The principle of connectivity is the worldview of many Indigenous peoples; it explains the respectful, spiritual and protective tie that they form with nature and the land. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey illustrates how nature’s healing powers allow the protagonist Chief Bromden, to return to his Indigenous heritage. At the beginning of the novel, Bromden is separated from the natural order of his roots and is affected by the mechanical creations of the combine. As the novel progresses, Bromden rediscovers nature within the walls of the ward. By the end of the novel he is able to fully reconnect with nature and gain closure in regards to his past trauma. Over the course of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s …show more content…
When he is in the presence of McMurphy, he smells something natural that he has not encountered for years. He describes this scent as a “man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields” (Kesey 86). Unlike the other men in the institute, McMurphy has a very natural and real presence that is not synthetic and machine-like. McMurphy’s alarmingly natural scent allows Chief to connect with nature and remember what the world outside smells like while he is still confined in the synthetic walls of the institute. When Bromden discovers a painting on the ward displaying a scene of “a guy fly-fishing somewhere in the mountains” (107) his link with nature strengthens. He becomes completely mesmerized by the scene and in his mind he steps into the painting so that he could truly feel and sense the presence of nature. When he does this it is like he is stepping into his old identity and being reminded that he is an Aboriginal man who grew up fly-fishing on the Columbia. In addition, when Bromden is unmedicated he looks out a window causing his “senses (to) (be) fully awakened in the moving nighttime scene” (Porter). Even though he has been in the institute for years, he finally realizes that outside of the walls there lies a beautiful pastureland with wildlife, trees and a naturally blowing breeze. In this scene Bromden sees nature through his own eyes and …show more content…
When he departs with the other patients on a fishing expedition he begins to “feel better than [he] remembered feeling since [he] was a kid, when everything was good and the land was still singing kids' poetry to [him]” (Kesey 216). On the fishing trip Chief begins to mellow out, laugh a little and act more human and alive than he has for years. Being on the water reconnects him to his roots as he grew up fishing on the Columbia and it brings him back to a time when he was one with nature. After battling the oppression of the combine, Bromden is sentenced to shock therapy and during his final treatment he relies on memories of home to ease the effects of the treatment. This helps him realize that he finally “had them beat” (245). He feels a sense of victory after being able to manage the pain of shock therapy without submitting to a state of non-existence in the form of fog. Instead he cherishes the memories of his childhood and is able to conquer the combine by connecting himself to the uplifting experiences of his past. The novel ends with Bromden realizing that he has a desire to escape the institute and return to his “point of origin that promises greater health and a deeper connection with his environment” (Kaiser). Finally he is looking past the walls of the institute and into a brighter future where he is no longer
The novel that Kesey wrote is focused on how Bromden’s past memories should not let him down, but to gather his strength and let go of the past to start anew. Kesey builds up the encouragement through the help on McMurphy in order for Bromden to face reality with the hallucinations, to Nurse Ratched’s authorities, and the use of symbolism.
Bromden, the narrator, always vies himself as small, even though he’s actually a large person. To him, McMurphy is big, which he says metaphorically. In the passage, McMurphy makes the patients big: “It started slow and pumped itself full, swelling the men bigger and bigger. I watched, part of them, laughing with them- and somehow not with them. I was off the boat, blown up off the water and skating the wind with those black birds, high above myself…” (Kesey 249-250). People who are small are weak and powerless, like Bromden and the patient’s, scared and willing to submit to power. Meanwhile, people who are big, like McMurphy, are confident and not afraid. McMurphy made the men “bigger”, more powerful, just by laughing and giving them confidence. All in all, the metaphor and contrast between being big and small reveal how McMurphy made them stronger and more confident just by being
Chief Bromden’s development in the story was evident mostly by his narrations throughout the story. Kesey created Chief’s initial character to be anxious and uncomfortable. This is most evident when he speaks about a certain “fog” in his narrations. The “fog” he hallucinates about may have been included as imagery of his inner apprehension and nervousness. "It's still hard for me to have clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen"(13). Bromden had come to the conclusion that the fog was not real, but had trouble trying not to think about it. “When the fog clears to where I can see, I’m sitting in the dayroom” (9). This quote makes the reader feel that Bromden’s angst may cloud his perception and represent his desire to hide from reality. Besides the fog, Bromden als...
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
This essay will be exploring the text One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey and the film Dead poet’s society written by Tom Schulman. The essay will show how the authors use over exaggerated wildcard characters such as McMurphy and Keating. The use of different settings such as an insane asylum and an all-boys institution. And Lastly the use of fore shading to show how the authors can use different texts to present similar ideas in different ways.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
...e land to the white people is tied into the female role theme in the story. His mother's emasculation of his father made him smaller not literally but psychologically weakening him enough to sell the land and become victim to the combine: This excerpt best represents Keseys use of combining themes, and especially represent the story of the native Americans. Kesey combined The role of women, conformity, and the civilization of the native American throughout the novel. Kesey expertly weaves several very strong stories and themes in to the American myth of Randel McMurphy. He does so in a way that makes a particularly strong statement about American culture. Kesey makes a significant argument about the mechanical regularity supported by Western Civilization. By using Chief Bromden as the Narrator Kesey pulls the reader right in to the middle of the story and also The Great Conversation by using the only character that can shed light on all of the dominant themes present in the novel. Kesey's work takes on a shape outside of the mental hospital which for most readers is hard to relate with, and uses the insane to challenge some very real aspects and arguments present in today's world.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution. 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.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1996. Print. Viking Critical Library.
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.”
Chief Bromden begins to develop a sense of existence. Before, Chief Bromden is described as a patient who is deaf. Because everyone assumes that Chief Bromden can not hear, Chief is able to listen to all the information that is kept from other patients inside the ward: “they don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb… I’m cagey enough to fool them that much” (3). Due to his “impaired hearing”, no individual at the ward approaches Chief because
Chief Bromden, a tall American-Indian mute is the central character that symbolizes the change throughout the text and also throughout society. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest uses this character that is subject to change as the narrator event though his perceptions cannot be fully trusted.
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...
Throughout the sixties , America- involved in the Cold War at this time- suffered from extreme fear of communism. This caused numerous severe changes in society ranging from corrupt political oppression, to the twisted treatment of the minority. Published in 1962, Ken Kesey ’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , manages to capture these changes in the variety of ways. Kesey’s novel incorporates some of the main issues that affected the United States during the early and mid 60s. The government had no limits and was cruel to those who did not fit into society, including the mentally ill. The wrongful treatment of the people caused an eruption of rebellion and protest- thus the Beatnik era was born. The novel, written during this movement, sheds light on Kesey’s personal opinion on this chaotic period in US history . The treatment of mentally ill patients, the oppressive government, and uprising in the 1960s inspired Kesey while writing his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.