One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

976 Words2 Pages

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Every American has grown up with these words, lived by these words, and thusly, accepted them as a given: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This sentence has made its place in the United States Constitution as well, and there are variations of this all over the world—“liberté, egalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity) in France, “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit” (unity, justice, and freedom) in Germany, and many more. Not having to curtail speech, have every move checked, or suppress individuality are gifts, often taken for granted in today’s society. People go about their day, not having a second thought about choosing when to smoke a cigarette or being able to play a game of cards with friends without fighting for it. But in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, personal freedom, a sense of self, and individuality are withheld from the patients in an Oregon insane asylum. The asylum itself is symbolic of society and how it pressures people to act a certain way, and portrays how deviating even slightly from the label “normal” is cause for being confined. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, characters such as Chief Bromden and Dale Harding are prime examples for how society manipulates differences into weaknesses, and only with the aid of Randle McMurphy are they able to reassert themselves and defy society’s conformity.

Chief Bromden is the narrator of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and although in the beginning he appears to readers as physically formidable, he is a docile and unusually subdued man. He is a staggeringly tall N...

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...he would not have wanted to be an example, a trophy to Nurse Ratched and suffocates him (Kesey 270). Even then, he serves as the impelling force that makes Chief leave the Combine and its oppression for good.

Society can be an antagonist or an ally, depending on the individual and the circumstances. This is shown indefinitely in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Differences like Chief Bromden’s race and Dale Harding’s sexual orientation were turned into weaknesses, and only with Randle McMurphy’s courage and perseverance were they overcome. However, it came at a cost. McMurphy died for this cause. Billy Bibbit and Cheswick were casualties along the way. So, readers must ask themselves the question that Chief’s father asked: “What can you pay for the way a man lives? What can you pay for what a man is?”

