One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest is a terrific novel, about an Oregon Psychiatric Hospital, and the events that occur in a ward within it. Ken Kesey takes a daring approach on a dysfunctional situation governed by a mechanical, uptight, and appearingly emotionless Miss Ratched. The tale is told through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a tall “Indian”, who has a very complex psychological problem of his own.
However, this book is not stand-alone evidence of the story, and there is a film adaptation by the same name. Since the motion picture is based on Ken Kesey’s exceptional paperback vision, the two are similar as intended, yet have one apparent difference. This one difference interestingly, makes all the difference, as it illustrates other subliminal contrasting concepts! Based on past examples, movies tend to encapsulate their written kin whom they are based off of, but only to a certain extent. This is because a movie is usually designed to create a bold, lively, group centred scenario.
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest has not so much as failed to provide the same visualized and emotionalized “feel” to the story (eg. Ender’s Game), but it has changed the focus of the plot quite drastically.
That difference is the narration of Chief Bromden in the literary work of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as opposed to the more generally generated point of view in the movie flick. The significance in this aberration, is its simple inability to explore the incredibly creative ambiguous connotations we can pursue with our own opinions about the psychological state of the Chief himself. This sets us on a slightly contradistinctive path to put more focus on different themes that are apparent throughout the book, or even create new ones and put them into
Nurse Ratched wants to display the newly braindead McMurphy to show the patients on the ward what happens if they disobey her. Bromden channels his inner McMurphy by thinking back to what he would have done to prove a point. He says, “I watched and tried to figure out what he would’ve done” (Kesey). Bromden takes on McMurphy’s persona which reveals how much of an impact he had on Bromden. The reader may believe that evil has triumphed over good because McMurphy is now merely a vegetable. “Insert quote”... By referring to McMurphy as “the body,” it is dehumanized. The reader can infer that this means Nurse has taken all the life out of him. Bromden not only puts McMurphy out of his misery, but he also escapes. The escape is symbolic of leaving everything behind. Nurse Ratched’s final plot to gain control by presenting McMurphy as a vegetable is soiled and Bromden gets away before she could take control of him. The fight is over and good triumphs over
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.
Everything seen as unfathomable ideals at the time are used in the book to help point out how ridiculous they are. For example one of the many crucial roles in One who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the evil Nurse Ratched who obliterates all of the standards of women during this time. She is an authoritative figure who has complete control over the male patients in the ward. She can play with them as if they are her puppets she makes even the biggest man on the Ward Chief, a 6’7 foot Indian feel tiny in comparison. In fact Chief explains to Mcmurphy “No. I’m way too little . I used to be big, but not no more.You twice my size. ” ( Kesey #219) This proves how Nurse Ratched as such control over her patients that a 6’7 man thinks he is smaller than the height of the average man like Mcmurphy. She uses any opportunity she can to get into the head of her patients by forcing the patients to repetitively speak about their flaws and insecurities and writes every bit of information down to use against them later. These tortuous meeting usually cause the patients to go into a fit the most notable patient is Billy Bibit, a man known for his stuttering problems exclaimed “ 'I c-c-couldn't take it. Wh-wh-wh-whenever the officer in charge of class would call roll, call Bibit, I couldn't answer.” then he says “You were supposed to say, “Here sir,” and I never c-c-could get it out.”(Kesey #56) This viscous routine of her silencing the patients by making them confess what they lack in order to fit into society continued until McMurphy Showed
The book, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” is a story about the exploits of the struggling patients of a psychiatric ward, an overbearing nurse, and a vulgar but lively new admission. Within this particular story, Kesey implements thematic elements in the story. These elements are known as motifs in which gives the story a deeper meaning including the characters as well. Three motifs are used to influence the reader’s understanding of the story which are the fog, the religious Christ aspect, and people as machines. Throughout the novel these elements are heavily noticed and do provide such deep meaning to the characters and story. With this in mind this makes the story more of a true experience.
In Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, the nurse Miss Ratched is a fine example of a realistic fictional villain. Possession of three key components is essential in identifying what makes Miss Ratched a villian. Motive is what drives the villain to commit the very acts that allow them to be considered evil in the first place, and often drive their entire being as a character. While they must possess motive, they must also have a sense of morals that coincides with their motives (typically evil, or distorted) and follow their moral compass in a way that often causes trouble for those around them. Additionally, a villain is frequently associated with their opposite; the hero who combats them. Kesey’s character perfectly aligns with these three categories of what makes a villain, and it is unquestionable that she is the villain of the novel.
“…She’s somethin’ of a cunt, ain’t she Doc?” Although Milos Foreman’s character, Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), put his opinion of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) in the most vulgar of terms, he was not so far from the truth. In the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Nurse Ratched’s treatment and care of the patients was unethical when compared to the standards one would expect of a health care administrator. She used control over her patients to ensure order, without regard to the feelings and concerns of the patients. This issue is presented by the director, Milos Foreman, through symbolism, characterization and scenes. This, in turn, determines how the director wants us, as viewers, to feel about the issue.
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,
“A success, they say, but I say he’s just another robot for the Combine and might be better off as a failure…”(17).
Author Ken Kesey is the mastermind behind multiple best-selling books. Kesey’s background opened his point of view to help create characters that resemble the people that grew up with him. The use of psychedelics allowed Kesey to view the world differently and focus on controversial topics. By working in an actual mental hospital Ken Kesey was able to increase character development. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest narrator, Chief Bromden, acts deaf in order to survive safely in the mental institution.
The resolution of the conflict: At the end of the Novel, the resolution was Chief Bromden had escaped from the mental hospital. It affected the mental hospital because many patients were happy he escaped from Nurse Ratched authority.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, address the conflict between the individual self against authoritarian figures and societal institutions. During one of the group meetings, Chief Bromden notices that the fog is coming in thicker than ever before which blocks his sight and clouds his hearing during the meeting. Then, once all the taking fades completely, the Chief and a chair float past each other and the Chief becomes scared. In this passage, Kesey uses the motif of fragmentation, as seen in Billy Bibbit’s stutter and the alliteration of “comes cutting” when describing the Big Nurse’s voice, to explain part of the reason to the patient’s passivity; it is through a dominating force, such as the Big Nurse or Billy Bibbit’s mother,
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.
I am talking here about the narration of the story. The narration is provided by Bromden in the book and in my opinion gives a lot of meaning to the plot of the story. Bromden is supposed to be a man with an enormous story with his experience as a soldier in WW2 and seeing the book through his eyes helps to understand his thoughts. We understand his story only by reading how Bromden describes the other patients and how the nurses act around the ward. Even though Bromden isn’t the main focus and it’s more Murphy, seeing Bromden’s point of view and perspective is quite
In recent years, it has become popular for many of America's great literary masterpieces to be adapted into film versions. As easy a task as it may sound, there are many problems that can arise from trying to adapt a book into a movie, being that the written word is what makes the novel a literary work of art. Many times, it is hard to express the written word on camera because the words that express so much action and feeling can not always be expressed the same way through pictures and acting. One example of this can be found in the comparison of Ken Kesey's novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the film version directed in 1975 by Milos Forman.
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.