How to: Escape a Combine Harvester Essay

In the beginning of the novel, Nurse Ratched undoubtedly dominates the control of the mental hospital. Chief’s profound description of Nurse Ratched reveals he feels threatened by her. Chief insists that “she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor”(5) indicating he feels figuratively smaller than Nurse Ratched. He also details her as a stiff, calculated, and precise like a machine running the whole facility. Chief Bromden feels so impotent under her ruling, that he hallucinates a fog machine and keeps everyone satisfied under her power. The fog is a reoccurring symbol in the novel that can represent Chief’s helplessness: “One of these days I'll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest operates as an entertaining and interesting novel on a pure surface level. There’s a good story, well-developed characters and fresh language. It has all the workings of a good novel, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest isn’t just a good novel. It’s a great one, because Kesey uses Chief Bromden’s perspective to let imagery flow out of the novel and have it all come back to one theme: individuality and its repression by society. This idea is highlighted by the image of gambling vs. playing it safe, whether in literal card games or as a way of living. The mental ward’s new patient, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a self-described “gambling fool” (12)1, while his opposer, “Big Nurse” Ratched,

This belief has made her incredibly sure of herself and given her confidence with the unruly patients. Chief Bromden is observing the Big Nurse and through her expression he creates this picture in his mind of a robot, which oversees every movement, thought, and word said. Since she is described as a robot, I imagine the nurse to be cold and have a metaphorical mask over her face at all times. In order for her to maintain her value of order in the hospital, she must show no sign of affection or love in her behavior. If she were to grow too attached to a patient, the smooth order of the hospital would turn erratic because the patients could do whatever they want and receive little punishment in return. I predict that the nurse must not be married or have any children, because she behaves so frigid and her actions are script-like. If she were to have a family, the BIg Nurse would sometimes show pity or kindness to the patients. The quote contains both imagery and simile, because the nurse is compared to a robot, and the narrator describes how the nurse keeps an eye on everything in the ward. The Big Nurse is like a robot because Chief Bromden believes her to control everything that is happening in the hospital, similar to a machine. In addition, the imagery in the quote depicts the nurse with wires shooting out and sending constant signals, another indication of her power over the

Nurse Ratched manipulated the patients by making the patients believe that they had no power. The patients believe that “[They’re] not in here because [they] are rabbits—[they’d] be rabbits wherever [they] were—[they’re] all in here because [they] can't adjust to our rabbithood. [They] need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place," (Kesey 64). The author uses the phrase, “[They] need a good strong wolf like the nurse” to exemplify that Nurse Ratched had brainwashed them with the idea that they are subjective to her because she has power over them. The patients believe that they must depend on Nurse Ratched, therefore they wouldn’t think to revolt against her. Because of this the patients are subjective to her power and afraid to speak against her. Because they don’t realize that they had their power taken away from Nurse Ratched, McMurphy was able to use it manipulate their opinions about the nurse. McMurphy reveals that Nurse Ratched is one of the “people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst,” (Kesey 60). The author uses the word “weak” in order to exemplify the how Nurse Ratched’s power can be

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

The way Nurse Ratched controls the inmates and punishes them using electric shock therapy symbolizes how McMurphy is trapped. This feeling of entrapment leaves McMurphy in a continuous battle to gain back his freedom from Nurse Ratched. According to McMurphy, “we must pursue freedom at any cost, even if that cost is death.” Along with gaining freedom, Chief Bromden shows characteristics of the second theme, heroism. Throughout the book Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb. This symbolizes how he feels hidden and different compared to the world he is living in. As the novel continues he becomes greedy for freedom and eventually rises up to his biggest fears when he suffocates Nurse Ratched. Once Nurse Ratched is out of the picture, Bromden breaks the window and escapes from the hospital. The idea that Bromden was able to remove the control panel and use it to break the window, symbolizes his true strength and how he can accomplish anything after running “through” his freedom.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel that encapsulates a unique view of an already unique decade. By presenting the decade through the perspective of a mentally unstable group of people, it is seen the harm done to everyone in the decade, regardless of race, class, social standing, political values, or mental

