One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey

Nurse Ratched confirms to the reader that she is infect insane by reacting in the way she did when the boys were enjoying themselves, being compared to Hitler, and her being heartless towards a young man who is suicidal, proving to the readers that she

Chief Bromden is the main character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Chief Bromden, also know as “Chief Broom” is mentally ill in a mental ward. Chief suffers from Schizophrenia, lack of identity, and oppression. Chief Bromden changes throughout the novel by coming out of his fog, becoming aware of his surroundings, and even leaving the mental ward with the help of his friend Mcmurphy.

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

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.

As a man who pretends to be deaf and mute, Bromden is considered to be a relatively unbiased character, yet he even displays strong feelings of hatred towards Nurse Ratched, proving just how evil she is. As Nurse Ratched enters the novel for the first time, she brings with her a noticeably ominous atmospheric change with, “A gust of cold,” (4) that represents her complete control over every aspect of the mental ward, even the weather. At the pinnacle of Kesey’s totalitarian society, Nurse Ratched represents the tendencies of an oppressive government or what Bromden calls, The Combine. For example, she suppresses the patients’ free will because regardless of the patients actual sanity, she is undeniably in control of their fates at the hospital. Besides McMurphy, the majority of the patients could leave on their own, but Nurse Ratched has been able to brainwash them into thinking that they are not suited to assimilate with others outside of the ward. Billy Bibbit says to McMurphy when he asks why they do not leave, “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn’t like a con-convertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you’re so b-big and so tough!” (162-163). Just like an oppressive government, Nurse Ratched convinces its people that they are worthless so they never feel powerful enough to retaliate. Like an alcoholic, Nurse Ratched needs her fix of power that makes her drunk and

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.

There are many situations in which Nurse Ratched exhibits control over her patients, by treating them as subordinates, humiliating them and de-masculinizing them without concern for their well-being. She uses control to withhold simple privileges, such as being able to watch a baseball game on the television, tub privileges and their right to have possession of cigarettes. It seems she actually derives satisfaction from this through hints of smiles, which are so seldom seen. This only brings about anger and hostility in the patients because of the way she treats them: like children instead of men. This is put best when one patient, Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) says, “Rules? Piss on your fucking rules, Miss Ratched! ... I ain’t no little kid! When you’re gonna have cigarettes kept from me like

Regarding Miss Ratched, she seems to show signs of passive-aggressive behavior throughout the book. This behavior adds to her manipulative ways and contributed to the decrease of the patients’ progress (mental/physical state). Passive-aggressive behavior is used to maintain control and power because it’s a way for her to not display any signs of weakness. Miss Ratched, also known as the Big Nurse to the patients, fights hard to remain as the top authority figure in the Ward due to her thirst for power. To maintain the control over the men, she emasculates them, stripping them of their masculinity, in various ways to prevent the chance of an uproar against her. For instance, after a group meeting regarding Harding’s problem with his wife’s breasts, the patients attack Harding. In response, McMurphy provides an analogy of a pecking party to the current

McMurphy learns that involuntarily committed patients cannot leave the hospital without staff approval. Therefore, he cannot leave at the end of his six months sentence, but when Nurse Ratched says he can and he begins to submit to her authority. However, by this time, he had become the leader for the other patients. Their sanity, their claim to manhood lies in the balance. Cheswick, dismayed by McMurphy’s surrender, commits suicide.

Many times throughout one of Ken Kesey’s most famous novels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book uses animals as symbols to represent the story’s plot. The animals usually relate to individual characters and their current struggles within the story. Animal imagery provides us with great insight to the themes that Kesey is trying to have us explore, and is a very good tool that the reader can use to help better understand and relate to the characters.

McMurphy places a bet with the other men on the ward that he can break Nurse Ratched without a) getting sent to the Disturbed Ward, b) getting treated with electroshock therapy, or c) being lobotomized. Slowly, McMurphy undermines Nurse Ratched’s system of control while remaining Mr. Nice Guy. She’s no fool, however. What McMurphy doesn’t understand is that Nurse Ratched has a lot of control over the situation. Since he’s a patient in the asylum, she can keep him locked up as long as she wants. As long as he’s under her rule, she has the power to send him

Ratched the head nurse of the institution because as the film begins, Ms. Ratched is portrayed as a person who tries to intimidate and manipulate every patient that is under her care. She also exercises her power through her therapy meetings by disempowering her patients through their weakness. For example, when Billy talks out of turn in the group therapy, Ms. Ratched only has to mention Billy’s mother to make Billy feel ashamed of actions, as she knows that in the past his mother has disapproved a lot of his behaviors and decisions. However, her tactics do not work with McMurphy, because he knows that he is not going to be in the institution forever, and so he takes the liberty to mess around with the system by ignoring the threats and the rules that the institute has placed for the benefit of the patients. Therefore, as a result of McMurphy’s behavior, the other patients in the institution start becoming more aware of what Ms. Ratched is doing to them, which leads her to take more extreme measures to regain her control over them. Yet, it is not until she is nearly strangled to death that she becomes more cautious about her actions and a little more sympathetic towards her

The book I chose is entitled “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” written by Ken Kesey. It is important to start off by providing some of Ken Kesey’s background. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Kesey ended up at Stanford in a creative writing program. He ended up volunteering in an experimental drug program where he was used to test the different effects of the drugs at the Local Veterans Administration hospital. This was where he began to experiment with LCD. During his experimental time, He ended up taking a job as an orderly in the mental institution where he got to witness how the mentally ill were treated by the staff and how the facility was run. He could not have written a better work of fiction to illustrate his experiences.

Have you ever thought about how it looks like in a mental institution? If the answear is yes, then i recommend you to watch 1975's best comedy/drama movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It starts Jack Nicholson as the criminal R.P.McMurphy being sentenced to prison for raping a girl, to avoid that he acts like a crazy person, so he can be sent to a mental institotion instead. That is exactly what happens, the doctor sent him to the ward for evaluation. The plot involves Louise Fletcher as the mean nurse Ratched treating the patients poorly, witch makes McMurphy go mad. He criticizes hers way of handling diffrent situations in the ward and he does eveything in his power to change the ward.

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