One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Critical Analysis

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

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, patient Chief Bromden observes the matriarchy dictated by Nurse Ratched and the conflict that occurs due to Randle McMurphy’s arrival at the mental institution. The author uses fog in many analogies created regarding Bromden’s sense of clarity. Kesey employs the fog as a motif throughout the novel to emphasize the relationship between reality and delusion in the hospital, and to provide insight into Chief Bromden’s disposition.

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.

The 1960’s was a period of great dissatisfaction from people who felt their rights were being violated. Millions of Americans, young and old, black and white, came together to fight against racial discrimination and protest the Vietnam War. The government suppressed the southern black population the right to vote, while sponsoring a war in Vietnam that was widely unpopular. Reflecting the anti-establishment movements of the 1960’s, Ken Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It has since become an American classic for its themes of rebellion and nonconformity against an over controlling authority that does not respect individualism and humanity.

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

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

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.

McMurphy does the same. One of the patients on the ward, known as Chief hid from everyone the fact that he could hear and speak. McMurphy was the one that encouraged Chief to speak for the first time after so many years of silence, when he said, “Thank-you” (Kesey, 1962, p.217). This ultimately healed Chief of his illness. McMurphy’s actions parallel the miracles performed by Jesus.

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.

“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

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

Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is a creation of the socio-cultural context of his time. Social and cultural values, attitudes and beliefs informed his invited reading of his text.

She believes him to be an ordinary man and that he will eventually settle down. Nonetheless, McMurphy continues to do all he can to annoy her. Throughtout the story, the two battle against each other, seeing who will give in to who first. Everything is rather harmless until and inmates party rolls around. McMurphy smuggles in prostitutes to help out the inmate, Billy. When the nurse found out what had been going on she was furious. Billy ended up slitting his throat and bleeding to death. McMurphy was in real trouble with the nurse this time. To retaliate he tore open Nurse Ratched uniform. As a result, McMurphy is taken away and give a lobotomy. When he returns, he has been changed into a vegetable. His Indian friend known as Chief Bromdencannot bear to see his friend in such a state, and ends up smothering him to death to save him from such a miserable existence. However, he escapes to freedom after that. Ironically, dead Mcmurphy had given this man a new life.

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.