What makes an outcast in society? A stutter, an addiction, being gay or a mental illness? In this novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” By Ken Kesey, explores this topic of conformity and individuality. R.P McMurphy is the main character and he wins the struggle between him and the nurse over this issue. McMurphy wins this war because he alleviates the stress of being ‘odd’ in the ward for the patients, he also demonstrated that being upset with the rules of the ward is okay and it was their right and lastly, McMurphy leaves a legacy as a reminder of his values and lessons. Firstly, McMurphy relieves the contingency of being odd and outcasted in society for the patients. Being different in society and having faults are all frowned upon …show more content…
He also made the other men comfortable with breaking the rules. When McMurphy rebels against the big nurse, the men see this as an opportunity to get their manhood back, because up until McMurphy arrived, the nurse used fear to gain control. McMurphy recognizes this can kind of repression has lead to the worsening of their mental conditions. “ ‘You’re gonna sit back and let some blue haired women talk you into being a rabbit?’ ‘Not talk me into it. No, I was born a rabbit. Just look at me. I simply need the nurse to make me happy with my role.’ ” (Kesey 91) In this quote, McMurphy is arguing with Harding about his identity in the ward. Harding feels beaten down into a small, harmless animals that do not disobey the rules of the hospital, made by the Big Nurse. Harding is so whipped into obedience by the ward, he truly believes he is this helpless and weak. His disbelief in his abilities is truly why McMurphy is drawn to him to help; to show him just how strong he could be. Even Kesey’s word choice to use “need the nurse” shows how long Harding has been feeling this way for. This speaks to society’s harsh views on individuality because Harding is suspected to be homosexual, therefore, going against the regularities of society in this time period of the 1950s. McMurphy plays the role of being a new light in the ward. He is one who does not easily abandon his uniqueness, no matter how odd or unconventional …show more content…
The men, after McMurphy’s death, hold onto his story and pass it on. He is a man, a myth, and a legend that forever remains in the hospital. Leaving an everlasting sting on the nurse and how she reigns over the hospital. McMurphy’s death also affected Bromden, giving him enough strength to set off into the world, breaking loose from the Nurse’s control and living life as McMurphy would have wanted him to. “I feel good, seeing McMurphy get that black boys goat like not many men could. Papa used to be able to do that” (Kesey 94) This is Bromden speaking of McMurphy making fun of the staff’s blind rule-following tendencies. This also, strongly shows how much Bromden, and the other men, think of McMurphy as a father figure. He is a man in their lives that gives them confidence and comfort. The men in the ward & especially Billy Bibbit and Bromden, like authority and power; for example, the Big Nurse, Billy’s mom, and Bromden’s dad. They like to follow a structure and have a power to look up to; McMurphy is a different kind of power that’s freeing to be lead by. When they see their leader ‘fight the power’ they see this as an invitation to follow suit and question their old ways of the ward, therefore not conforming. So, when the men in the ward make McMurphy like their strong father figure, that becomes their normal. This also speaks to Kesey’s underline analogy,
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a novel containing the theme of emotions being played with in order to confine and change people. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about a mental institution where a Nurse named Miss Ratched has total control over its patients. She uses her knowledge of the patients to strike fear in their minds. Chief Bromden a chronic who suffers from schizophrenia and pretends to be deaf and mute narrates the novel. From his perspective we see the rise and fall of a newly admitted patient, RP McMurphy. McMurphy used his knowledge and courage to bring changes in the ward. During his time period in the ward he sought to end the reign of the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, also to bring the patients back on their feet. McMurphy issue with the ward and the patients on the ward can be better understood when you look at this novel through a psychoanalytic lens. By applying Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence to McMurphy’s views, it is can be seen that his ideas can bring change in the patients and they can use their
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story of Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a mental institution, and the way her patients respond to her harsh treatment. The story is told from the perspective of a large, Native-American patient named Bromden; he immediately introduces Randle McMurphy, a recently admitted patient, who is disturbed by the controlling and abusive way Ratched runs her ward. Through these feelings, McMurphy makes it his goal to undermine Ratched’s authority, while convincing the other patients to do the same. McMurphy becomes a symbol of rebellion through talking behind Ratched’s back, illegally playing cards, calling for votes, and leaving the ward for a fishing trip. His shenanigans cause his identity to be completely stolen through a lobotomy that puts him in a vegetative state. Bromden sees McMurphy in this condition and decides that the patients need to remember him as a symbol of individuality, not as a husk of a man destroyed by the
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
People often find themselves as part of a collective, following society's norms and may find oneself in places where feeling constrained by the rules and will act out to be unconstrained, as a result people are branded as nuisances or troublemakers. In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the author Ken Kesey conveys the attempt McMurphy makes to live unconstrained by the authority of Nurse Ratched. The story is very one sided and helps create an understanding for those troublemakers who are look down on in hopes of shifting ingrained ideals. The Significance of McMurphy's struggles lies in the importance placed on individuality and liberty. If McMurphy had not opposed fear and autocratic authority of Nurse Ratched nothing would have gotten better on the ward the men would still feel fear. and unnerved by a possibility of freedom. “...Then, just as she's rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine ... holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! ” In the novel McMurphy shows little signs like this to combat thee Nurse. His defiance of her system included
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
“Power comes from temperament but enthusiasm kills the switch”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken kesey reveals how the struggle for power and authority is shown in the psychiatric hospital. Ken kesey expresses this mastery through Nurse Ratched and McMurphy and their effect on the patients in the ward. Nurse Ratched has all the power due to her technically being in charge of the ward. The patients “men” are powerless with their acceptance and obedience to her actions. However, everything changes when McMurphy arrives. His confidence and charisma give him some type of power that challenges and disrupts the Nurse’s drunkening thirst for power. Power in this novel is lost, gained and repossessed.
