Analysis Of Charles Cheswick In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Every work of literature – whether long, short, humorous, or frightening – enables all readers to experience a certain set of emotions from the passages within the text; but what do these emotions imply? In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster clarifies that these reactions closely associate with symbolic meanings. He specifies how “every reader’s experience of a work is unique” in order to explain that almost everything stands as a symbol and carries various ideas – depending on the reader’s emotional interpretation (Foster 110). Foster also mentions the concept of intertextuality in which pure originality is impossible, thus resulting with authors influencing one another. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stands

McMurphy is at constant odds with Nurse Ratched, the antagonist of the story; she represents the anally fixated dictator. She has established system believed to find sanity by adjusting the patients to the outside world standards. Nurse Ratched tries to shape the patients not in their own image but an image that she sees all people should act. It is believed that what the Nurse is doing is helpful to the acute’s actually suppressing their individually. In the novel they are multiple power struggles between the Big Nurse and Randle Patrick McMurphy on Nurse Ratched side, she is trying to hold order among the ward to conform McMurphy. However, McMurphy acknowledges the way she runs the ward is not right and it is actually suppressing the acute’s masculinity and self-confidence. In one section Chief Bromden acknowledges why he believes McMurphy is so strong is because he is what he is. “I’d think he was strong enough being his own self that he would never back down the way she was hoping he would.” Nurse Ratched may have a hard time trying to make McMurphy conform but she has ease making the rest conform to her standards. These are the supposed standards that the patients believe they need in order to be accepted in society. However, they are the supposed beliefs that the majority of people believe in order to strive socially. It is not only the Combine’s Ward that there a sense of missing identity there is also. Compared to the society that humankind occupies, people

Randle McMurphy, the protagonist, is introduced to break down the nurse’s oppressive ways. McMurphy, a con man who was sentenced to a work farm, was diagnosed as a psychopath and sent to the mental hospital, which he much preferred. Serving as a savior figure to the patients of the ward who have already been battered by the Big Nurse, McMurphy causes interference to the nurse’s control. He supports the men as they are ridiculed in meetings and supports their attempts to change policy. Although he does help other patients, he first looks out for himself. He cons the patients out of their money and then follows the nurse’s rules for awhile because of the threat of being kept on the

Interestingly, McMurphy loosely follows the path of Jesus Christ, where he begins a journey of unselfishness to help free his fellow ward members from the strong grips of the combine. With his fusion of an almost thuggish hero and a liberator, McMurphy cements himself as an archetype that was common in the psychological field from that time. In conjunction with the thoughts of many theorists, like Freud, McMurphy becomes a character that serves almost as role model for many young people. In the case of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy’s fellow ward-mates are the figurative representation of the children McMurphy would appeal to. In the end, it is McMurphy’s rebelliousness and inevitable sacrifice that help portray him as a classical hero, while also allowing him to free society from the constraints of oppression.

He says, “Just as I said: any of you sharpies here willing to take my five bucks that says that I can get the best of that woman, before the week’s up, without her getting the best of me?” (73) This quote shows that McMurphy is very self-assured that he can accomplish what he sets his mind to. The ward was not used to this kind of behavior in a man. Most of the men that were already there needed to be there because of an actual insanity problem, but McMurphy was there because he would rather have been there than where he was before and the court had allowed him to be transferred. McMurphy took them completely by surprise with his resistance to follow their instructions and to do what he was expected to do. At his arrival, he immediately exhibited disobedience. He refused to take a shower, which was the asylum’s policy for new admissions. This instantly put Randle McMurphy under the staff’s radar for them to watch out for.

As soon as McMurphy arrives on the ward, he challenges Nurse Ratched’s abusive regime in hopes of restoring humanity and the rights of the individual. It didn’t take long

In Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, the nurse Miss Ratched is a fine example of a realistic fictional villain. Possession of three key components is essential in identifying what makes Miss Ratched a villian. Motive is what drives the villain to commit the very acts that allow them to be considered evil in the first place, and often drive their entire being as a character. While they must possess motive, they must also have a sense of morals that coincides with their motives (typically evil, or distorted) and follow their moral compass in a way that often causes trouble for those around them. Additionally, a villain is frequently associated with their opposite; the hero who combats them. Kesey’s character perfectly aligns with these three categories of what makes a villain, and it is unquestionable that she is the villain of the novel.

In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the lead protagonist, Randle McMurphy, changes over the course of the novel because of the characters that he meets and the effects they have on him. Originally, McMurphy was selfish, disrespectful, and inconsiderate, but then he forms closer bonds with the other characters and they change him and the way he views other people. The characters in the mental hospital struggle with conforming to the dictator in the ward, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy comes into the hospital as a way out of a prison sentence and tries to teach the patients that they need to stand up for themselves and do what they believe is right.

In this book written by Ken Kesey, the main character is a man named R.P. McMurphy who tricks people into thinking that he is a psychopath. To McMurphy, the asylum is a get out of jail free card, which quickly turns out to be something else entirely. However, one vital aspect of this book is the way in which it addresses and provides insight upon several contemporary issues relating to the American healthcare system, by illustrating the ways in which our modern healthcare system has improved and grown in the last five decades. This includes the following areas of healthcare: the need for a healthcare reform, the lack of healthy doctor-patient relationships, and the murky definition of mental illness.

away his ability to laugh. A second example is the scene in which McMurphy and his

McMurphy learns that involuntarily committed patients cannot leave the hospital without staff approval. Therefore, he cannot leave at the end of his six months sentence, but when Nurse Ratched says he can and he begins to submit to her authority. However, by this time, he had become the leader for the other patients. Their sanity, their claim to manhood lies in the balance. Cheswick, dismayed by McMurphy’s surrender, commits suicide.

“A success, they say, but I say he’s just another robot for the Combine and might be better off as a failure…”(17).

When McMurphy finds out that he is one of two patients that are involuntarily committed to the hospital, it makes him realize that he alone is fighting for his freedom, and the others have been repressed by Ratched to the point of being afraid to rebel against her or simply leave. McMurphy fights until the end to free these men of their emasculation even if it

Characters like Billy Bibbit, who is too timid, with a speech impediment and Harding who is a closet homosexual and was less avert in sexuality were seen as having mental problems, and were committed to the asylum. McMurphy demonstrated the treating of these patients like normal people, helped them to become more in line with society then Nurse Ratched’s rules and group therapy meetings, or pecking party as Chief Bromden would call it. Chief Bromden was a Native American and wasn’t insane until he was institutionalized and withdrew himself from everyone else pretending he was deaf and dumb to protect himself. Ken Kesey’s message here with Chief Bromdens silence, was to portray the natives of the time having no voice in the country and to show the controlling and manipulative manner of Nurse Ratched that emasculated and de-socialised these grown men.

Throughout history there have been many great leaders who have helped their countries thrive and prosper. The most influential leaders of the modern world include; Nelson Mandela, who helped to free his country of the legacy of apartheid, Abraham Lincoln, who served as president of the United States of America during the time when our country was most divided, and Rosa Parks, who fought for the rights of African-Americans during the civil rights movement. Leaders such as these start out as ordinary people, but then decide that they want to do something for the greater good that then causes extraordinary things to happen. These types of heroes exist in the modern world and also in literature. A leader such as this can be seen in Richard Adams’