Reading Log for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” The novel is written from the perspective of a mental patient, Big Chief Bromden, who observes and comments about the daily activities of the hospital where he is a chronic patient. Through his interpretations, the reader experiences his surroundings and experiences. One of the key elements that he conveys early on is that he is pretending to be deaf and is able to hear everything spoken around him. Since the hospital staff is unaware of his ability to hear, he is able to hear things that no one ever intended for him to know about. He is fully aware of the hostility that the hospital staff has for the patients because he hears them speaking about them all of the time. From the beginning, he …show more content…
However, Nurse Ratched believes that he is upsetting them and should be removed from the ward. It appears that Nurse Ratched is becoming more threatened by McMurphy and his antics of constant rebellion and disobedience. It is at this time that the cause of Chief Bromden’s psychological problems is revealed. The Chief suffers from hallucinations and delusions. He imagines a thick fog that emits from the vents of the institution and is controlled by the staff. The cause of these hallucinations is from his time served in World War II and the emasculation of his father when he was a child. This has led him to see the world in his mind as the Combine, a dominating organization that controls society and forces them into conformity and submission. The first signs of McMurphy’s effect on the patients comes when he openly rebels against Nurse Ratched when she refuses to acknowledge their vote to change the tv schedule to watch the World Series. At first McMurphy stands in front of the blank tv and refuses to do his scheduled work. Slowly the other patients join him. It is at this point that McMurphy realizes that he has in fact become their leader and he has achieved equal footing with Nurse Ratched. It can also be said that this is the first time that the reader sees Chief Bromden assert himself as an active participant in the ward by supporting Murphy’s revolt against Nurse Ratched. This is reminiscent of times when there have been figures that I despised and formed alliances with others to disrupt or challenge their authority. I predict that eventually the inmates will overthrow Nurse Ratched behind the leadership and cunning of McMurphy. He organizes a chartered fishing trip for the inmates. At first he has trouble getting the necessary amount of passengers to sign up. This is because Nnurse Ratched goes behind McMurphy and passes out literature about the dangers of boating and severe
...and they have no choice, but to follow it or else they can be put into the “Combine” as Bromden sees it. Near the end of the novel “she turned and walked into the Nurses’ Station and closed the door behind her”. When the nurse “walked” away, it shows how she no longer cares and Bromden will then start having a sense of feeling that he should do something because she just let Billy kill himself. The moment when Nurse Ratched “close[s] the door” is a sign for Bromden to gather his courage and help everyone to get out of this ward.
He would always sneak in wine, gamble with them, and would have them play along on all his jokes. His need for freedom was refreshing to everyone else, that what kept them going. At points when he gave up from being a rebel, other patients gave up. McMurphy wins this war between him and Ratched because he helps other patients continue to be excited and helps them get out of there. McMurphy influences patients to stand up for themselves and not take orders from Ratched. Harding listened to McMurphy and did exactly that. He started to call her out on things and make fun of her, and she couldn't respond. It was clear that Nurse Ratched wasn't the same person and because of what McMurphy did, she couldn't get back in control. Ken Kesey writes, “She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings… she couldn't rule with her old power anymore… She was losing her patients one after the other” ( 320-321). McMurphy has always taught them to follow their own rules and not obey Ratched. In particular, he influenced Chief, a quiet patient that watches his surrounding carefully. After teaching Chief what it's like to follow your own rules, Chief begins to follow McMurphy’s role. After the incident of stripping Ratched’s identity, he learns that McMurphy was a hero to him and although he doesn’t physically help him out, McMurphy has taught Chief how to play this game. Chief tries to be like McMurphy by taking over. DOing so he tries on his cap, trying to be the new McMurphy. Ken Kesey writes, “I reached into McMurphy’s nightstand and got his cap and tried it on. It was too small” (323). Chief realized that no one could take over McMurphy's role, but that Chief would have to be in control over himself to make a statement. Chief does exactly that, he runs for it, making him happier than he has ever
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) The character McMurphy as played by Jack Nicholson, McMurphy’s is a criminal who is troubled and keeps being defiant. Instead of pleading guilty, McMurphy pleads insanity and then lands inside a mental hospital. Murphy reasons that being imprisoned within the hospital will be just as bad as being locked up in prison until he starts enjoying being within by messing around with other staff and patients. In the staff, McMurphy continuously irritates Nurse Ratched. You can see how it builds up to a control problem between the inmates and staff. Nurse Ratched is seen as the “institution” and it is McMurphy’s whole goal to rebel against that institution that she makes herself out to be.The other inmates view McMurphy like he is god. He gives the inmates reason to
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.
