One Flew Over The Cuckoo 's Nest

In Ken Kesey’s book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, there were two main characters that were in a battle to have the majority of control over the ward. Throughout the story, they engaged in different acts of stubbornness to see who could display the most power and which of the two could stand their ground the longest without giving in to the other. These two characters were: Randle McMurphy, a new patient who was determined to change the ways of the ward, and Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of the asylum who preferred to have complete control over everyone and everything.

Though every period of time, people often find themselves looking for a savior. While most people turn for Jesus Christ or other religious figures, in the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the patients of a strictly-run psychiatric ward turn to Randal Patrick McMurphy. Kesey uses McMurphy to create a Christ Figure, or a character that shows allusions to Christ, in his work. Despite being a patient, McMurphy finds a way to stand out as a Christ Figure through having his individual thoughts and actions, rather than shrinking himself to what the ward wants him to be.

Works of literature innately embody the author’s ideology and the historical context of the given time period. Within the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the author furthers his ideals against the issue of oppression as he attempts to take stabs against its deteriorating effects and support those who rebel. Set in the microcosm of a small mental hospital, he establishes man’s external struggle to overcome tyranny. At the head of the head of the ward is the corrupted character of Nurse Ratched, who rules with an iron fist and the help of her machine like aides. It also features the nonconformist character, McMurphy, as he works to break Nurse Ratched’s endless cycle of tyranny. Although the novel shifts between the

Prompt: 2. Does McMurphy win or lose his battle with Nurse Ratched? Justify your answer with three specific examples from the text.

Only a few are able to utilize the power to control and manipulate situations which can lead to drastic outcomes. Those with an assertive and manipulative personality tends to use that to their own benefit and completely disregard the impact their personality has on the surrounding people and themselves. In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he expresses the theme of power and manipulation through two characters, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy. Both characters use their manipulative powers for their own advantage in a deceptive way that causes the patients admitted to the asylum to suffer rather than improve.

An exceptionally tall, Native American, Chief Bromden, trapped in the Oregon psychiatric ward, suffers from the psychological condition of paranoid schizophrenia. This fictional character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest struggles with extreme mental illness, but he also falls victim to the choking grasp of society, which worsens Bromden’s condition. Paranoid schizophrenia is a rare mental illness that leads to heavy delusions and hallucinations among other, less serious, symptoms. Through the love and compassion that Bromden’s inmate, Randle Patrick McMurphy, gives Chief Bromden, he is able to briefly overcome paranoid schizophrenia and escape the dehumanizing psychiatric ward that he is held prisoner in.

In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, Nurse Ratched symbolizes the oppression of society through archetypal emasculation. The male patients at the ward are controlled, alienated and forced into submission by the superior female characters. Throughout the novel, there is a constant fear of female superiority; Randle McMurphy, the sexually empowered male protagonist, states how they are essentially being castrated. Castration, in the novel, symbolizes the removal of freedom, sexual expression and their identity. Furthermore, Nurse Ratched, the mechanical enforcer, represents American society: corruption, surveillance and the deterioration of individuality.

Many times throughout one of Ken Kesey’s most famous novels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book uses animals as symbols to represent the story’s plot. The animals usually relate to individual characters and their current struggles within the story. Animal imagery provides us with great insight to the themes that Kesey is trying to have us explore, and is a very good tool that the reader can use to help better understand and relate to the characters.

There are many defining qualities that a hero must display. Hero’s don’t need to be stereotyped as one who jumps off tall buildings to save people, or dressed up in fancy costumes. Hero’s however, all have a few things in common. In general, a hero is usually defined by a combination of qualities including moral integrity, mental acuity, a spirit of self-sacrifice, and determination. Importantly, a hero's abilities must be employed for a good cause, usually the protection of the weak.

In Kesey’s 1950s novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ Nurse Ratched’s relationship with male patients is based upon differences they hold about gender and identity. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a masculine misandrist figure that gains power from emasculation. She carries “no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties” . This implies nothing womanly about her as she prioritises her “duties”, suggesting that she aims to control her male patients by ridding her feminine qualities. In addition, she is shown in robotic with a chilling aura. This is evident when she slid “through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her” . This indicates that as a power figure her only concern is controlling her male patients, making sure they are obedient and abiding by her rules. “Gust of cold” implies that by doing so she wholly ruins her relationship with the males due to her “cold” and callous methods. Daniel J. Vitkus states she is “the Big Nurse, an evil mother who wishes to keep and control her little boys (the men on the ward) under her system of mechanical surveillance and mind control.” Yet, can be argued that she is fulfilling her role of working as a Nurse within a mental institution. However Vitkus’s critique is similar to when McMurphy says “Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter?” McMurphy is a hyper masculine force against Ratched’s emasculating norms. Their relationship is essentially a power

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator, Chief Bromden, perceives the Big Nurse as the evil head of the mental institution for a decade because he is “dehumanized to a machine created by the evil Nurse Ratched” (Porter 49), he befriends Mr. Randle McMurphy, or just Mac, and is able to recover back to feeling human emotions. The Nurse, as a matter of fact, is not actually cruel, but just doing her daily duties at the ward. Every single complication, dilemma, and dispute that arises subsequent to McMurphy’s arrival the mental institution are directly from Mr. McMurphy and not the Nurse.

She has the patients divided into two groups: Acutes and Chronics. Acutes still have a chance of recovery, while Chronics are so far gone that they are like “vegetables” with no chance of recovery. McMurphy and Nurse Ratched do not like each other from the start. In Part 1, McMurphy makes a bet with the others that he can break Nurse Ratched whilst avoiding getting sent to the Disturbed Ward, receiving electroshock treatments, or being lobotomized. This slow insidious undermining of Nurse Ratched’s authority plays out like a game, in the beginning anyhow.

A novel based off of a nursery rhyme must be peaceful and cheerful right? Not according to Ken Kesey. In his kaleidoscopic novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey introduces the reader to a plethora of kooky, loony, and downright absurd situations, all the while being set in a mental hospital in the 1960’s. Kesey adventures in experimenting with elements of an entirely new literary time period, Post-Modernism. By using an overabundance of tones that, to the ordinary author, would be insane, Kesey is able to form creative and crazy characters. By using his experience in mental hospitals, Kesey gives immense depth to One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. From the blank screen World Series to the midnight party, and all of the other insanity that ensues, Kesey is able to create an engrossing and fulfilling novel, with a slight flair of the psychedelic.

Nurse Ratched did not agree and put it to a vote, and before McMurphy could say anything, hands were shooting up one by one, “ First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years ” (Kesey 140). Although the outcome was not in favor of McMurphy or the other patients, this particular situation shows that McMurphy’s actions can be judged reasonable because he was fighting for the patients. The patients have gained confidence since McMurphy has joined the ward. McMurphy taught the men how to stand up for themselves. Before he came, the patients would not have dared to even ask to watch the world series, let alone have an open vote against the

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.