One Who Flew The Cuckoo's Nest Literary Analysis

“Enhancing Your Body Image” (2015) discusses the impact popular culture has on women strive to have Twiggy’s body and men hope to be the tough guy like Clint Eastwood (p.340). People are willing to alter their appearance physically; for example, people try to lose weight or change their personality by playing sports or instruments to find the sense of belonging. Society has a fascination of trying to belong within a social group.

The Chief, our narrator, is a shy Native American who pretends to be deaf and dumb to remain invisible on the ward. This allows him to be an observer which offers him a measure of self-protection. Most of the patients treat Chief like an object. However, McMurphy continually tries to communicate with him. For example, he states “I swear you 're the biggest Indian I ever saw” (Kesey 219). As in most cases, McMurphy motivates and imparts confidence in numerous men during his stay at the asylum. One of the primary acutes he encourages is Bromden, as McMurphy is the only person who is able to make Chief Bromden, who

Undeniably, Ken Kesey's intention throughout the novel of The One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was to enlighten us to a new world of understanding about the complexities of human nature. From observations on the internal and external conflicts between a rebel and a follower within a suppressive microcosm of society, we are elevated to the understanding of how through human nature, both conflicting figures are inevitably destroyed and further reinforces the social order. Thus, Kesey resolves this complication by inspiring us to be neither a rebel nor a follower, but convinces us throughout the text to take a third option in being a spectator that learns from the mistakes made by others in order to truly escape the repressing order of society.

The fact that his size has grown over time is not important but what is significant is the effect of that increase of power has in the plot of the novel. To elaborate, a short time later after this quote, McMurphy used that power to accomplish what would be one of the most game-changing events and act as a turning point in the story as he used his growing size to expose Nurse Ratched’s weakness to all of the patients. The thing to take from this is how “big” and powerful the individual of McMurphy got and how tremendous of an impact that his size and power had on the patients overcoming Nurse Ratched. This would parallel society overcoming the government. To conclude how the motif of size contributes to the theme of individuality, we end with the development of the size of Bromden and how that led to one of the other more influential events in the story. At the beginning of the book, Bromden was considerably powerless which was reflected by his correlating subpar size. Through the heavy influence and training from McMurphy, Bromden then regained his former size as we can see in this quote, “I looked down and saw how my foot was bigger than I’d ever remembered it, like McMurphy’s just saying it had blowed it twice its size,” (Kesey 268). What is noteworthy from this passage is not the fact that he was getting larger in size and recovering his confidence but rather what

From his introduction, McMurphy is characterized as masculine and expressive, a stark contrast to Ratched’s repressive nature. While Ratched makes an effort to mask her identifiable sexual characteristics, McMurphy jumps at attempts to showcase his machismo. Upon his arrival, McMurphy’s boisterous laugh represents huge change coming to the ward, as Bromden “realized it’s the first laugh [he] heard in years” (Kesey, 12). This also shows McMurphy’s jolly nature, which is seen as uplifting by the patients through the story.As the story progresses, McMurphy falls more and more into the conventional “Great American Hero” stereotype: overtly masculine and self-expressive (Potts). McMurphy can also be seen as an ideal adolescent hero when seeing him from a Jungian Perspective: “physically powerful, avidly sexual, cunning, and confident” (Potts). Just like Ratched, McMurphy is alluded to in the nursery rhyme from Bromden’s grandmother, showing how this relatively powerless character does more to help than the individuals in the system designed to help. After Ratched’s part in the rhyme, McMurphy is described as the “goose” that swoops down to pluck Bromden out of the cuckoo’s nest (Kesey 285). This shows that McMurphy ironically does more to help Bromden and the

This source is going to be used specifically to show how body image varies from each individual to the next due to other factors such as those mentioned above. When discussing body image a one size fits all definition and experienced is assigned , but this source will show that no two experiences are the same. The examples in this novel will also be used to show that these differences need to be taken in consideration when starting to find out what method works to help an individual create a more positive body

In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey uses machine imagery to develop the theme that society forces people to conform. The novel is able to portray machine imagery and conformity by using the Patients, Combine, and Bromden’s Dream.

Also, the reader knows that he is severely psychotic. Even though the Chief is a very large and powerful man, in his mind he is small and weak. He is constantly in a fog that he thinks is pumped on to the ward. With Randle P. McMurphy joining the ward, the Chief begins to grow again. The Chief and McMurphy bond, as friends, instantly. Their beds are next to each other’s and they talk about many different things every night. McMurphy learns all about the Chief’s past. However, the Chief is afraid. He is afraid that McMurphy will bring him and the other patients out of the fog. The Chief doesn’t want to come out of the fog, because he feels safe while he is in the fog. “That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.” (114) In the end, through their friendship, McMurphy brings the Chief back to reality and he makes him big again. Chief Bromden is not afraid to be out of the fog and he is grateful to McMurphy. He is so grateful; in fact, he returns the favor after McMurphy’s lobotomy and suffocates him, to set him free. In the film, however, Randle P. McMurphy is considered the main character. The story starts with McMurphy being admitted into the psychiatric hospital. He is a strong individual who pretends to be crazy to get out of working in a prison. The film centers on McMurphy’s character and his