Works Cited

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Bromden vs. Himself
1174 Words | 3 Pages
Chief Bromden’s character development is extremely limited in the movie adaptation, because director Milos Forman took out one of the most crucial details of the novel: Bromden’s first person narration. The movie lacked in any references to Bromden’s philosophy of society and had nothing about his back-story, an important aspect of what made him the person he was at the beginning of the movie. Of course, it would’ve been a pain to film an entire movie from one person’s point of view, much less include narrations and backgrounds. Overall, despite the film’s outstanding ability to match the novel’s original storyline, Ken Kesey does not depict Chief Bromden’s growth in a successful, accurate, and admirable way.
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AP Lit Final
661 Words | 2 Pages
... knot of tight-smiled fury" (Kesey, 23). Chief continues to describe her as a machine disguised as a doll on the outside, but steel and mechanized underneath. Her expressions are always "calculated and mechanical” (Kesey, 26), and as Chief Bromden notes later on, McMurphy is onto what he realized long ago, “that it’s not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it’s the whole nation-wide Combine that’s the really big force…and she is just a high-ranking official for them” (Kesey, 159). Bromden’s claim here is perhaps one of the most blatant parallels between the characteristics of the novel and the characteristics of real world society at the time. Perceiving that it is only he himself and McMurphy that have even the faintest impression of the concept of the Combine, Chief solidifies the idea that McMurphy is a rebel much like the beats of the 1950’s (Knapp, James. ).
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Cuckoo's Nest Social Hierarchy
981 Words | 2 Pages
White characters such as Nurse Ratched and McMurphy show surprise that he is able to speak and understand them while the black boys claim that Indians can't read or write. Bromden justifies that he is victim to racial inequality when people look "at me [him] like I'm [he’s] some kind of bug" (26) or when people "see right through me [him] like I [he] wasn't there." Throughout Bromden's childhood, he realized that the white people thought he was deaf and mute and that even if he spoke, no one could hear him. In order to survive through the dangers of the social hierarchy he existed in through the ward, he feigns deafness. Bromden points out that, "it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all." (178) Bromden, has also been constantly abused by the staff and other patients at the ward who call him Chief Broom, a derogation of his name as Chief and a mockery of his floor mopping “duties” in the ward that the black boys force upon him. Bromden's circumstances is illustrative of his race and of his entire tribe. The social criticism that Kesey portrays, emerges piecemeal through Bromden’s constant flashbacks and hallucinations of his village. Kesey compares Native Indian cohesion with the new estrangement accompanying the loss of Indian cultures and the adjustment of a white lifestyle to show the social unity once created by Indian traditions. By the end of
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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
1919 Words | 4 Pages
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.
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One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
1055 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Over The Cuckoo's Nest And Fahrenheit 451 Comparison Essay
819 Words | 2 Pages
However things start to change for both of these men when they start to receive guidance from their counterparts, Randle McMurphy and Clarisse McClellan. Both of these characters become the catalyst for the freedom and liberation that Bromden and Montag come to find. Throughout the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief Bromden is stuck in the “fog” living in his past memories. Bromden
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Point of View in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2247 Words | 5 Pages
The choice that a novelist makes in deciding the point of view for a novel is hardly a minor one. Few authors make the decision to use first person narration by secondary character as Ken Kesey does in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. By choosing Bromden as narrator instead of the central character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, Kesey gives us narration that is objective, that is to say from the outside of the central character, and also narration that is subjective and understandably unreliable. The paranoia and dementia that fill Bromden's narration set a tone for the struggle for liberation that is the theme of the story. It is also this choice of narrator that leads the reader to wonder at the conclusion whether the story was actually that of McMurphy or Bromden. Kesey's choice of narrative technique makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a successful novel.
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Chief Bromden Character Analysis
770 Words | 2 Pages
Prior to Randle McMurphy’s arrival, the society Nurse Ratched created was like slavery during the 1800s in America, which caused Chief Bromden to follow her orders and to be obedient like a dog, and if he retaliated, he was sent to the “Disturbed Ward” and received electroshock therapy to make sure he does not rebel again. When Randle McMurphy makes his entrance to the mental ward, the idea of being oppressed and being free changes the male patients especially Chief Bromden. McMurphy embodies freedom and represents the opportunity that the patients have of leaving the mental ward. The rebellious attitude and thought of being freed caused Chief Bromden to gain influence from McMurphy and to become more rebellious against Nurse Ratched. The shift in attitude for Bromden comes when he voted for the patients to see the baseball game. After this event, he retaliates more and does not care about the standards of the society that exists in the ward; as a matter of fact, he helps McMurphy to bring down Nurse Ratched’s oppressive rule on the patients. For instance, McMurphy and Bromden have a fight with the nurse aides to defend George because George has a phobia about cleansing. Eventually, Bromden has enough with the standards of the society he lives in and breaks the window screen by throwing the control panel and escapes the ward. Bromden from being loyal as a dog to Nurse Ratched eventually becomes “the wolf” and fights against her, and he is eventually free from imprisonment of Nurse
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Examples Of Injustice In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
743 Words | 2 Pages
1950’s society is all about conformity. All differences should be shoved down, or corrected, and you should fit the cookie-cutter image of the “Perfect American.” Anyone who does not fit this mold is shunned, treated cruelly, and considered defective. The psych ward in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is full of people who don’t meet these expectations in one way or another. These people are treated as if they can not think for themselves, can not carry out simple tasks on their own, and are incapable of functioning independently. Ken Kesey’s novel should be regarded as a lesson, a reminder, for us to treat all people, like people.
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OFOTCN
1700 Words | 4 Pages
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey begins with a short introduction by the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden is a half Indian Chronic at the ward. Chronics are patients that have been in the ward for so long that people assume that they will never check out. During the time that Bromden was there, he acted as a dumb deaf mute without being caught by anyone. Though his condition does not seem as bad as some of the other Chronics—some were vegetables—it was evident that Bromden had problems with hallucinations and delusions from the final line of the first chapter, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”
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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest American Dream
232 Words | 1 Pages
“Then why? Why? You’re just a young guy! You ought a be out running around in a convertible, bird-dogging girls. All of this” - he sweeps his hand around him again - “why do you stand for it?”(Kesey 31)In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a major theme is societal pressure vs self. Ken Kesey captures this classical conflict between expectations and reality through his portrayal of, Billy Bibbit. Questioning society’s definition of sanity, Ken Kesey portrays his disagreement with the norms with his characterization of Billy Bibbit, the influence and legitimacy of society’s views, and the constitution of normal behavior.
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Chief Bomden: The Character Of Chief Bromden
1284 Words | 3 Pages
Chief Bromden, known as Chief Broom, is a long-term patient that serves in the psychiatric ward due to his schizophrenic condition. Because of his condition, he creates many hallucinations. For example, he believes that he can hear mechanical operations behind the walls of the psychiatric ward. In discussion of Chief Bromden, one controversial issue has been whether or not he is a heroic figure because of his hallucinations, failing to address the real events in the novel. On the other hand, many contend how Chief Bromden is a hero utilizes his surroundings and observations to overcome his psychosis. I believe that Ken Kesey portrays Chief Bromden as a figure who completes the hero’s journey because he overcomes his own psychosis and decides to express himself and live his own life.
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Chief Bromden's Escape in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
1212 Words | 3 Pages
Chief Bromden is a six foot seven tall Native American (half) who feels very small and weak even though by physical description, he is very big and strong. Chief does not have enough self-confidence and he is not independent. That is what makes him so small and weak. When Randle McMurphy, the new inmate in the asylum comes in, Chief is reminded of what his father used to be: strong, independent, confident and big. "He talks a little the way papa used to, voice loud and full of hell" (16) McMurphy helps Chief gains back his self-confidence and teaches him to be independent.
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Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
995 Words | 2 Pages
Take for example, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. There is no doubt in my mind that the mental institution that comprises the primary setting of the narrative is intended as a metaphor of societal oppression. This symbolic novel relays the story of an inmate standing up against the powerful forces that operate a psychiatric hospital, but it represents much more than just a classic case of “man versus the establishment”. The questions raised by Kesey are almost as chilling as his descriptive tales of inmate abuse. Kesey compelled me to ponder just how thin the line is that separates insanity from sanity, and treatment from control. Representing a heroic struggle of personality against an institution of mindless conformity, I found “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to be one powerful piece of literature.
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1229 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

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Cuckoo's Nest Social Hierarchy