quote symbolizes normal people who are part of society, which is represented by the Combine. During their first lesson together, Keating takes the boys to the hallway where they examine a dedication to past students. “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones…believe they’re destined for great things…eyes are full of hope, just like you…you can hear them whisper their legacy to you…Carpe Diem.” The students are a symbol of what the boys could become if they take their independence, or in other words, if they seize the day. Kesey and Weir both use symbolism as a way to show what might happen; In Kesey’s case what is desired and in Weir’s case what is