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Analysis of One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Relationship between literature and society Pdf
Relationship between literature and society Pdf
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Recommended: Analysis of One flew over the cuckoo's nest
The society that we live in today has shaped individuals perspectives on what is right or wrong. Take for instance; I acquire a metal pot and a wooden spoon and advance to the streets of the University of Nebraska, Omaha. I am right next to the stop sign of the HPER building. I sit down and sat drumming up any sort of rhyme. The chance that I will looked at crazy or even called crazy will be over 90%. What defines humans as crazy? Who is the person that made this rules? These are the kind of questions the play “ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST” is trying to ask.
This my general over view of the play when I first read it: The play on “One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest” has a very slow start. Has the audience, I was not drawn into the play. The
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I do not think he was crazy. I think the Chief was one of the most mentally balanced one in the whole play from the beginning. Chief Bromden was driven in sane by the society. Because he was deaf and dumb, the society probably presumed him as crazy. The deaf and dumb were not considered normal in the 1960. So, after I finished reading the play, I realized that the Chief was just sharing the suffering that he going through in the hospital to the audience. “Well, well, here’s the Chief. The Soopah Chief.” The audience can easily pick out the demeaning tone Warren and Williams is constantly giving the Chief all throughout the play. And because he could not speak, the Chief had to communicate to the audience in a different way compared to the other …show more content…
There were multiple different themes, but in the end it all tied into the play. The author demonstrated a madness or what we see as crazy. He showed freedom and imprisonment. Law and order, with rebellion affecting the balance of the society system. And the finally, the constant lust of power by Nurse Ratchet. The frustrating thing about all this theme is that our society has fallen victim unto each one. The government and society normality’s has giving us rules to follow and if we do not do it, the person is considered abnormal. Ken Kesey was able to show that the human race is constantly being manipulated by our own
In my opinion the main theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is conformity. The patients at this mental institution, or at least the one in the Big Nurse’s ward, find themselves on a rough situation where not following standards costs them many privileges being taken away. The standards that the Combine sets are what makes the patients so afraid of a change and simply conform hopelessly to what they have since anything out of the ordinary would get them in trouble. Such conformity is what Mc Murphy can not stand and makes him bring life back to the ward by fighting Miss Ratched and creating a new environment for the patients. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest represents a rebellion against the conformity implied in today’s society.
Ken Kesey incorporates figurative language into his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, to illustrate the struggle to overcome the comfort of inaction, that ultimately results in the great benefit of standing up for one’s self. When McMurphy decides to stand up to Nurse Ratched, there is “no fog” (130). Kesey’s metaphor of the fog represents the haze of inaction that hovers over the patients of the ward. With the oppressive Nurse Ratched in charge, the patients are not able to stand up for themselves and are forced to be “sly” to avoid her vicious punishments (166). When the patients avoid confrontation with the Nurse, they are guaranteed safety by hiding in the fog, complaisant with their standing. The fog obscures the patient’s view of the ward and the farther they slip into it, the farther away they drift from reality.
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.
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.
Gender relations and differences have been a part of society since the birth of civilization. Gender relations in the past have been mainly dominated by men. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are lower that men. Women are never really apart of the play and when they are a part of the play, they are usually expressing stereotypical women behavior. In Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, women are mainly expressed overpowering men. Both pieces include patriarchal elements. Kesey and Shakespeare use various stereotypical female characters as a metaphor for the different roles that women have in society, to express the views society holds on these roles.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the idea of what it is like to be free or confined and most importantly on what basis can one define what does freedom stands for, in the view of any individual. One of the novel’s most important feature is that the psych ward, Nurse Ratched, and all the other people looking after the patients in the asylum who are portrayed as tools of “sanity” in the novel are, in fact, insane in their own way. For them the meaning of freedom should be unknown to the patients and they shall be the one confining them to the boundaries of freedom as known by them. This question of what should be the judging aspect of freedom and confinement becomes more relevant with the arrival of Randle McMurphy to the ward, a highly likely gambler who with all the possibility may have faked psychosis and pretended to be mentally unstable to get relocated to the asylum from a work camp. . The most easily noticable themes is that of freedom and confinement discussed through the characters in the novel. Many types of freedoms are addressed ranging from the substantial and concrete to the conscious and implicit. The setting mainly takes place in a mental asylum on a locked ward which curbs the characters’ freedom physically. The characters are constantly pushed and degraded by the antagonist Ms. Ratched which
When it comes to manipulation many view it as a negative aspect in life. Although people view it as a negative aspect, they continue to manipulate words and actions to get what they want. Ken Kesey applied manipulation in the book to reveal the positive and negative sides of manipulation. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a controversial novel that describes the inner workings of a mental institution.
