One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest: Power Essay

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.

Interestingly, McMurphy loosely follows the path of Jesus Christ, where he begins a journey of unselfishness to help free his fellow ward members from the strong grips of the combine. With his fusion of an almost thuggish hero and a liberator, McMurphy cements himself as an archetype that was common in the psychological field from that time. In conjunction with the thoughts of many theorists, like Freud, McMurphy becomes a character that serves almost as role model for many young people. In the case of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy’s fellow ward-mates are the figurative representation of the children McMurphy would appeal to. In the end, it is McMurphy’s rebelliousness and inevitable sacrifice that help portray him as a classical hero, while also allowing him to free society from the constraints of oppression.

method as I thought the patient would be more likely to remember what I had

The black boys come sign for him [the new admission] and take him into the shower room, where they strip him and leave him shivering with the door open while they all three run grinning up down the halls looking for the Vaseline, “We need that Vaseline,” they’ll tell the Big Nurse, “for the thermometer”. She looks from one to the other: “I’m sure you do,” and hands them a jar holds at least a gallon. (Kesey 9)

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

People with a lot of power are usually very influential and can change your life. In the Novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, McMurphy and Nurse Ratched both had the same main goal of beating each other. Both the Nurse and McMurphy have an impact on the patient’s and how they act. Big Nurse tries to divide the patients to keep them from uniting while McMurphy is trying to unite them, so they can rebel against the Nurse. Both Nurse Ratched and McMurphy have a huge impact on the patient's.

McMurphy was a so called a psychopath rite when he first arrived to the ward. Things really came alive when he arrived he immediately took over the ward.Even though everyone in the ward was scared and afraid of Nurse ratchet.Everyone was scared to get electroshock therapy or lobotomy session because it was all up to Nurse Ratchet,so of course no one wanted to get on her bad side until Mcmurphy arrived to ward and everything changed because he was the only so called rebel to stand up to Nurse Ratchet.Since none of the patients had confidence to stand up for themselves he then standed up for the patients and started to push the limits on Nurse Ratchet by telling her to turn on the tv so all the patients could watch the world series,and makeing

The fishing episode is another great difference between the novel and the movie. In the book, the fishing trip was a planned event that the Nurse kept trying to ruin. Despite her attempts, McMurphy managed to convince Dr. Spivey to join the group when a prostitute named Candy came with only one car. In the movie, McMurphy hijacks a school bus and encourages the other men of his ward to participate in this act of rebellion against Nurse Ratched. Also, the former fisherman, George, was on the fishing trip in the book, but was not at all present in the movie. The fishing trip in the movie was so different from the book because they wanted to show that McMurphy was not conforming to the Nurse's rules. Unlike in the movie, Cheswick was not present for the fishing trip since he was dead. We see from this that McMurphy would have normally asked before taking the men on the trip since he was trying to get on her better side.

     Sometimes in life people are forced to conform to a certain situation for lack of a better alternative, and this is the case in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. These such people lack the will to stand up for their scruples, and intern are simply guided through their mundane lives by the powers that be. Until someone comes along offering them leadership and the prospect to become “big again.” The man who does so is no other than R.P. McMurphy. Scanlon, Harding, Bibbit, and Chief Bromden may have become adjusted to the oppressive system in which they lived, but certainly were much better adjusted to the real world and life in general after their experience with McMurphy.

Although McMurphy’s time begins to dwindle at the ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey depicts McMurphy as a martyr for his continuous devotion to help the men overcome Nurse Ratched and the Combine.

When McMurphy finds out that he is one of two patients that are involuntarily committed to the hospital, it makes him realize that he alone is fighting for his freedom, and the others have been repressed by Ratched to the point of being afraid to rebel against her or simply leave. McMurphy fights until the end to free these men of their emasculation even if it

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.

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.

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.

She could only imagine why they utilized these drugs. Were they in pain or were they taking these drugs for pure pleasure and the mental high?