Who Is The Author Of The Cuckoo's Nest

Though every period of time, people often find themselves looking for a savior. While most people turn for Jesus Christ or other religious figures, in the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the patients of a strictly-run psychiatric ward turn to Randal Patrick McMurphy. Kesey uses McMurphy to create a Christ Figure, or a character that shows allusions to Christ, in his work. Despite being a patient, McMurphy finds a way to stand out as a Christ Figure through having his individual thoughts and actions, rather than shrinking himself to what the ward wants him to be.

Many pieces of literature have comparable characteristics, including the use of literary elements to portray deeper meaning. “The Story of an Hour” and The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are great pieces of literature which keep their main focus around the use of symbolism, hidden in the plot. Whereas Mrs. Mallard, from “The Story of an Hour”, appears to be insane due to her husband, characters from The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gains their insanity from Nurse Ratched, both authors incorporate symbolism in order to display themes and reveal character traits

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.

Only a few are able to utilize the power to control and manipulate situations which can lead to drastic outcomes. Those with an assertive and manipulative personality tends to use that to their own benefit and completely disregard the impact their personality has on the surrounding people and themselves. In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he expresses the theme of power and manipulation through two characters, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy. Both characters use their manipulative powers for their own advantage in a deceptive way that causes the patients admitted to the asylum to suffer rather than improve.

“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.

Kesey highlights two distinctions between the roles of women in his novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. He places women in two categories, the ‘Ballcutters’ and ‘Whores’ . The ‘Ballcutters’ are presented to have a dominant role over the men within the ‘Combine’ and challenges their masculinity, resulting in them being personified as machines. This is demonstrated when Bromden describes the ‘tip of each finger the same colour as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron’ of Nurse Ratched. Bromden compares the complexion of her fingers and lips with a metal iron, suggesting not only is she machine like, but also has the physical appearance of a metal machine. The ‘Whores’ are Candy and Sandy who are submissive and this stems from the introduction of the contraceptive pill, as ‘feminists encouraged sexual exploitation with multiple partners and claimed sexual pleasure as a woman’s right’, Thus, resulting into them being presented as sexual beings fulfilling the sexual appetite of men.

After the catastrophic rebellion of the ward, Big Nurse calls for another group discussion excluding McMurphy’s participation in order to regain the power she possessed before McMurphy’s arrival at the ward. This is the most important moment in the book because Ken Kesey’s separation of the patients from McMurphy causes them to falter from Big Nurse’s obscure behavior and exotic responses. Because of the separation and the unexpected behavior; Big Nurse is able to regain authority by turning Mcmurphy’s allies and his exceptional characteristics against him.

In One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the concept of insanity is proven as a state consipred by society, but is represented as an illness that one individual grants on another. Kesey’s writes his novel through the mind of Chief Bromden, a patient in a mental hospital, who becomes inspired to rebel against the ward by a character named McMurphy. Through characters like McMurphy and Chief Bromden, Kesey shows that the men are not mentally ill, instead they are disturbed by the corrupted treatment from Nurse Ratched. McMurphy and Bromden “are resocialized to play a passive and apathetic role rather than an active one in an effort to change troublesome patterns

In the convoluted mess of the botched colonization of Mars in The Martian Chronicles and the horrors of mental institutions in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest arise many intricate similarities and differences. Both The Martian Chronicles and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest have characters who oppose change, strive for freedom, and oppose the status quo; however, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the maintenance of current norms is portrayed as evil while in The Martian Chronicles it is painted as an act of heroism.

Within every reading and film presented in the class, there was a protagonist in each story who was teetering on the brink of insanity. Some protagonist in the stories were indeed insane, but some were also normal people perceived by other characters as insane due to certain circumstances. Many of the films and readings also shared similarities, one of the main similarities was that in every single story or film, there was a focus on the main character placed in a stressful situation. They also showed how the character dealt with it, whether he let it push him to insanity, or if he handled it properly. Two films that were covered in class were One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest directed by Milos Forman, and Shallow Grave directed by Danny Boyle.

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado in 1935. He and his family moved to Springfield, Oregon where he went to public school and then graduated from the University of Oregon. He competed in athletics and drama throughout his college career. As a champion wrestler, he almost scored a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Kesey then married Faye Haxy, his high school sweetheart, in 1956. They had three children together. Two years after their marriage, he began to study creative writing at Stanford University.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about a mental ward, its patients, and the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, a sadistic woman who overpowers her patients by making them feel small, incompetent, and incapable of belonging to society in a normal manner. Two of the patients, Billy Bibbit, a shy and fearful man with a bad stutter, and R. P. McMurphy, a very smart and outspoken man, each play a big part in the movie. They are both examples of wrongful treatment within the institution. In the end, Billy commits suicide as a result of Nurse Ratched’s threats towards him, while McMurphy undergoes a lobotomy and is eventually put out of his misery by his friend, known as Chief Bromden, so that he would no longer suffer as a vegetable.

Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, takes us through Mcmurphy’s experience in the state mental hospital, taking place in Oregon’s state hospital. Chief narrates through the story, he is half native american who acts like a deaf dumb chronic. In the beginning of the story Mcmurphy arrives at the hospital as transfer. On Mcmurphy’s first day there he finds out Harding is top dog and intends on changing that. Then, during the first group meeting he sees Nurse Ratched; who is head of the ward, puts all the men against each other. After the meeting he describes it all as a “pecking party”, so he then makes a bet with the boys that he can break Nurse Ratched without destroying himself. One morning he asked the nurse if she could turn

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.

Daniel Gouadec (2002: 273) said in Translation as a Profession that "most translation problems and potential risks could be resolved by getting as much information as possible prior to a translation project". As to the translation project in this report, I made preparation in the following aspects: