The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory. It first started out as a hallucination for Bromden to show how he portrays his current situations in a different perspective .In the beginning of the novel, Kesey indicates that “it’s not so thick but what [he] can see if [he] strain real hard” (Kesey 42). The denotation of “strain” points out to the word “force” and in this case Kesey portrays how Bromden is the way he is being quiet because of how the Americans treated him and his father. The word “thick” refers to a bulky or heavy object, in this case the bulky object refers to the Combine. The Combine is an imagination figure of a hospital filled with people like Bromden and he thinks that people like him need to go into the Combine in order to come out fixed. Kesey makes it so Bromden can only “see” and hear, which lets Bromden to hallucinate because through his eyes he sees the fog; the fog shows how he has seen people get lobotomized and it ruins his thinking. While Bromden sees the condition Pete is in he thinks “one good thing--being simple like that put him out of the clutch of the Combine” (Kesey 50). Instead of “one thing” Kesey added in “good” which makes it look like Bromden himself is in a better state than Pete and that it could be worse if Bromden did talk, then Nurse R... ... middle of paper ... ...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. 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.
Throughout the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief Bromden is stuck in the “fog” living in his past memories. Bromden views Nurse Ratched as the time keeper, able to speed up or slow down the clock in turn making time unbearable at times. The only escape he has is the “fog” where time does not exist (Kesey 75). These hallucinations of the fog have Bromden believe that the other patients are lost in the fog as well. These thoughts are delusional of Bromden; however, metaphorically they hold true. Nurse Ratched maintains a status quo that tends to dilute the patients senses and her routine makes the time seem to go by too fast or too slow. These situations are the reason Bromden uses the fog to escape; it provides him a haven and often times a happy place where he reminisces of the times he spent with his father. Although the fog helps Bromden escape it also sometimes brings back memories of the war and the sounds he heard when he was under attack. There’s a similarity between the enemies of war and Nurse Ratched in which he feels he can’t be harmed when he’s hiding in the fog.
It would be hard to ignore biographical information when analyzing a work by Ken Kesey, because of both his involvement with the Beat writers and as an advocate for hallucinogenic drugs. In fact, it is said that Kesey created the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during a peyote hallucination, when an Indian came to him (Tanner 21). While his choice of the Indian, a supposed deaf mute, as narrator seems out of the norm it is even more so when comparing Kesey to the other Beat writers. McMurphy can be compared closely to Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, but Bromden is nothing like Kerouac's narrator, Sal Paradise. Certainly the loud and boisterous McMurphy would have made for an interesting narrator for this novel but this would have provided for a very different ending. Even the...
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is a work of literature that explores the concept of falsely diagnosing an individual who is sane. Randle Patrick McMurphy clearly falls into this concepts exhibited throughout the novel. McMurphy, a rebellious and rowdy man, enters a mental hospital. His singing and laughing could be heard throughout the ward. This fiery redhead challenges Nurse Ratched policies on the ward, and makes numerous attempts to get the patients on the ward to rebel against her. He disobeys Ratched’s rules by gambling inside the ward, helping Billy Bibbit lose his virginity, and allowing prostitutes to roam the hallways freely at night. McMurphy’s attempts to break free from Ratched’s dictatorship slowly starts to wane. McMurphy, later, gets into a violent fight with one of Ratched’s
As such, he knows everybody in the ward and learns their secrets by pretending to be dumb and deaf. Whenever he is on his medication or gets fearful, fog spills out into the hospital. In the following passage, the author focuses on the topic of the said fog that could be interpreted as several different things, “There’s long spells – three days, years – when you can’t see a thing, know where you are only by the speaker sounding overhead…Even McMurphy doesn’t seem to know he’s been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he’s bothered by it.” (117). Whenever the fog shows up, Chief Bromden notes how most, if not all, of the other patients don’t notice it. While the fog is not often addressed, it seems to represent how clouded they are to the outside world. To them, the mental hospital was their world. Over the course of the book, the fog gets progressively thinner and thinner. Eventually, with McMurphy’s influence on him, he manages to get out of the fog completely. This is noted on page 287 and 288, where he says, “It’s fogging a little, but I won’t slip off and hide in it. No…never again…I couldn’t remember all of it yet, but I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and tried to clear my head. I worked at it. I’d never worked at coming out of it before...I saw an aide coming up the hall with a tray for me and knew this time I had them
However, Bromden does not see it this way. The “fog” is Bromden’s hallucination that represents escapism from the oppression of Nurse Ratched. Although Bromden is a very observant person, making him a good narrator, he is flawed due to repeating hallucinations and delusions, specifically the “fog.” Because of the “fog,” Bromden has a specific take on the hospital, as well as society as a whole. His metaphors are insightful into what is truly happening at the ward, and what society sees of these men. The arrival of McMurphy only opens Bromden’s eyes even more, and leads to his eventual escape of the
With its confronting issues, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was an extremely important novel of the 1960's. The author, Ken Kesey, played a key role in the usage of the counterculture of the 60's; this included all groups who did not adapt to society’s standards, experimented with drugs, and rightfully lived their lives in an unorthodox style. Ken Kesey had momentous experiences that enabled him to create One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey moved to to Perry Lane in Menlo Park as a student at Stanford University. While at school Kesey and other student writers began experimentitng with psychedelic drugs.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey is a confronting novel that captures the essence of power and manipulation and the battle to maintain it. Set in a psychiatric ward in 1960s America, Kesey explores Nurse Ratched’s oppressive rule over the ward and her continual manipulation and exploitation of the weak and fragile patients. The arrival of R. P. McMurphy and his rebellious and defiant ways leads to a series of battles between the two characters as they struggle to maintain a position of power and status within the ward. Kesey presents the ideas of vulnerability and strength using a variety of literary devices and explains these ideas through how characters’ behaviours are influenced by the power of knowledge. Through his characters, Kesey explores the consequences of manipulation and exploitation, the injustice and lack of care that the patients are subject to, the results of rebellion and the consequential growth in confidence of the patients, and the boundaries between sanity and insanity, with devastating effect, echoing the conflicts of his time.
