One Flew over the Cuckoo Nest Critical Analysis

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

During the 1800s, treating individuals with psychological issues was a problematic and disturbing issue. Society didn’t understand mental illness very well, so the mentally ill individuals were sent to asylums primarily to get them off the streets. Patients in asylums were usually subjected to conditions that today we would consider horrific and inhumane due to the lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

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.

Over time, social norms and collective standards have lessened in value. In modern society, diversity and self-identity are seen as more desirable as opposed to fitting a particular mould that is defined by what is normal. Although, looking back about fifty years, this wasn’t the case. The societal focus was more directed towards an overall collective standard. Often times, when an individual felt as if they abnormal when compared to the average person in society, they simply accepted it and seeked refuge in an institution such as a mental institution. In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, many of the patients in the mental institution were staying voluntarily due to the overwhelming pressure radiating from society outside the asylum. This external pressure from their ”inability to adjust to society,”(pg 167) took a toll on their self-perception, convincing themselves that treatment was required. Those who are perceived as being a leader have a strong influence on others and can alter the self-perception of many individuals; Kesey shows the patients using this new self-perception to seek social conformity. Once the self confidence of an individual has diminished, the introduction of a new perspective can reverse these effects, build a sense of self-acceptance and, therefore, introduce a cure.

Although it may seem that Chief passively accepts the system and it’s methods, his accounts of the treatment implicitly convey Kesey‘s on critique of mental institutions. The cure administered by the hospital is described as the insertion into the patient’s brain of “head installations” (18) or “controls” (45) that produce a dull machine generated man. Once discharged, a fully adjusted patient and turns into a model worker and citizen who is warped in the ways of conformity.

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

Ken Kesey's use of symbolism in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest transforms the novel and the hospital within the novel a microcosm of society, a battle between the sane and insane, the conformist and the non-conformist. Randle McMurphy's arrival influenced the lives of almost every person, whether patient or employee. Whether or not his motives and actions were moral or good-hearted is difficult to conclude, however. On one hand, he undoubtedly saved the patients from losing their souls, so to speak, to Nurse Ratched and her ward. Without him, they would not have been able to stand up for themselves or grow a sense of self-appreciation and competence. On the other hand, there was a price to

“Both the book and the movie are insightful views into societal problems such as stereotypes about the people who have mental disorders. But the film is largely out of date in terms of depicting hospital staff as manipulative or evil. From what I saw when I worked in a similar institution, mental hospitals are a calm, healing environments—as they should be” (Wind Goodfriend, 2012).

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.

Eight sane people were admitted into twelve different hospitals, where their diagnostic experiences would be part of the data of the first part of the article, while the rest will be devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions. The patients were all very different from each other, three were women and five were men. Among them were three psychologists, one psychology graduate, a pediatrician, a housewife, a psychiatrist, and a painter. The ones that were in the mental health field were given a different occupation in order to avoid special attentions that might be given by the staff, as a matter of courtesy or caution. No one knew about the presence of the pseudopatients and the nature of the program was not known to any of the hospital staff. The settings were different as well. The hospitals were in five different states on the West and East coasts. Some were considered old and shabby and some were

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.

A variety of treatment techniques were present in the mental facility. We will examine those of McMurphy, Nurse Ratchett, and the head doctor. Nurse Ratchett and the head