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Winnie the Pooh once said. In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the men that live in the Oregon Mental Institution do not hear words like these very often. They have been rejected from society because they are not classified to meet the “social norm”. These “outcast” hide away behind the white walls of the ward, protecting themselves from the world around them. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey uses religious allusions to depict that society rejects people that do not fit the ideal social “norm”, but when someone can prove himself powerful enough to stand up for his beliefs men easily follow.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
Rules are good. Rules keep bad people from doing unthinkably horrible things. But sometimes, it seems as if the rules our society has made for us are in place only to suppress what shouldn’t be. Rules that say “you have to look this way” or “act like this or you’re weird”. Creativity, individuality, and freedom can be seen as crazy. This conflict between normalcy and madness is explored in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Society is presented as a ruthless machine that makes everyone conform to its narrow rules. With rules that deem people unworthy, all individuality is squeezed out of people, and the natural, joyful expressions of life are suppressed. Ken Kesey offers his readers a question: Do society’s rules for us come with malintent?
Someone who is insane can not act normally, as much as society can, such as normal perception, behavior, or social interaction. One example of the theme of someone being insane is at the beginning of the book when Bromden is talking about one of the patients, Ruckly, “Ruckly is another Chronic came in a few years back as an Acute… He was being a holy nuisance all over the place, kicking the black boys and biting the student nurses on the legs”(16.Kesey). This example shows how someone who is insane acts like, biting people and just beating up people for no reason, which means that they can not perform normal
When people witness someone with unusual behavior, they are often quick to surmise and diagnose the bane of his or her actions with one daunting condition - insanity. For example, a man who mutters to himself or hallucinates wild, imaginative scenarios is vulnerable to the harsh judgments of others. Bystanders immediately call him “insane” or “crazy”. However, how can one be so sure his behavior is truly insane or crazy? What are the criteria that claims abnormal people are abnormal and normal people are normal? In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey poses such questions. Kesey scrutinizes the thin line between insanity and sanity and challenges those who draw that line. Through his depiction of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Rules rule. Without things like stoplights and driving etiquette, we’d be one disaster-prone society. When we are in kindergarten, we learn how to color inside the lines and paint by the numbers, because we might be told that pretty pictures are those that are neat and tidy. We have terms like “good” and “sane” and “insane” because these words help us keep our lives organized and mess-free. No need to debate it or get into messy arguments. But One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest challenges all of that. It makes us look at who makes the rules. Now we want to know: who defines what behavior is "sane" or "insane"? McMurphy helps us realize just how arbitrary "sanity" can be, especially when the poster child of sanity happens to be the one and only Nurse Ratched. So just what does it mean to be "sane" or
The definition of insane in today’s world is embedded with controversy by our society. As an active member of society, Ken Kesey writes his own opinion of insanity in his successful novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by subtly incorporating his his thoughts towards the topic through dialogue between characters, the narrators comments, and much more. Kesey begins his novel by introducing an outspoken man named Randle Patrick McMurphy who enters the mental hospital where the narrator, Chief Bromden , resides and creates a lasting effect on his fellow patients by allowing them to think beyond societies’ strict ideology and how to gradually immerse themselves with their individuality. Much like Kesey’s opinion, today’s world is comprised of
Societal influence can often lead one to the misconception of personal mental instability, this is evident in both two works by Ken Kesey and James Mangold. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey a charismatic criminal, Randle McMurphy is forcefully admitted to a state asylum despite his perfectly healthy mind. His minimal interaction with a supervising doctor reveals the complicated attitude the film takes towards mental illness. Throughout the film, the mental state of McMurphy continues to be questioned as he rebellion escalates with hospital authorities. Similarly, in a Girl, Interrupted directed by James Mangold, a conclusion is made upon Susanna Kaysen after she is interviewed for only 20 minutes. These 20 minutes resulted in her stay in a mental asylum for two years. She finds herself stuck between choosing the inside world or facing the reality on the outside. After facing numerous criticisms, both resources showcase a different point of view for readers. One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest