One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Literary Analysis

1. Randle Patrick McMurphy charges into the Mental Hospital and challenges Nurse Ratched also known as the “Big Nurse” in attempts to topple what she has established. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” emptiness, placement, and apathy loom in the beginning of the novel, however once Randle Patrick McMurphy arrives the order of combines takes a drastic turn… for the good! McMurphy is a complex character because he can be seen either as a negative influence or as a positive influence because of his actions in the story. However, McMurphy a positive influence because of his actions within the novel.

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 the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy struggles to conform to the authority of the mental hospital, or more importantly, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched manipulates the patients and staff throughout the movie in order to make them all fit her expectations. Nurse Ratched had the institution on a specific routine until McMurphy showed. Since McMurphy’s arrival, he and Nurse Ratched have had many altercations, and as a result of his actions and disobedience, the audience is led to ponder if he is wrong by not being compliant to her request. McMurphy’s stubborn disobedience made him to blame for all the tragedies that occured in the movie’s conclusion.

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is about the power structure of a mental ward from the perspective of a patient, Bromden. The story takes place during the 1950's in Oregon. Many of the patients on the ward are not necessarily insane however do not fit in with pre established societal norms and have chosen a life away from these norms. The men who are voluntary have given in to the staff and follow them like sheep, however, the men who are committed need controlling according to society so they were sent to the ward. The head nurse, Nurse Rached, of the ward keeps control using her staff that has been picked out over years of meticulous selection. The staff under Rached's orders keep control of the patients

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.

Other patients on the ward begin to stand up to Nurse Ratchet and her rules. For instance, Cheswick hollers “ Rules? Piss on your fucking rules, Miss Ratched!” (Forman One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Film). A momentary outburst from Cheswick is an indicator that McMurphy has been able to model a sense of indignance at all of their treatment, and this is now being emulated by other patients through their behaviour towards Nurse Ratched. Another instance of patients talking down to Ratchet is when Sefelt states “Maybe he'll just show Nurse Ratched his big thing and she'll open the door for him.” (Forman One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Film). In this statement the use of sexual language is about empowerment. This makes reference to the possibility that McMurphy holds the key to their liberation from Nurse Ratchet’s control through his capacity to dominate her both sexually and otherwise. His ability to stand up to her and challenge her has captured Sefelt’s

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a book in which he dealt with the issues of racism, sex and authority that is going on in a mental institute. In the novel, the women are depicted as the power figures who are able to significantly manipulate the patients on the ward. There are four ways of Ken Kesey’s using of “woman” as a subject: Superiority of male sexuality over female authority, matriarchal system that seeks to castrate men in the society, mother figures as counterpart of Big Nurse and “Womanish” values defined as civilizing in the novel.

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

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

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

In the convoluted mess of the botched colonization of Mars in The Martian Chronicles and the horrors of mental institutions in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest arise many intricate similarities and differences. Both The Martian Chronicles and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest have characters who oppose change, strive for freedom, and oppose the status quo; however, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the maintenance of current norms is portrayed as evil while in The Martian Chronicles it is painted as an act of heroism.

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.

He is a main character that experiences an extreme change in the novel from a quiet little coward, to a big confident rebel who overcomes the control of the ward and society. He watches everyone around him follow in McMurphy’s footsteps and go through the same change he does. Before McMurphy rescued them they were lost. They were outsiders that could not conform but could not feel comfortable in their own skin either. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey uses the patients’ conflict between their individuality and society’s standards of normal to portray that one who heroically resists a confining power can direct a path to independence and courage for those who do not have the strength to do

While the novel itself is portrayed as an odd depiction of the struggle of power in an unrealistic setting, there is a purpose for the information included in the novel, which is full of symbolism. The novel by Ken Kesey was written around the children’s rhyme previously stated and symbolizes the plot. The beginning of the rhyme is displayed as “Ting. Tingle, tangle, tremble toes, she’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts them in pens” which also depicts the novel because the fisherman is Nurse Ratched, who “catches hens”, or mentally ill patients and “puts them in pens” by incarcerating them in the psychiatric hospital. The rhyme then continues with “… three geese in a flock, one flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

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.