The novel is shared through the viewpoint of Chief Bromden, who acts illiterate and deaf towards the other men and nurses in order to go unnoticed/as hidden as possible. The book is broken up into four sections, which can be interpreted as representing different stages of McMurphy’s mental instability. McMurphy is seen as the protagonist throughout the novel, he is certainly challenging the power of Nurse Ratched and quickly moves himself up to being a leader among the men. The book can be a comparison between the United States, inferring that Nurse Ratched is the books symbol for the United States government due to her actions being very authoritarian just similar to the United States during the 1960s. Chief Bromden gives insight into Nurse Ratched and her actions that make the reader draw on this comparison, “She stops and nods at some of the patients come to stand around and stare out of eyes all red and puffy with sleep. She nods once to each. Precise, automatic gesture. Her face is

In the novel the patients become increasingly more dependent on McMurphy. In a scene when the patients are being punished by Nurse Ratched McMurphy feels obligated to stand up for one of the patients, Chief Bromden states that he can hear the despair in McMurphy’s voice when he arguing with the workers (Kesey 272). Defending his friends McMurphy gets into a physical fight with the three workers and Chief Bromden steps in to help him. This results in both of them getting sent to the Disturbed ward and is the first step in McMurphy’s decline (Kesey 276). Chief Bromden and McMurphy are both given Electroshock treatments, Chief comes out of the treatments stronger than ever because he believes he has something to live for now, but McMurphy comes out of the treatment appearing weak and tired (Kesey 289). After the suicide of Billy Bibbit Nurse Ratched blames his untimely death on the actions of McMurphy saying that he was “gambling with human lives” (Kesey 318). This results in McMurphy to choking Nurse Ratched and Chief Bromden’s realization that it was the patients who were making McMurphy act the way he was. It was his obligation to the patients that forced him to go on defying the Combine long after he had given up (Kesey 318). As punishment McMurphy is lobotomized. He comes back to the ward looking lifeless and small, Chief Bromden suffocates McMurphy to maintain his image as a hero (Kesey

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the characters of Nurse Ratched and Bromden Chief both serve as social commentary of the government of the 1950s. Nurse Ratched represents the control and dominance of the government in the 50s, and Bromden Chief represents the oppression of non-white people by the government and McCarthyism. McCarthyism was a tool that was used by the government at that time in order to scare and manipulate citizens. Similarly, Nurse Ratched symbolizes McCarthyism because she instills fear and exerts control over the patients in the mental ward.

“Evolving Ideals of Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys” points out clearly that this pressure to conform exists for men today as well as for women. While Barbie dolls and GI Joe action figures are not the one and only reason that the majority of people feel insecure about how they look, they are a piece to the much larger puzzle. It is speculated that it takes a large number of combined factors that cause a specific person feel insecure about how they look. Countless times it is something that we unknowingly see or hear that effect how we think about ourselves. If we are always self-concise about how we look we are more likely to buy something that we observe in an advertisement, which claims to transform us to look better. Unfortunately the images that we have and are trying to obtain are unobtainable, so as a result, we continue to invest and spend time in pursuit of this alleged

Chief’s thoughts are particularly important in this illustration that truth becomes questioned when constructing a reality from imagined events in the way that he experiments with it throughout the novel. “But

Chief Bromden is a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, diagnosed as incurable, who is afraid of his own shadow. He imagines himself to be small and weak even though he stands at six feet and seven inches tall. He pretends to be a deaf-mute in order to protect himself. This shows how repressive Ratched and society have made him feel. He is a Colombian Indian, born of a White mother and an Indian father. He was the first patient in the ward, arriving at the hospital fifteen years earlier. After Bromden realizes Ratched’s intentions for McMurphy was to keep him in the institution for the rest of his life, he kills him using McMurphy as a martyr, not wanting him to experience the same fate as the other patients.

McMurphy slowly begins to realize that Nurse Ratched has the power to keep him institutionalized for as long as she deems necessary and send him to the disturbed ward, receive electroshock therapy, and/or be lobotomized. This causes him to behave himself enough that Nurse Ratched believes that, once again, she has the upper hand. However, this calm is just preceding a storm and McMurphy is back at it again at night by sneaking in two prostitutes, alcohol, and breaking into the medicine cabinet. The following morning Nurse Ratched guilt trips the men back into submission and is so good at it that a certain patient, Billy Bibbit, panic and slices his neck open. Nurse Ratched blames the death on a demoralized McMurphy who subsequently rips her shirt open to prove she’s “only” a woman (considered the “weaker” sex in the 1960s) and begins to strangle her. After he’s pulled off of her Nurse Ratched sends him away to get a lobotomy resulting in McMurphy becoming a