One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Final Scene

During his time spent, he is at constant war with her either he losing advantage or gaining. When McMurphy first arrives to the ward, he seems different compared to other admissions. Chief Bromden the narrator of the story mentions “ I don’t hear him slide scared along the wall, and when they tell him about the shower he don’t just submit with a weak little yes, he tells them right in a loud brassy voice that he’s already damn clean, thank you.(Kesey Pg.9)”. This means compared to the other admissions McMurphy does not submit like the rest he seems strong and takes charge of the situation he is. McMurphy is a man who confident, strong, and rowdy and despite his big and muscular appearance as mentioned by the narrator, Chief Bromden observations of him. In one section of the novel, Chief Bromden mentions during the recollections of his past he mentions of his father mentioning to him about conformity based on appearance “Papa said if you don’t watch it people will force you one way or the other into doing what they think you should do”. Therefore, even though McMurphy is a tall, broad across the jaw and shoulders and chest.

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.

Nurse Ratched, though average-sized, is described as “big as a tractor”, due to her manipulation and control of the patients. On the other hand, Chief Bromden (who describes himself as small), stands at six feet seven inches tall. Bromden told McMurphy that he used to be large, but he wasn’t anymore. His father was implied to have been the same, stemming from his marriage to a domineering white woman. By the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Bromden has mental size, not just physical – he increases, with McMurphy’s help, his self-esteem and confidence, and breaks out of the

The 1960’s was a period of great dissatisfaction from people who felt their rights were being violated. Millions of Americans, young and old, black and white, came together to fight against racial discrimination and protest the Vietnam War. The government suppressed the southern black population the right to vote, while sponsoring a war in Vietnam that was widely unpopular. Reflecting the anti-establishment movements of the 1960’s, Ken Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It has since become an American classic for its themes of rebellion and nonconformity against an over controlling authority that does not respect individualism and humanity.

In his review of the film on RogerEbert.com, Robert Ebert also describes how the speech that Chief Bromden gives “is a window into a real character with real problems.” By choosing to let the others believe that he was both deaf and dumb, Chief Bromden uses the stereotype of the noble and stoic Native American in order to fool everyone else. In this way, Chief Bromden uses this stereotype to his advantage, and this could be one of the reasons why he is able to evade the treatments that other patients have to endure, such as electrotherapy and

The way Nurse Ratched controls the inmates and punishes them using electric shock therapy symbolizes how McMurphy is trapped. This feeling of entrapment leaves McMurphy in a continuous battle to gain back his freedom from Nurse Ratched. According to McMurphy, “we must pursue freedom at any cost, even if that cost is death.” Along with gaining freedom, Chief Bromden shows characteristics of the second theme, heroism. Throughout the book Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb. This symbolizes how he feels hidden and different compared to the world he is living in. As the novel continues he becomes greedy for freedom and eventually rises up to his biggest fears when he suffocates Nurse Ratched. Once Nurse Ratched is out of the picture, Bromden breaks the window and escapes from the hospital. The idea that Bromden was able to remove the control panel and use it to break the window, symbolizes his true strength and how he can accomplish anything after running “through” his freedom.

​Red haired, rowdy, and raunchy are three words to describe the crazy, infamous McMurphy, while the Nurse is a prude, prideful and frigid ruler who is power-hungry over the mental institution. These two mixed together lead to a cunning war of dominance in the hospital. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey depicting the patients at an Oregon psychiatric hospital and how the of the patients and staff change when a new patient, Randle McMurphy arrives. From McMurphy 's devious schemes to manipulate the system to get what he wants, to the Nurse sabotaging his friends ' opinions of him in order to gain the upper hand, this superiority struggle has a definite winner at the end of the novel: McMurphy. McMurphy wins this battle with the Nurse because although he died at the end, he still overcomes and finds ways to manipulate Nurse Ratched 's harsh rules and regulations throughout the book, and leaves an effect on Ratched and the ward that proves the influence and power he had over all of them.

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.

The Christ figure is a recurring symbol in American literature. Throughout Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, various interactions and events portray McMurphy as a Christ figure. There are frequent visual and concrete references to Christ throughout the novel. Also, the reader discovers that the other patients view McMurphy as an inspiration and someone they wish to emulate. This cooperation enables him to oppose Nurse Ratched and do what he thinks is best for the patients.

At this time, the Nurse believes that she had won after defeating McMurphy and is now able to easily assert her dominance again. However, she is not aware of the true effects of McMurphy’s character on other patients. “McMurphy's commitment to human freedom is a seed that will be nurtured into a tree in his relations with the men in the cuckoo's nest and will eventually bear the fruit of their freedom before it expires from the effort” (Porter 3). M. Gilbert Porter suggests the fact that others, namely Chief Bromden, had taken the beliefs of McMurphy to heart. Porter asserts that McMurphy’s strength and influence had accomplished its goal of reaching out and controlling the patients of the ward. People such as Chief Bromden are now aware of his wishes even after McMurphy had received multiple electroshock therapy sessions and a lobotomy. Unfortunately for the Nurse, she has underestimated the extent to which McMurphy’s strength had reached. Bromden is able to use this strength to lift the panel to break a window to success, a feat even McMurphy couldn’t accomplish. “The glass splashed out in the moon, like a bright cold water baptizing the sleeping earth” (Kesey 324). By breaking the window to freedom, Bromden is able to break the boundaries that the Nurse had failed to strengthen after McMurphy’s loss. Ratched

The plot of the story is Bromden’s worldview is subjugated by his fear of what he calls the Combine, a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb and tries to go unnoticed, even though he is six feet seven inches tall. The all-male mental patients are divided into Acutes, who can be cured, and Chronics, who couldn’t be cured. They are controlled by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who runs the ward with harsh, mechanical precision. Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the work farm; Bromden senses that something is different about him. McMurphy swaggers into the ward and introduces himself as a gambling man. Bromden suffocates McMurphy in his bed, enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live as a symbol of Ratched’s power. Bromden, having improved his immense strength that he had thought was gone during his time in the mental ward, but escapes from the hospital by breaking through a window.

Conformity has been the target of many works of literature even before Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye spewed angst about everyone around him being a “phony.” To many people, there are forces in the social order that shape others to fit a certain mold, and one who does not fit the mold will be considered an outcast by society. During the 1960’s, rebellion was a shared act among the majority, including authors and artists; this was due to the conflict in the East as well as the Civil Rights movement. To these people, the government was a criminal, even a machine perhaps, which threatened one’s individuality. This provides some historical context on the background of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ken Kesey, the author, worked in

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.

She believes him to be an ordinary man and that he will eventually settle down. Nonetheless, McMurphy continues to do all he can to annoy her. Throughtout the story, the two battle against each other, seeing who will give in to who first. Everything is rather harmless until and inmates party rolls around. McMurphy smuggles in prostitutes to help out the inmate, Billy. When the nurse found out what had been going on she was furious. Billy ended up slitting his throat and bleeding to death. McMurphy was in real trouble with the nurse this time. To retaliate he tore open Nurse Ratched uniform. As a result, McMurphy is taken away and give a lobotomy. When he returns, he has been changed into a vegetable. His Indian friend known as Chief Bromdencannot bear to see his friend in such a state, and ends up smothering him to death to save him from such a miserable existence. However, he escapes to freedom after that. Ironically, dead Mcmurphy had given this man a new life.

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.