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest presents a view of changing society unseen by most Americans. Life is explained through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic half Indian who spent most of his adulthood in a psychiatric hospital. Called The Combine throughout the novel, Chief Bromden explains society from a unique perspective and displays the conformity it enforces. Throughout the novel, Chief Bromden

Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a unique fiction novel about oppression and rebellion in an American 1950’s Mental Hospital. In this highly distinctive novel, setting definitely refers to the interior, the interiors of the Institution. It also refers to the period this novel this was set in, the 50’s, 60’s where McCarthyism was dominant. Furthermore, it has great symbolic value, representing issues such as the American struggle of freedom and conformity. This essay shall discuss the ‘setting’ & its significance towards Ken Kesey’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

When norms of society are unfair and seem set in stone, rebellion is bound to occur, ultimately bringing about change in the community. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest demonstrates the conflict of individuals who have to survive in an environment where they are pressured to cooperate. The hospital's atmosphere suppresses the patients' individuality through authority figures that mold the patients into their visions of perfection. The ward staff's ability to overpower the patients' free will is not questioned until a man named Randal McMurphy is committed to the mental institute. He rebels against what he perceives as a rigid, dehumanizing, and uncompassionate

Setting is also important, as it refers to the period this book was set in, the 1950's. Ultimately, it is a reflection of what was happening in American society at the time, and what American society expected from each other. McCarthyism, as started by Senator Joseph McCarthy, was the most prevalent movement of the 1950's, where there was great momentum for anti-communism and the suppression of the Anti-communist party. Freedom of speech was suppressed, just like speech and actions were inside the hospital. Here, the Combine and Nurse Ratched act like the McCarthy "representatives", where the patients are seen as members of the public, having their every word and movement under close scrutiny.

Though she smiles a lot and talks sweetly, she’s not a kind or charming woman; instead she is a woman with a strong will for control. She pursues power with intensity and is very successful at getting people to do what she wants. Nurse Ratched has the ability to present a false superficial self, and she has complete and total control over the ward and her emotions at all times. This exemplifies that the mechanistic and oppressive forces in society build up through the abuse of power and dishonesty by authoritative figures. (Lead in) “Manipulative to the core, the only thing that really matters to Ratched is her desire to control everything around her- the environment, the staff, the patients” (Novel For Student 224). The abuse of power and authority cause individuals to be broken. Explain how the outside quote integrates into your thesis and your quotes from the book. The narrator says, “What the chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beaten in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant

Dialogue (pg. 197) “Then it may be that the trip will have to be cancelled.” This relates to the theme because it once again describes how this combine has just destroyed the patients in there. This line describes the long term patients and shows that the constant abusive treatment throughout the past years that was authorized by the Big Nurse has seriously affected their individuality that they had. Their manhood and personalities were destroyed here by the Big Nurse.

     The one that flies over the cuckoo's nest is the giant, allegedly deaf-mute Chief Bromden. In Ken Kesey's original novel, Chief narrates the story, providing evocative images of an all-powerful bureaucratic 'harvesting machine' fostering functionalist social integration: a combine that would process out individuality, thus creating compliant individuals (the exaggerated representation of this in the film's ward is a microcosm of society at large). Those who did not conform would be relegated to a correctional facility for repair or removal.

Similar to Nineteen Eighty-four, the psychiatric ward is controlled by Nurse Ratched and her staff members. Throughout the novel, the combine;” a machine culture which harvest and packages men…and Big Nurse, its powerful agent”(Terrry G.sherwood, 100) does everything in their power to construct “ a world of precision, efficiency, and tidiness”( Terrry G.sherwood, 39). The head administrative Nurse Ratched a former army veteran is portrayed as a sexually repressed woman who regulates people in the ward such as; the inmates, the black boys and the rest with an iron fist and an iron glove and is the human manifestation of the combine. From the society`s standpoint, Nurse Ratched or Big Nurse is doing her job in a properly, orginazing way through her actions;However inside the mental institution she`s different. Knowing fully of the power that she acquires over the patients and the nurses she has no hesitation of using it to maintain her powers and achieve her