To navigate your way through life trying to identify what makes you insane or not will simply drive you into insanity. But, what measures the level to which you are considered sane? Throughout the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, this very question is explored and challenged consistently. Through the characters and their experiences within a psych ward in the 1960s, Kesey presents us with one simple question: how do you define insanity? The novel is narrated by Chief Bromden, who had pretended to be a deaf and dumb man for majority of his life. One re-occurring concept throughout the novel, that is presented by Chief, is the Combine. The Combine is the name given to the entirety of society and how it automatically declines …show more content…
Majority of the patients in the ward have been underestimated and undermined their entire lives, giving them absolutely no willpower to ever push boundaries of what they can accomplish. When you have someone like Nurse Ratched constantly watching you and judging you, it takes away a lot of self esteem, if any of them had in the first place. McMurphy pushed these patients to finally pave their own path rather than travelling one that was already made for them. But, in many ways McMurphy tried to use the idea of insanity to his and the other patients’ …show more content…
She will never gain the cooperation of the patients again (Bom, 14). In her pursuit to silence the patients, she only gave them more of a voice. Chief Bromden has spent his entire life in the shadows of his ethnicity and his accused insanity. Through Bromden’s narration and point of view in the novel, “His character causes us to doubt the validity of claims that declare men to be mad for their experience of the system, and presents madness as the possible result of our own society.” (Bom, 10). With the powerful ending of Chief putting McMurphy out of his misery and finally running away was very symbolic. Yes, through the novel McMurphy was always a scheming man, but him showing Chief the control panel and his ability to pick it up was not only foreshadowing but also heavily
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 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.
McMurphy learns that he is commited in the hospital and cannot leave until the nurse says he can, he becomes despaired and distances himself from the rest of the patients in an attempt to reduce the time that he will be required to stay in the hospital. He soon realises that no one can leave the hospital because they have become so powerless and dependant, that they do not have the courage to leave. This is another turning point of McMurphy’s determination. He soon discovers that, in order to help out the others, he will have to risk his length of time staying at the hospital. Even with this threat on his shoulders, he does not hesitate to help them realise their true potential. McMurphy’s plan is first to set out to prove that the patients and Nurse Ratched are humans, they can be broken. He also decides to help Chief Bromden realise his own true potential. In everyone else’s eyes, the Chief is viewed as irrelevant and small since he is muted. In Truth, the Chief is not mute and when McMurphy finds this out he is excited since he saw the Chief as a tall and strong man, stronger than almost any man that McMurphy has ever encountered. McMurphy later on promises the Chief that he will help him feel “big” again. McMurphy decides to take the patients out fishing, as an opportunity for them to feel like they are human again. During the trip, McMurphy shows the men how they their mental disabilities against others, like the man at the gas pump. When the men stand up to the man at the gas pump, they feel as if they are not weaklings like they were in the hospital. Nonetheless, the patients seem to be unable to stand up the men at the dock that are hollering at Candy. Out on the sea, McMurphy does not help the men when they yell for his assistance at catching the fish, when the patients caught a large fish out of the sea, they felt like the were humans. When
Bromden is nothing more than a crazy Indian who doesn't want to talk so. pretends to be deaf and dumb. Much of the understanding and respect is lost in the transition between book and movie. In the book, Bromden has flashbacks to his childhood, lighting on significant points in his childhood. His background is never even brushed upon in the movie. Of course it would have been nearly impossible to tell of Bromdens life in a movie, much less show the world from his point of view as in the book. Bromden is still a very interesting character but the real puzzle to his problems are lost in the process. & nbsp; McMurphy is a very sly, cunning man. He knows how to play his game. and does it well.
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
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
Although the novel depicts an extreme scenario of a society with rigid norms, there is some degree of a Combine in every society. The Combine is a great force that?s hard to overcome but can be broken down with determination from a strong group of opinionated individuals. It takes a leader to influence the passive to fight to obtain their rights. When enough people feel stifled by unfair treatment they need to band together as pack of wolves to try to change the system.
Insanity is a blurred line in the eyes of Ken Kesey. He reveals a hidden microcosm of mental illness, debauchery, and tyranny in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The remarkable account of a con man’s ill-fated journey inside a psychiatric hospital exposes the horrors of troubling malpractices and mistreatments. Through a sane man’s time within a crazy man’s definition of a madhouse, there is exploration and insight for the consequences of submission and aberration from societal norm. While some of the novel’s concerns are now anachronous, some are more vital today than before. 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.
This idea of society as a system of oppression is what the narrator of the novel, Chief Bromden, is attempting to explain to McMurphy the whole time. Chief, being a mentally ill man, refers to this system as “the combine” which to him is “a big machine room down in the bowels of a dam” (153). This use of mechanical imagery in describing the entity that controls the men feeds into Kesey’s commentary on how inhumanely mental patients are treated by society. McMurphy is first seen to understand this idea when sitting outside an X-ray room with the other patients. The patients sit discussing the evils of Nurse Ratched, this is seen when Kesey writes, “They talk for a while about whether she’s the root of all the trouble here or not, and Harding says she’s the most of it” (192). Following this moment, instead of having him agree, Kesey provides McMurphy with a contrasting opinion when he writes, “McMurphy isn’t so sure anymore,” which implies he is coming to the realization,“It’s the whole combine, the nationwide combine that’s really the big force,” that has power over the men (192). McMurphy finally becomes certain of his assumption in the first conversation he has with Chief. Chief, for the first time explains his idea of the combine to McMurphy when he says, “‘they
This is showing the aftermath of how McMurphy's actions affect others as well as that McMurphy's desires are outweighed by the desires of those around him.Realization was made by McMurphy he noticed that the patients looked at him for guidance, they expected McMurphy to put up a fight to keep them from unfair circumstances.
In the control panel scene, McMurphy bets with the other men that he can lift the control panel even though it is too heavy for him. He is teaching Chief and the other inmates that even if you think you can't do something, you have to try. If you try and you fail that will be okay, but if you never try, you don't know what you can do. The other men and Chief have never tried to rebel against Nurse Ratched and the institution. They have watched others fail so they are afraid to try; but they are different. If they try, they might be able to defeat Nurse Ratched. They do not know about their own abilities. They lack the self-confidence and courage to do it for themselves. So McMurphy shows them how to try. "But I tried, though,' he says. Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"(111)
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 Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
Unable to see McMurphy imprisoned in a body that will go on living (under Nurse Ratched’s control) even though his spirit is gone, Chief smothers him to death that night. Then he escapes the hospital and leaves for Canada and a new life. We begin to see the different situations in which the patients struggle to overcome. Whether insane or not, the hospital is undeniably in control of the fates of its
The biggest theme of the story is oppression. Throughout the course of the story, patients are suppressed and fight to find who they really are. One particular symbol that represents the struggle is the control panel. McMurphy makes a valiant effort to lift the control panel, but it ends with “Then his breath