One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Separatism

wo of the most prominent conflicts in the story are issues arising from person vs. person (Randle McMurphy vs. Nurse Ratched) and person vs. self (Dale Harding and Billy Bibbit.) Of the two topics, the arising issues between patient McMurphy and Mrs. Ratched seems to prompt for the largest problem. From the moment that McMurphy was admitted to the psychiatric ward, there was tension between him and Nurse Ratched. Upon his arrival, McMurphy established that he wanted to know who the “bull goose looney” (most influential man among the patients) was so that he could overpower him and gain power. Nurse Ratched seemed to disapprove of his thirst for power from the beginning, fearing that he may disrupt the flow of her ward. The tension between the

An exceptionally tall, Native American, Chief Bromden, trapped in the Oregon psychiatric ward, suffers from the psychological condition of paranoid schizophrenia. This fictional character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest struggles with extreme mental illness, but he also falls victim to the choking grasp of society, which worsens Bromden’s condition. Paranoid schizophrenia is a rare mental illness that leads to heavy delusions and hallucinations among other, less serious, symptoms. Through the love and compassion that Bromden’s inmate, Randle Patrick McMurphy, gives Chief Bromden, he is able to briefly overcome paranoid schizophrenia and escape the dehumanizing psychiatric ward that he is held prisoner in.

In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, Nurse Ratched symbolizes the oppression of society through archetypal emasculation. The male patients at the ward are controlled, alienated and forced into submission by the superior female characters. Throughout the novel, there is a constant fear of female superiority; Randle McMurphy, the sexually empowered male protagonist, states how they are essentially being castrated. Castration, in the novel, symbolizes the removal of freedom, sexual expression and their identity. Furthermore, Nurse Ratched, the mechanical enforcer, represents American society: corruption, surveillance and the deterioration of individuality.

According to Aristotle, “a perfect tragedy should be […] that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or some depravity, but by some error or frailty” (Butcher 45). The novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, follows ‘Chief’ Bromden, the narrator, as he copes with life in a mental asylum in the 1950’s after the arrival of McMurphy, a stubborn and hot-headed new patient. Aristotle first defined the perfect protagonist of a tragedy in his book Poetics, published around 300 BC. His ideas of what characteristics constitute a tragic hero continue to be used to this day in analyzing the role individuals play in literature. Because McMurphy is fundamentally good yet also flawed, and because with his demise comes a significant message, he can be considered a tragic hero.

Kesey highlights two distinctions between the roles of women in his novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. He places women in two categories, the ‘Ballcutters’ and ‘Whores’ . The ‘Ballcutters’ are presented to have a dominant role over the men within the ‘Combine’ and challenges their masculinity, resulting in them being personified as machines. This is demonstrated when Bromden describes the ‘tip of each finger the same colour as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron’ of Nurse Ratched. Bromden compares the complexion of her fingers and lips with a metal iron, suggesting not only is she machine like, but also has the physical appearance of a metal machine. The ‘Whores’ are Candy and Sandy who are submissive and this stems from the introduction of the contraceptive pill, as ‘feminists encouraged sexual exploitation with multiple partners and claimed sexual pleasure as a woman’s right’, Thus, resulting into them being presented as sexual beings fulfilling the sexual appetite of men.

There are many defining qualities that a hero must display. Hero’s don’t need to be stereotyped as one who jumps off tall buildings to save people, or dressed up in fancy costumes. Hero’s however, all have a few things in common. In general, a hero is usually defined by a combination of qualities including moral integrity, mental acuity, a spirit of self-sacrifice, and determination. Importantly, a hero's abilities must be employed for a good cause, usually the protection of the weak.

Winston Churchill once stated, “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” Social criticism is necessary to depict the flaws out in our society, so that we may fix them. Ken Kesey tried to bring attention to issues plaguing America in the 1950’s through his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) was directed by Milos Forman. The film stars Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Danny Devito, Brad Dourif, Will Sampson and many more. The film is about a troubled man who instead of jail is sent to a psychiatric ward for his sentence. Randle McMurphy believes being in a psychiatric ward will be better and easier than jail. However, the head of the ward is Nurse Ratched and she rules with a stern hand and makes his time spent not so easy. There are many twists and turns and some sad moments for McMurphy. He tries to make the best of it and for the others patients but Nurse Ratched makes it extremely difficult. McMurphy has to try and stay sane in the ward for the time he is there. This film shows

CHIEF BROMDEN: He is the narrator of the novel and has been in the mental hospital longer than anyone else. He feels as though he has lost himself ever since he was placed into the mental hospital for his illusions and his mental instability. He often just quietly observes everyone in the word and pretends as though he can’t hear or speak. He doesn’t get in anyone’s way, but somehow manages to find out a lot about people in the mental hospital. Due to how analytical he is, he quickly notices how different McMurphy is from everyone else.

In Kesey’s 1950s novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ Nurse Ratched’s relationship with male patients is based upon differences they hold about gender and identity. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a masculine misandrist figure that gains power from emasculation. She carries “no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties” . This implies nothing womanly about her as she prioritises her “duties”, suggesting that she aims to control her male patients by ridding her feminine qualities. In addition, she is shown in robotic with a chilling aura. This is evident when she slid “through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her” . This indicates that as a power figure her only concern is controlling her male patients, making sure they are obedient and abiding by her rules. “Gust of cold” implies that by doing so she wholly ruins her relationship with the males due to her “cold” and callous methods. Daniel J. Vitkus states she is “the Big Nurse, an evil mother who wishes to keep and control her little boys (the men on the ward) under her system of mechanical surveillance and mind control.” Yet, can be argued that she is fulfilling her role of working as a Nurse within a mental institution. However Vitkus’s critique is similar to when McMurphy says “Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter?” McMurphy is a hyper masculine force against Ratched’s emasculating norms. Their relationship is essentially a power

One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest describes a mental hospital where the patients housed within are restrained by the use of medication and a controlling nurse who reduces the patients wills. The patients over and over betray one another, which effectively draw them to further detachment within themselves. In an institution where no one seems to care about curing patients Nurse Ratched seems happy to break the will of each patient, making them manageable. In this way, the hospital’s day to day activities blackout all free will instead of creating comfort. The arrival of a new patient, McMurphy creates attention immediately in the ward as he acts out of routine. Due to his

The portrayal of sanity and insanity, consciousness and unconsciousness, clarity and opacity in one’s psyche is one of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s most examined themes. The analysis of this theme, and Kesey’s commentary that extends from it, further asserts this novel as a classic according to Sainte-Beuve’s definition. Insanity is first introduced as a central theme in the novel through with the inherent unreliability present in Bromden’s retelling of the novel, as it is all told in a flashback, and even he admits that his memory still isn’t “clear”. Kesey explores altered states of consciousness in his novel through both insanity and hallucinogenic medication, with one of the first examples of hallucination being Bromden imagining that,

In today’s world with the recent chaos that has erupted many people tend to think that the world has become insane and that they are the last sane individuals alive. However, in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the ones who are seeking treatment for insanity seem more reasonable then the sane ones. This is because in the novel, the person that holds jurisdiction, Nurse Ratched also maintains a fearsome reputation. Many people would agree that the theme that drives the conflict in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a primeval form of masculinity versus asexual women, institutions and society because the author, Ken Kesey uses nonconformity, fear and alpha females as a tactic to keep the patients in the asylum.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey. The book was published in 1962, by Signet, an imprint of New American Library. The book itself has 325 pages total, and rather than being divided into chapters, it is divided into sections. As a result of this, I doubled the required number of questions needed for the study guide section of this project, and based them off of each specific section.

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.