The use of theme in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey brings upon the ideas of misogyny, sexual repression and freedom, and salvation from an omnipotent oppressor, through the story of Chief Bromden, who lives in an insanity ward. Even from the beginning pages of the novel, the reader is introduced to such characters as Nurse Ratched, or the “Big Nurse,” who is said to be the dictator of the ward and acts upon the ward with the utmost control. Another branch of the theme of oppressors and salvation that relates to Nurse Ratched, as well as Randle McMurphy, is the idea that they are both representatives of figures based in Catholicism. Sexual repression and freedom is seen with the ultimate punishment in the ward, a lobotomy, being stated as equivalent to castration. Both of the operations are seen as emasculating, removing the men’s personal freedom, individuality, and sexual expression, and reducing them to a child-like state. All of these different pieces of the theme relates to a powerful institution that, because of the advances of the time, such as technology and civil rights for women, is causing men to be common workers without distinctive thoughts that must fit the everyday working mold of the 1950s.
Leach, Caroline, and Stuart Murray. "Disability and Gender in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008): n. pag. Disability Studies Quarterly. Web. 13 May 2017. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/149/149
The main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is brought to a state mental institution from a state prison to be studied to see if he has a mental illness. McMurphy has a history of serving time in prison for assault, and seems to take no responsibility for his actions. McMurphy is very outgoing, loud, rugged, a leader, and a rebel. McMurphy also seems to get pleasure out of fighting the system. McMurphy relishes in challenging the authority of Nurse Ratchett who seems to have a strong hold over the other patients in the ward. He enters into a power struggle with Nurse Ratchett when he finds out that he cannot leave the hospital until the staff, which primarily means her, considers him cured.
The staff of the hospital also have their mission, and that is to keep the patients living as they always have, under conformity and military manner. Conformity has taken over and anyone who steps out of line will be punished. hen McMurphy first arrives to the hospital he immediately attracts attention for he was something the patients were not acccostumed to see. McMurphy represents sexuality, freedom, and self-determination—characteristics that clash with the oppressed ward, which is controlled by Nurse Ratched. He came in big and strong and laugh which came to be known as a symbol of freedom.
Although some parents believe Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is sending the wrong message to their children, the message is positive and can help their children better understand mental institutions and also teaches them that everyone deserves freedom.
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.
Now more than ever we live in a world of power struggles but in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Kesey brings the attention of this struggle to a more controversial setting. The book is placed in a mental institution called Combine. A key part to understanding Kesey’s message is understanding his history. He was a nurse in a mental institution which inspired this book because of his own personal observations and experiences. That means that his purpose is not just logical but very much comes from the heart. Another key part is the time period. During the early 1960s America was in the space race. There was a strong power struggle then as well between capitalism vs communism. They also were in a stage of reform in which the idea
McMurphy is an individual who is challenging and rebelling against the system's rules and practices. He eventually teaches this practice of rebellion to the other patients who begin to realize that their lives are being controlled unfairly by the mental institution. When McMurphy first arrives at the institution, all of the other patients are afraid to express their thoughts to the Big Nurse. They are afraid to exercise their thoughts freely, and they believe that the Big Nurse will punish them if they question her authority. One patient, Harding, says, "All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees...We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place" (Kesey 62).
Initially the ward is run as if it was a prison ward, but from the moment the brawling, gambling McMurphy sets foot on the ward it is identified that he is going to cause havoc and provide change for the patients. McMurphy becomes a leader, a Christ like figure and the other patients are his disciples. The person who is objective to listen to his teachings at first is Chief Bromden (often called Bromden), but then he realizes that he is there to save them and joins McMurphy and the Acutes (meaning that they have possibility for rehabilitation and release) in the protest against Nurse Ratched, a bureaucratic woman who is the protagonist of the story, and the `Combine' (or society).
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.
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.