The Individual and The System One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Many social issues and problems are explored in Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Perhaps the most obvious complaint against society is the treatment of the individual. This problem of the individual versus the system is a very controversial topic that has provoked great questioning of the government and the methods used to treat people who are unable to conform to the government's standards.
McMurphy is an individual who is challenging and rebelling against the system's rules and practices. He eventually teaches this practice of rebellion to the other patients who begin to realize that their lives are being controlled unfairly by the mental institution. When McMurphy first arrives at the institution, all of the other patients are afraid to express their thoughts to the Big Nurse. They are afraid to exercise their thoughts freely, and they believe that the Big Nurse will punish them if they question her authority. One patient, Harding, says, "All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees...We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place" (Kesey 62).
This novel has a very strong theme of government rejecting those who are considered nonconformists in modern society. The government then places these nonconformists in mental institutions so it will not have to deal with them. This is society's way of ditching those with nonconformist attitudes so they will disappear from the world and be forgotten. According to one critic, oppressive, conformist, regulatory, civilization is the suppressor of individual freedom (Barsness 433). "He (McMurphy) hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or the other,anymore than he'd let the Combine (the characters' metaphor for the government) mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit...He's not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him" (Kesey 153).
McMurphy is symbolized as the typical individual, while Big Nurse Ratched is symbolized as a member of the system, or the Combine. Bromden narrates, "McMurphy doesn't know it, but he's onto what I realized a long time back, that it's not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it's the whole Combine, the nation-wide Combine that's the really big force, and the nurse is just a high-ranking official for them" (181).
In a staff meeting, Nurse Ratched gains her composure, and decides to use her position of authority to her advantage, when other professionals question whether McMurphy should be sent back to the working farm: “I expect her to get mad, but she doesn't; she just gives him that let’s-wait-and-see look...we have weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in his hospital is entirely up to us” (157-158). The Big Nurse is only keeping McMurphy under her jurisdiction so that she can redeem herself, and come back full force, towards McMurphy. The more time that she has with McMurphy, the more likely she is to win the battle against
In the story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, patients live locked up in a restricted domain, everyday taking orders from the dictator, Nurse Ratched. Once McMurphy enters this asylum, he starts to rally everyone up and acting like this hospital is a competitive game between him and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy promotes negative behavior, such as, gambling and going against the rules, to mess around with the nurses and so he can be the leader that everyone looks up to. McMurphy soon learns that he might not be in control after all. Nurse Ratched decides who will be let out and when. After realizing why no one has stood up to Nurse Ratched before, he starts to follow rules and obey the nurses. This changes the whole mood of the hospital,
have either not stir the mixture or use a machine to stir it at the
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
From the moment McMurphy enters the ward it is clear to all that he is different and hard to control. He’s seen as a figure the rest of the patients can look up to and he raises their hopes in taking back power from the big nurse. The other patients identify McMurphy as a leader when he first stands up to the nurse at her group therapy, saying that she has manipulated them all to become “a bunch of chickens at a pecking party”(Kesey 55). He tells the patients that they do not have to listen to Nurse Ratched and he confronts her tactics and motives. The patients see him as a leader at this point, but McMurphy does not see the need for him to be leading alone. McMurphy is a strong willed and opinionated man, so when he arrives at the ward he fails to comprehend why the men live in fear, until Harding explains it to him by
They both realize that in order to get their own way, they must gain control over their rival and the ward. McMurphy and Nurse Ratched have different methods of attaining and using what control they have. They have different motives for seeking control over others. They also have different perceptions of the amount of control they possess. Throughout the novel, these two characters engulf themselves in an epic struggle for the most control.
Hunt, John W. "Flying the Cuckoo's Nest: Kesey's Narrator as Norm." Lex et Scientia 13 (1977): 27-32. Rpt. in A Casebook on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 13-23.
As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior. McMurphy’s dereliction of Nurse Ratched’s rules not only provides entertainment for Bromden and the other patients, but also acts as an impetus for their own reb...
At first glance, a reader may wonder how Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a book depicting a group of mentally unstable men and their boisterous Irish-American leader, connects with the economic and sociological view o...
Beginning in ancient times, animals were experimented on out of pure curiosity, and people did not understand how different systems really worked. Today, we have an undeniable understanding of the body’s functions and metabolism, proving that this practice is becoming increasingly unreliable, expensive, and above all: cruel. For centuries, innocent animals such as rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, cats, dogs, and primates have been used for man’s own selfish wants. In modernity, “an estimated 26 million animals are used and slaughtered every year due to animal research.” (“Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?”, 1). For some, animal research is the image of medical breakthroughs. For others, the mere thought brings the image of animals being locked in cages, starved, alone, and in pain. Animals’ rights are commonly ignored, and malpractice is often hidden from the public eye.Widely believed to bring medical gain, animal testing is cruel, inhumane, and costly. This practice is a flawed system that should be bypassed at all conceivable costs.
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
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."
Ken Kesey in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest question a lot of things that you think almost everyday. With this famous portrait of a mental institute its rebellious patients and domineering caretakers counter-culture icon Kesey is doing a whole lot more than just spinning a great yarn. He is asking us to stop and consider how what we call "normal" is forced upon each and every one of us. Stepping out of line, going against the grain, swimming upstream whatever your metaphor, there is a steep price to pay for that kind of behavior. The novel tells McMurphys tale, along with the tales of other inmates who suffer under the yoke of the authoritarian Nurse Ratched it is the story of any person who has felt suffocated and confined by our
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Each year, millions of animals suffer due to the various kinds of research that companies and laboratories do. Cosmetic, drug, food, and chemical