One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Literary Analysis

Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey uses symbolism and metaphors to illustrate how his views of nonconformity

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.

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.

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

Society is governed by a set of rules and laws that help to maintain order and efficiency. However, the rules and laws that are set may be given by one person and is not acceptable by society or an individual. This could lead to challenging authority and becoming an individual and not a statistic in society. Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one of the main characters, Randle McMurphy, defies all the rules given once entering the mental hospital. In doing so, he challenges Nurse Ratched's authority which disturbs the order in the ward. Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,a children folk rhyme, and a Beatles song, Tomorrow Never Knows, depict the power and control one may have over society or an individual.

Out of the four characters listed in this film, the one character that does not exhibit pretense is Billy. We first see Billy as a nervous, shy young boy with a speech impediment. Billy has weird relationships with women; he likes women and enjoys the company of them but is fearful of the women that are most close to him. Billy’s mother and especially Nurse Ratched are the women he is most afraid of. Nurse Ratched has a personal relationship with Billy’ mother, she has a special motherly power that she only has on Billy and not the other patients in the hospital. She can control him into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do because, Billy is afraid that Nurse Ratched will tell his mother about his

Ken Kesey and Tom Schulman explore the struggle for independence by adopting similar setting, plot, and contrasting characterisation in their respective pieces, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Dead Poet’s Society. The two works share an exaggerated institutionalised setting, wherein the internal community is repressed by overbearing authority figures. However, as the media format varies, the portrayal, imagery, and symbolism of the setting differs. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Dead Poet’s Society contain parallel plots. Both involve the introduction of a ‘wildcard’ figure into the microcosms of the institute. The character’s idealistic preaching of freedom inevitably leads to disaster at the climax of the novel. Although both preach independence, the definition of independence greatly differs. McMurphy finds independence in escape, while Keating conveys the importance of independent thinking, however within the limitations of the institution. By methods unique to each piece the disruptive figure is neutralised, concluding in the regression back to the establishment’s version of ‘normal’.

Characters like Billy Bibbit, who is too timid, with a speech impediment and Harding who is a closet homosexual and was less avert in sexuality were seen as having mental problems, and were committed to the asylum. McMurphy demonstrated the treating of these patients like normal people, helped them to become more in line with society then Nurse Ratched’s rules and group therapy meetings, or pecking party as Chief Bromden would call it. Chief Bromden was a Native American and wasn’t insane until he was institutionalized and withdrew himself from everyone else pretending he was deaf and dumb to protect himself. Ken Kesey’s message here with Chief Bromdens silence, was to portray the natives of the time having no voice in the country and to show the controlling and manipulative manner of Nurse Ratched that emasculated and de-socialised these grown men.

“Power and Control” in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey The concept of control and power is central to Ken Kesey's well-known novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Kesey deftly examines the complex dynamics of power inside a mental health facility, shedding light on how oppressive it can be. The powerful characters of Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, whose unrelenting desire for dominance reflects larger social power struggles, embody this recurring theme. This paper aims to decipher the novel's complex depiction of power relations by carefully combining original findings with academic analysis.

Societal pressures are expectations used against those who do not deem socially acceptable actions or behaviours. It often causes people to change their picture of reality, as they want to appear ‘normal’ among the majority. But how can one truly be themselves, all whilst letting societal pressures dictate one’s path? Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, explores the societal pressures for patients to conform to the behavioural standards of society within the walls of a mental ward— but the power of one individual arises the rebellion of other patients to go against the authority of this institution. By examining the symbolism of the patients’ imprisonment, imagery of the machinery, and the setting of the ward, one can see that

In 1962, Kesey’s work was published in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. Young people were resisting to conform to what society wanted them to be. The story of The One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a metaphor of the repressive America’s society in the 1960’s and the rebellion that came from it. There were deep changes to the way psychology and psychiatry were being advanced in America. A controversial movement towards deinstitutionalization was forming.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a story that has touched the lives of many people since the publishing of the novel by Ken Kesey in 1962 and the premier of the film (directed by Miloš Forman) in 1975. The story has remained timeless and continues to be a critical part of the educational curriculum. This is because the story-line continues to relate to current themes and issues our society is experiencing. One of these issues including the need for rebellion against a strict autocracy or governing body. It is evident throughout both the film and the novel rebellion is needed by those who are a minority, by individuals, and those within our society.

In this world, there are two sides to everything. Whether it may be a message, a film or a novel, each platform of literature has two different windows. The first being the depiction of the author and the second being the interpretation of the audience. This concept is evident within both works this essay seeks to explore. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, a charismatic criminal, Randle P. McMurphy is admitted to a state asylum due to his will of serving out of prison sentence in a mental hospital rather than the penitentiary. McMurphy brings in the outside world to the admitted patients after being legally declared insane through a condensed interview with a psychiatrist. He symbolizes freedom, life and the power of an

Written by Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published in 1967 by Penguin Books. This story was written based on the author’s experience while working in a mental institution. He held long conversations with the inmates in order to gain a better understanding of them. It was during this period that he wrote the first draft of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Most of the characters in the novel are based upon actual patients he met while working at the hospital.

In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of English boys in their adolescence are stranded on an island. They crash-land while being evacuated because of an atomic war, so the boys must learn to cooperate with each other in order to survive. The boys are civil at first, but the bonds of civilization unfold as the rapacity for power and immediate desires become more important than civility and rescue. The conflict between Ralph, the protagonist, and Jack, the antagonist, represents the conflict between the impulse to civilization and the impulse to savagery, respectively. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses Ralph and Jack’s struggle for power to show that greed and lust for power can corrupt the best