One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Family Theme

In the novel, McMurphy represents strength, for even his hands, “Were thick and strong closing over mine, and my hand commenced to feel peculiar and went to swelling up out there on my stick of an arm, like he was transmitting his own blood into it. It rang with blood and power,” (Kesey 25). He is seen as a symbol of strength

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.

Early on in the novel, Kesey provides the reader with short glimpses into Bromden’s mentality through parenthetical digressions and the use of the fog. Initially, the author creates one of these brief glances in an analogy where a hound is “running scared and lost”

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.

Nurse Ratched, though average-sized, is described as “big as a tractor”, due to her manipulation and control of the patients. On the other hand, Chief Bromden (who describes himself as small), stands at six feet seven inches tall. Bromden told McMurphy that he used to be large, but he wasn’t anymore. His father was implied to have been the same, stemming from his marriage to a domineering white woman. By the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Bromden has mental size, not just physical – he increases, with McMurphy’s help, his self-esteem and confidence, and breaks out of the

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.

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,

​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

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

Power and control are the central ideas of Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are examples of physical, authoritative and mechanical power in the novel, as well as cases of self-control, and control over others. Nurse Ratched is the ultimate example of authoritative power and control over others but R.P. McMurphy refuses to acknowledge the Nurse’s power, and encourages others to challenge the status quo. The other patients begin powerless, but with McMurphy’s help, learn to control their own lives. Many symbols are also used to represent power and control in the book, such as the ‘Combine’, ‘fog’, and the imagery of machines.

Although it may seem that Chief passively accepts the system and it’s methods, his accounts of the treatment implicitly convey Kesey‘s on critique of mental institutions. The cure administered by the hospital is described as the insertion into the patient’s brain of “head installations” (18) or “controls” (45) that produce a dull machine generated man. Once discharged, a fully adjusted patient and turns into a model worker and citizen who is warped in the ways of conformity.

The mental state of people is a significant matter in past and contemporary society that should be cared for and be continuously monitored. This is conveyed in author, Ken Kesey’s world renown novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The novel depicts how the best way to positively affect the rehabilitation process for the mentally ill is to resurrect the humanity within the individual. This resurrection must be done by allowing patients to pursue their happiness. The men on the ward are clearly dynamic characters, they change slowly throughout the novel.

In the 1950’s, clashes between communism and capitalism have dominated the decade. Although it wasn’t always easy, the United States experienced an important economic and home construction growth. The fifty’s weren’t always easy but it made place to a lot of improvement in the US government and in the society. In this text I will talk to you about the similarities and differences between the novel One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest and the movie. First of all, the story took place in hospital in Oregon in the late fifty’s and early sixty’s. The World War II is still present in the community’s head. The hospital is a world of regulations, routine, and discipline in which Nurse Ratched has a full control. Nurse Ratched also does all what she can to keep the outside world away from the patients. Chief Bromden, the narrator, has been a patient in the Oregon psychiatric hospital for ten years. Bromden suffers from paranoia and it is very easy to understand all along the story. In the hospital, all the patient are men and they are all divided on a particular way. All the men that can not be cured are together and all the others that can be cured and together too. The hospital is ruled by Miss Rached, an army Nurse that is very mechanical. Everything starts when Randle McMurphy enters the hospital. Bromden see’s right away that McMurphy is not like the other patients. After experiencing his first meeting directed by nurse Ratched, McMurphy tells the other patients that the nurse is a