Nurse Ratched’s role within the asylum is to cure them of this inability, yet the patient won’t comply with her. She’s trying her best to cope with the patients and doing her job Yet the patients are doing everything that is the complete opposite of what she is wanting them to do. The patients still had the audacity to rebel against Nurse Ratched’s policies despite her
Ken Kesey was an American novelist who many consider a link between the 1950s Beat generation and the counterculture of the 1960s. After attending Stanford University, Kesey served as an experimental subject and aide in a hospital where he was introduced to psychedelic drugs. As an author he is known for his literary themes of rebellion against societal oppression and his use of personal experiences with psychotropic and hallucinogenic drugs. These experiences validate his status as a preeminent spokesperson for the counterculture. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey helps to develop a deeper in the meaning in the novel by using motifs such as laughter, fear, and the fog to represent the struggle for freedom for the mentally impaired in society during this time.
The Aides in Kesey's novel, who are also called "black boys," negatively portray blacks as inferior to white people in society. The aides had a poor, rough childhood growing up as seen by their lack of education as seen in the quote "`Why, who you s'pose signed chief Bromden up for this foolishness? Inniuns ain't able to write'" (191). Their aides' hatred of the patients stems from their rough childhood. They are also cast as irresponsible and unable to carry out simple jobs. This is evident in the quote "`I'll take him. He's always untying his sheet and roaming around.'" (147), when Turkle, the night-shift aide, lies to the nurse in charge at night by saying that Bromden untied his sheets, when Turkle Irresponsibly untied Bromden's sheets for him.
After he escapes the ward, Bromden returns back to his own home. With McMurphy’s help and friendship, Bromden is able to adapt McMurphy’s words and is able to start a new life as a real individual. Not only is he able to escape and return to home with his family, he also overcomes his own psychosis. Similar to Susanna Kaysen, Bromden becomes an individual who helps out other patients at the ward accomplishing their goal. Bromden surpasses the final stage of Maslow’s hierarchy needs, which is self-actualization. He realizes his personal potential, self-fulfillment, leading him to grow up as a responsible adult through his
She reoccurs with features described as “ Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-colored enamel, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils—everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.”(Kesey 23). In this statement not only do we begin to develop a physical understanding of Nurse Ratched, but a mental understanding as well. She obviously has some deep insecurities with her physical appearance, and that was no mistake on Kesey’s part. He aims to expose his characters-representing nurses and such of the mental institutions- own personal need for power, in other words her lack of control of her body is reinforced by her control over others. Here Kesey inn directly preparing us for Ratched’s role as the leader but instead chooses to prepare us with the why. Later on, we get a better idea of Kesey’s message when he says, “Even the best-behaved Admission is bound to need some work to swing into routine, and, also, you never can tell when just
Chief Bromden hallucinates the fog machine and Air Raids. They represent his mental clarity, it comes when he is less stable and recedes when he's more coherent. That is the first noticeable change by Bromden because of the receding hallucinations when McMurphy enters the ward; McMurphy usurps his power to change through charisma.
Tradition, Honour, Discipline, Excellence; are the four pillars that are apparent in Dead Poets Society, Weir uses this symbol alongside the symbol of uniform to show how the students at Welton Academy are subject to conform to these rules. Similarly, in OFOTCN Kesey uses the fog that constantly surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward. Chief claims it is ‘made’ by Nurse Ratched. Because we know that Chief is schizophrenic and sees this that are not literally there, we recognize that the fog may be medically induced and is a fog of the mind rather than a literal fog. It keeps the patients from rising up in rebellion against Nurse Ratched but is also keeps them satisfied with their lives and prevent them ever thinking for themselves. The way Nurse Ratched controls the patients of her ward is very similar to the way Principle Nolan controls his students. Weir and Kesey use these characters and these symbols as tools or techniques to illustrate the difficulty around the struggle for independence. The uniform, pillars, and the fog are all symbols that help them live in that way but they prevents them from ever trying to improve their situations. As Chief says, “the men hide behind the fog because it is comfortable.” Weir and Kesey are using the symbols as a technique to explain the idea that you can live comfortably when dependent
Working in a mental institution gave Kesey the insight and knowledge into patients and their perceptions of the world. During his time in the psychiatric ward, Kesey interviewed many patients, to get their perception on life inside and outside the psychiatric ward. This is where the inspiration came to form some of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Kesey also ingested LSD, called “tripping”, while interviewing the patients in order to gain insight into their altered perceptions of the world. He even convinced a friend to administer electroshock therapy to ensure an accurate depiction in his novel” (The Psychedelic ‘60s). Kesey had an immense interest in the altered-consciousness. When Kesey was on psychoactive drugs, he wrote some of the most vivid, important details in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “The paranoid sections of the novel where Chief discusses his belief that the hospital where he stays is actually an emasculating factory for a larger Combine that represses individuality were largely written while Kesey was under the influence of mind-altering substances” (The Psychedelic ‘60s). Throughout Kesey’s experience volunteering in the psychiatric ward, he was able to see in depth how patients felt and how poorly they were treated during that time. “On one occasion, Kesey mentions, what’s the difference between the orderlies and the nurse and the patients? He began to see that they were all damaged in some way or another” (Kesey’s ‘Cuckoo’s Nest Still Flying At 50). Ken Kesey’s involvement and observation of treatment, therapy, and use of drugs on patients in the psychiatric ward validate the stories and writing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Kesey’s works in the hospital’s mental wards is where he finds inspiration