The Use of Laughter as Medicine in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
For years, it has been said that laughter is the best medicine. In Proverbs 17:22 it says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Imagine being in a place where medicine takes the place of laughter. This is the environment the patients at an Oregon psychiatric hospital in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) experienced before the arrival of a new patient.
Chief Bromden, who is presumably deaf and dumb, narrates the story in third person. Mr. McMurphy enters the ward all smiles and hearty laughter as his own personal medicine. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a story about patients in a psychiatric hospital, who are under the power of Nurse Ratched. Mrs. Ratched has control over all the patients except for Mr. McMurphy, who uses laughter to fight her power. According to Chief Bromden, McMurphy "...knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (212). Laughter is McMurphy's medicine and tool to get him and the rest of the patients through their endless days at the hospital. The author's theme throughout the novel is that laughter is the best medicine, and he shows this through McMurphy's static character. The story is made up of series of conflicts between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy becomes a hero, changing the lives of many of the inmates. In the end, though, he pays for his actions by suffering a lobotomy, which turned him into a vegetable. The story ends when Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow and escapes to freedom.
McMurphy demonstrates how he uses laughter and jokes to get through his days by trying to get Mr...
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... fact that he has just been shocked when he tells Bromden that they are just charging his battery and "when I get out of here the first woman that takes on ol' Red McMurphy the ten-thousand-watt psychopath, she's gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars [sic]!" (242-243). Here McMurphy uses a perverted mind to help him adjust to the reality that he has just received shock treatment.
When a society replaces medicine for laughter, people are going to have problems just as the patients did in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, along with today's society, believes that laughter truly is the best medicine, and one cannot live a normal, sane life without it.
Works Cited
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1962). The Viking Press Inc. New York, New York.Gideons International. Tennessee: The National Publishing Company.
Although modern science has allowed us to develop many complex medicines, laughter is still the strongest one available in the real world and in the book. Laughter proves to be a strong medicine in more ways than one and is completely free, allowing anyone to use it at anytime. It allows us to connect socially with people, it can be used as a way of overthrowing power, and it is good for your health. As Randle McMurphy showed in the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, laughter can lighten the mood in the darkest situations.
In Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest there are many recurring motifs and images. One very prominent motif is laughter. Following the motif of laughter throughout the novel, it is mostly associated with McMurphy and power/control. McMurphy teaches the patients how to laugh again and with the laughter the combine loses control and the patients gain their power back.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, McMurphy often uses the power of laughter to overcome what is going on in the world around him. Laughter lightens the feeling in the book, and at times gives it a warmer feeling. It also helps develop, and shape the characters throughout the entire story.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is an inspiring story of patients in a mental ward overcoming its oppressive nature with the help of a new arrival named Randle McMurphy. As Randle exposes the corrupt nature of the ward through manipulation and rebellion, medicated and conformed patients as well as myself begin to question the legitimacy of mental illness and the necessity of ward practices.
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
Throughout society, there are many individuals who influence the growth/development of others. Ones influence on others could either have a positive or negative impact on an individual's life. Throughout Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy's arrival on the ward influences the way the patients seek their own freedom. McMurphy sympathizes for the patient, not wanting to see them suffer in this “cuckoo nest” of a hospital. Such oppressive control is too much for McMurphy to bear and therefore he begins to challenge the Nurse’s control over all the patients in the wards, symbolically, all of mankind. Kesey’s title, One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, signifies how the patients in the ward are able to free themselves under Nurse Ratched’s oppressive
It is sensible that in order to be admitted into a mental institution, the patient must have a prominent mental illness, however, that is not the case in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Upon first entering the ward, the majority of the patients are ordinary people but as time progresses, the omnipotent Big Nurse slowly destroys their masculinity through forceful accusations and painful treatment. “He’s a new man. Gad, modern American science…,” (40). Big Nurse’s gains power through her ability to determine the fate of her patients. This dismal satire depicts the robotic nature of the Big Nurse as she instantly transforms a unique patient into just another fly on a wall. The concrete diction reveals the ir...
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.
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.
The implementation of policy and legislation related to inclusive education, thus being a focus on the diversity and difference in our society (Ashman & Elkins, 2009), would have vast implications on the way society views that which is different to the accepted “norm”.
Laughter is a therapeutic form. In the novel One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey laughter represents freedom and an escape from nurse Ratched’s restrictions.
Sean O’Casey once said that, “Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” Without laughing, man is not living fully. For the men in the novel, One Who Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, they are in a mental institution and are repressed by their head nurse until a new patient, McMurphy, comes in laughing an changing the way everything is ran, turning the insane sane. In the novel, laughter is a symbol of sanity and it helps a person grow stronger, so when the men laugh they grow more confident and obtain the ability to overcome the Nurses’ power.
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