Gambling and Taking Risks in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a power play is presented between an unsuspected hero and a ruthless and control obsessed nurse in a mental hospital. The tragic ending makes the reader ponder if the selfless, and sacrificial hero, McMurphy, truly wins against the evil Nurse Ratched. Although Nurse Ratched is a powerful and unyielding force against the boys, good ultimately triumphs over evil because McMurphy shows the patients their own power and how they can stand up for themselves, sacrificing himself to save the others.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey during a time in our society when pressures of our modern world seemed at their greatest. Many people were, at this time, deemed by society’s standards to be insane and institutionalized. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a ward of a mental institution. The major conflict in the novel is that of power. Power is a recurring and overwhelming theme throughout the novel. Kesey shows the power of women who are associated with the patients, the power Nurse Ratched has, and also the power McMurphy fights to win. By default, he also shows how little power the patients have.

Society is governed by a set of rules and laws that help to maintain order and efficiency. However, the rules and laws that are set may be given by one person and is not acceptable by society or an individual. This could lead to challenging authority and becoming an individual and not a statistic in society. Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one of the main characters, Randle McMurphy, defies all the rules given once entering the mental hospital. In doing so, he challenges Nurse Ratched's authority which disturbs the order in the ward. Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,a children folk rhyme, and a Beatles song, Tomorrow Never Knows, depict the power and control one may have over society or an individual.

In Part I of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy enters the ward as self-absorbed and self centered. He doesn’t care if he takes advantage of the people and only cares about himself. His track record proves this; “ A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest - for Rape” (Kesey 42). All of his convictions and arrests show that he wasn’t ever worried about anyone else, especially his charged of rape. McMurphy also shows his self-centered personality right away when he was talking to the patients. He tells them; “Why, one of the big reasons I got myself sent here was because I needed some new suckers.... I thought I might take advantage of this and maybe make both our lives a little more richer. I’m starting level with you. I’m a gambler and I’m not in the habit of losing” (71). McMurphy comes straight out and tells the patients that he is a gambler and plans on taking their money. He doesn’t care about what they might think about him and it also doesn’t bother him to take advantage of people like mental handicaps. He just wants to win their money and plans on doing so. Overall, in Part I McMurphy is self-absorbed and self-centered and proves this with his life history and with what he tells the other patients.

​Red haired, rowdy, and raunchy are three words to describe the crazy, infamous McMurphy, while the Nurse is a prude, prideful and frigid ruler who is power-hungry over the mental institution. These two mixed together lead to a cunning war of dominance in the hospital. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey depicting the patients at an Oregon psychiatric hospital and how the of the patients and staff change when a new patient, Randle McMurphy arrives. From McMurphy 's devious schemes to manipulate the system to get what he wants, to the Nurse sabotaging his friends ' opinions of him in order to gain the upper hand, this superiority struggle has a definite winner at the end of the novel: McMurphy. McMurphy wins this battle with the Nurse because although he died at the end, he still overcomes and finds ways to manipulate Nurse Ratched 's harsh rules and regulations throughout the book, and leaves an effect on Ratched and the ward that proves the influence and power he had over all of them.

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, is a commended novel written by Ken Kesey about a certifiable mental institution. Randle Patrick McMurphy is the character that Kesey has predominantly used to impact the reader. Kesey illustrated this by having a presumed deaf mute, Chief Bromden narrate the novel, focusing on how McMurphy influence’s the other deranged characters of the novel. In order to have McMurphy leave an impact on the ward, Kesey portrayed him as an anti- hero. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is not the only novel to include an anti- hero; authors have included these types of characters to incorporate aspects of the human conditions to their literature. Kesey could have initially kept McMurphy as a hero; to save the day and fight

The story One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey describes a 1950’s Oregon mental hospital that is administered by a cruel and abusive nurse named Miss. Ratched was inspired by Kesey’s own experience observing patients in a mental hospital. The 1950’s were a time of increasing social change and development culminating in movements such as the civil rights and sexual revolution movements of the 60’s. The novel ties sexual liberation to personal freedoms and shows that being able to manage one's behavior and choices is a sign of independence. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey persuades us to share the same worldview through use of language and perspective, showing us the importance of freedom and the impact of society on what freedoms we allow ourselves to have.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, is the telling of the inner workings of a mental asylum told by the view of one of the patients. Bromden, the narrator who is seemingly deaf and mute, begins the story with warning the reader that he is not a reliable source before he dives into the past to tell of the mayhem that Randall McMurphy brings to the mental institute with his arrival. McMurphy takes the asylum by storm with his masculinity in a corporation ran by an effeminate woman, Big Nurse Ratched. The longer McMurphy stays, the more the patients become individuals rather than a part of the machine of the

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a controversial novel that has left parents and school authorities debating about its influence on students since its publication in 1962. The novel describes the inner workings of a mental institution, how the patients are emasculated and mistreated by the terrifying Nurse Ratched, who will go to any length to control them. But in comes McMurphy, a criminal who chose to go to an asylum rather than serve physical labor; he disrupts the order of the hospital with his big personality and loud opinions, undermining the authority of Nurse Ratched and encouraging the patients to live their own lives, until he too, is silenced forever by authority. With his novel, Ken Kesey paints society as an oppressive

Throughout his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey boldly criticizes the popular belief that mental illness is debilitating. Furthermore, Kesey dares to suggest that such instability is empowering. His well-developed characters, though confined to a psychiatric hospital in Oregon, prove to be the most perceptive people in the novel. By approaching his subject through the voice of a narrator who successfully fakes being deaf and dumb, Kesey forces his readers to acknowledge that there may be more to those with mental illness than meets the eye.

“People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.” This quote by Ken Kesey embodies his view of society in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest. He depicts the modern society through Nurse Ratched, a strong authoritarian figure, that embellishes the nature of society. Nurse Ratched is notorious in her endeavors to control the men and uses her power to regulate the men. In this domain the beams of society cause the men to shrink from individual freedom that is reawakened with McMurphy, who teaches the men to be bold in the face of society. In Kesey’s work he highlights several major ideas about society. He illustrates the repressive nature of society that causes men to conform to boundaries. Further, he depicts how society rejects those who are deemed defective in the system. Lastly, he also illustrates how society is a major cause of shame and indignity. Thus, Kensey delineates the nature of society as being repressive, selective, and a cause of diffidence.

Our perspective of a stranger whom we’ve never met nor seen, but only heard of through the mouth of the enemy’s opinion, will inevitably align with the only version of the story we’ve heard. This sort of bias is found in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with Nurse Ratched’s depiction through the narration by Chief Bromden. The reliability of Bromden’s perspective is questionable, as it is his interpretation of the world, rather than what it actually is.

We feel that One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest is filled with many psychological connotations. This movie is set in a mental hospital where McMurphy was admitted to be psychologically evaluated because of violent behavior. Upon his arrival McMurphy noticed that the patients were very robot-like in their actions. The hospital is extremely structured where the patient’s daily life was monotonous. We will discuss the various connotations by answering the following questions that have been asked.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Gambler, we are presented with a novel whose protagonist is what we would call today a problem gambler.  The gambling mania of the story's hero, Alexei Ivanovitch, is a mirror of Dostoyevsky's own gambling compulsion.  The heroine, Polina Alexandrovna, represents a woman Dostoyevsky had as a real lover.  Polina is the stepdaughter of the General, who Alexei works for as a servant.  The General shows paranoia over gambling from the outset of the story.  He censures Alexei with respect to his care of the children, "I suppose you would like to take them to the Casino to play roulette?  Well, excuse my speaking so plainly, but I know how addicted you are to gambling.  Though I

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.