The Cuckoo's Above The Boat

The common cuckoo can be recognized by its soft, two-note call: “cuc-koo, cuc-koo.” This gentle song may make the bird seem innocent. However, the cuckoo is guilty of using a few cunning schemes to advance its own interests. Specifically, cuckoo birds employ a technique known as mimicry. This means that they copy the physical, and behavioral patterns of other animals to improve their own chances at survival. Thanks to these wily tricks, common cuckoos have managed to thrive in many parts of the world.

Ken Kesey’s figurative language in his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, suggests that broken individuals can connect and make each other whole again. The traumatic events that occur when the patients are younger still affect them in their current state. For example, throughout his life, Bromden has always been assumed to be deaf and dumb. When he spoke to people their “machinery dispose[d] of the words like they weren’t even spoken” (181). Kesey’s metaphor represents how Bromden feels that the Combine influences him. When Bromden speaks, the words do not “fit” in the listener’s brain and they ignore him (181). Being a large Native American man, Bromden does not fit into the mold that is set by the Combine (societal expectations), so

Prompt: 2. Does McMurphy win or lose his battle with Nurse Ratched? Justify your answer with three specific examples from the text.

The significance of the title can be interpreted in this quote. The story is about a struggle in a psychiatric ward, where many “cuckoos'; reside, “Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, she’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts ‘em in pens… wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock… one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest… O-U-T spells out… goose swoops down and plucks you out.'; This is where the title comes from, the cuckoo’s nest being the psychiatric ward and McMurphy being the goose who plucks “you'; out.

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.

“Seconds stretched into minutes, and the initial anger at the sim reduced to a simmer, tunneling beneath Far’s skin like fire ants. The debriefing instructor was usually here by now, congratulating him on this or that maneuver. Delay meant conversation, conversation meant doubt” (35). The author uses the simile “tunneling beneath Far’s skin like fire ants” to show the terror mixed with hatred that Far is feeling after the simulation.

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.

Part Three: At the beginning of the fishing trip the men were afraid to leave to the hospital because the hospital was their safe place. They were afraid that people would judge them and they were afraid of the "bad weather" Nurse Ratched told them about. The men had little confidence, especially when the men were taunting and making fun of them before they got on the boat. McMurphy usually does everything for them or tells them exactly how to do something, but this let the men branch out on figure things out for themselves. Towards the end of the fishing scene the men are fishing by themselves without McMurphy's help which shows how they gained confidence in themselves and shows how they can face public interactions. The fishing scene helped

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey tells a story of a psychiatric ward full of unfair treatment brought to justice by a savior, Randle McMurphy. Throughout the novel biblical allusions are used to shine light on the evil in the ward. Some biblical allusions Kesey uses in “ One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” are the savior in McMurphy and the crucifixion of Jesus (McMurphy) in the form of the shock shop. Randle McMurphy is a reflection of Jesus as his teachings, just like Jesus’, impacted the patients. Since the moment McMurphy arrived he challenged the rules of the ward and encourages both the Acutes and Chronics to do so as well.

   In 1962, when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (the Nest), was published, America was at the start of decade that would be characterized by turmoil. Involvement in Vietnam was increasing, civil rights marches were taking place in the south and a new era of sexual promiscuity and drug use was about to come into full swing. Young Americans formed a subgroup in American society that historians termed the “counterculture”. The Nest is a product of time when it was written. It is anti-authoritarian and tells the tale of a man's rebelling against the establishment. Kesey used metaphor to make a social commentary on the America of the sixties. In this paper I will

“On each landing… the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall,” (pg 1). I think this quote explains fear or dictatorship. “Any sound Winston made… would be picked up by it… [and] he could be seen as well as heard,” (pg 3).This quote is explaining how whatever you say may always be heard and how a personal life is no longer personal. “You had to live –did live, from habit that became instinct –in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and,except in darkness, every moves scrutinized,” (pg 3). This quote explains how living in by fear or saying anything these days will be heard whether believed or not.

Crazy people are only crazy when they don’t fit in. Colonel Matterson, in Ken kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, appears to be the archetypal insane asylum patient, but upon further investigation, supports many ideas conveyed at other points in the text. He does so in large part by comparing America, Canada, and Mexico to several miscellaneous items. These items are representative of various ideas throughout the novel, connecting to motifs that display a single larger theme. Colonel Matterson’s metaphors are aligned with a broader theme of the rejection of American society’s standards.

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

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.

We do not get regular TV and I do not watch Sitcoms, so for this assignment I choose a show off Netflix, and I watched Cuckoo, Season 2, episode 1. In this episode, the main character Ken seems to display a high emotional intelligence since from the start he shows empathy towards his daughter when they learned that cuckoo was dead. However, he mismanaged his emotions when he went to get a vasectomy at his wife’s request, and the male doctor to perform the surgery seemed to be somewhat in love with him and a little bit too interested in his testicles. I am also getting the impression that it is a neighbor of some sorts. This caused the character Ken great discomfort so he left the situation, and left without getting the surgery. Now, when he