In the 1950’s, mental hospitals weren’t what they are now. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he shows how people in mental hospitals were treated at that time all through the eyes of an Indian man named Chief Bromden. Ken Kesey uses his personal experiences to add settings and even characters to show this in his writing. His life is clearly seen by McMurphy’s problem with authority which goes perfectly with his own and by the setting of a mental hospital, which Kesey once worked in.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to authority, but we should rebel when it is against our better judgment. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy is an individual who represents rebellion. He knew conforming to society wouldn't benefit him. He broke Nurse Ratched's rules and although he was becoming weak, he wouldn't conform. He did not try to fit into the image of a patient in a mental ward.
While McMurphy tries to bring about equality between the patients and head nurse, she holds onto her self-proclaimed right to exact power over her charges because of her money, education, and, ultimately, sanity. The patients represent the working-class by providing Ratched, the manufacturer, with the “products” from which she profits—their deranged minds. The patients can even be viewed as products themselves after shock therapy treatments and lobotomies leave them without personality. The negative effects of the hospital’s organizational structure are numerous. The men feel worthless, abused, and manipulated, much like the proletariat who endured horrendous working conditions and rarely saw the fruits of their labor during the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom and United States in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century (“Industrial Revolution” 630).
He continued to show the patients that the nurses were not in power in fact had little power over him. Inspired patients occurred once again he had inspired them with is lack of surrender to the wards system. With this situation in play this brought up McMurphy picking the needs of patients to motivate his own plan of
The theory of the Therapeutic Community is that the group can “help the guy by showing him where he 's out of place; how society is what decides who 's sane and who isn 't so you got to measure up (p.49).” If a person has a quality that makes them stand out from the rest of the people (if they have a stutter, or have feminine features even though they 're men, or if they like to gamble) then society deems them insane and unfit for society. These are the people who go to the ward for “fixing”. All people in society have to be a certain way, they can 't have any qualities that makes them stand out and it is crucial that by the time they come out, they have no personal liberty because a person who has freedom of mind threatens the control of those in charge (Mcmurphy has personal liberty and that is why he is able to threaten the control of Nurse Ratched.) He makes a bet with the other patients that “I can get the best of that woman-before the week 's up-without her getting the best of me (p.79)” and because he has his own personal freedom, he is able to do just what he said he 'd do. The next morning Mcmurphy woke up early, ruining Nurse Ratched 's beloved schedule an walking around with nothing but a towel around his waist and his underwear
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 the novel, Kesey suggests that a healthy expression of sexuality is a key component of sanity and that repression of sexuality leads directly to insanity. For example; by treating him like an infant and not allowing him to develop sexually, Billy Bibbet's mother causes him to lose his sanity. Missing from the halls of the mental hospital are healthy, natural expression of sexuality between two people. Perverted sexual expressions are said to take place in the ward; for example; Bromden describes the aides as "black boys in white suites committing sex acts in the hall" (p.9). The aides engage in illicit "sex acts" that nobody witnesses, and on several occasions it is suggested that they rape the patients, such as Taber. Nurse Ratched implicitly permits this to happen, symbolized by the jar of Vaseline she leaves the aides. This shows how she condones the sexual violation of the patients, because she gains control from their oppression. McMurphy's sanity is symbolized by his bold and open insertion of sexuality which gives him great confidence and individuality. This stands in contrast to what Kesey implies, ironically and tragically, represents the institution.
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
The story provides two dramatically polar-opposite symbols of power: McMurphy and Ratched (and her fog machine). McMurphy displays and utilizes his power through leadership and inspiration to the patients. McMurphy leads the crew of patients on a fishing trip, which leads to relevations for all of them. By the end of the trip, the patients are described “They could sense the change that most of us were only suspecting; these weren’t the same bunch of weak-knees from a nuthouse that they’d watched take their insults on the dock this morning” (196). This novel is based on the idea of power, and the idea of it is shown in every single chapter. However, to make the idea of power more dynamic, McMurphy was introduced by the author to display a certain type of power; power that is good and inspires others. By bringing in McMurphy, readers can see how truly changing the concept of power can be, but also show that power does not have to be evil and bad. McMurphy’s influence of the patients on the fishing trip shows that good power even has the capabilities of changing the lives of people. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched is also a symbol of power, but the power instilled by Nurse Ratched is very menacing and dark. An example of her power is when she “turns on the fog machine”. Nurse and her assistants are shown instilling their power like during moments “They’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t