Ken Kesey uses his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to describe the lives of patients in a mental institution, and their struggle to overcome the oppressive authority under which they are living. Told from the point of view of a supposedly mute schizophrenic, the novel also shines a light on the many disorders present in the patients, as well as how their illnesses affect their lives during a time when little known about these disorders, and when patients living with these illnesses were seen as an extreme threat. Chief Bromden, the narrator of the novel, has many mental illnesses, but he learns to accept himself and embrace his differences. Through the heroism introduced through Randle McMurphy, Chief becomes confident in himself, and is ultimately able to escape from the toxic environment Nurse Ratched has created on the ward. Chief has many disorders including schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and, in addition to these illnesses, he pretends to be deaf and dumb. This combination of many mind and life altering diagnoses leads to an interesting point of view, and a deeper look into the lives of people living with the …show more content…
“Paranoia is the belief that people are conspiring against you and deliberately trying to harm you” (Mirowsky, Ross 228). It is only natural for a man who had everything taken away from him to be wary of his surroundings, and find it difficult to trust anyone or anything. However, Chief’s association of the Nurse's station with a control panel that keeps the entire ward running, reveals his deepest layer of paranoia. Chief has always felt as though he was being controlled, and his paranoia regarding those running the ward shows readers that he does not trust them in any way. At one point Chief even goes as far to say that Nurse Ratched controls time on the ward. He
Chief Bromden, the narrator of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, has been a paranoid-schizophrenic patient in the psychiatric hospital as he suffers from hallucinations and delusions. Everyone believes that he is deaf and dumb, although this is merely an act on his part that he has kept up due to the fear of huge conglomeration. Nurse Ratched is a nurse who runs the ward with harsh and systemized rules for the mental patients. For an example of what happens in the daily life of patient in her ward, she encourages the patients to attack each other in their most vulnerable spots, shaming them during daily meetings, which she concludes as “therapy”. In any case patient rebels against the rules set by her, he is sent to receive electroshock treatments.
The narrator of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, has been a patient in an Oregon
For the majority of the story Chief pretended to be deaf and dumb to avoid attentions. The mental hospital divided the patients into two groups, the Acutes and the Chronics. The Acute was the group where patients can still be cured while Chronics was the group where patients were beyond saving. The hospital was run by a woman called Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched
Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse) is the head nurse of the ward, or the combine as Bromden calls it, and she runs and directs the institution. She is very powerful and demanding – the ward only functions in the way she sees fit. Ratched will often dominate over the patients and other ward staff, even the doctor on staff. She also exposes the ward patients to electro-shock therapy if they disobey her orders. Like a massive obstacle, the Big Nurse proves to assert her power over all the patients and seems to care more about the functionality of the ward rather than her patient’s humanity.
Well, I’m not big and tough”(195). The patients are scared of society, scared of the people because of their opinions. Ratched feeds off the patients fear of her and their powerlessness in the ward, yet she continues to be power hungry. With McMurphy starting the opposition towards the Nurse, her authority is no longer being respected and she no longer has the power to control the patients. “She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings and singing in the latrines.
Very early in the story it is evident that there is a great deal of oppression taking place on the ward, some of this is physical, but the most harmful is the psychological oppression that is inflicted on the patients taking
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, considers the qualities in which society determines sanity. The label of insanity is given when someone is different from the perceived norm. Conversely, a person is perceived as sane when their behavior is consistent with the beliefs of the majority. Although the characters of this novel are patients of a mental institution, they all show qualities of sanity. The book is narrated by Chief Brodmen, an observant chronic psychiatric patient, who many believe to be deaf and dumb.
Fear is within everybody in the world, nobody can escape it and nobody can avoid encountering it. Fear can define many things: being unable to talk to others, having a rush of adrenaline because something is frightening , or just the fact that the task at hand is too hard to handle and someone could potentially yell at someone for not completing it. Fear is the main element in both the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest and the film The Ward. Being in a mental ward is not as bad as many people say so, only until meeting certain people there, is when people change their whole perspective on it. The way it is presented to people and the thought of being in a mental ward makes people feel more fear within themselves.
McMurphy could be considered a symbol of rebellion, freedom, masculinity and hedonism, whereas the Nurse is a counterpoint to all of these ideas, symbolising the oppression and control of the Combine, self-repression and is a castrating force on the male patients in the ward. From McMurphy’s disruptive entrance to the ward to his bitter end, him and the Nurse, and the ideas they symbolise, are in constant conflict. McMurphy and the Nurse “sizing each other up” (p26) occurs constantly, with McMurphy opposing her at every action she takes, “making an enemy out of the woman (p262). This conflict escalates, with Nurse Ratched “losing patients one after the other” (p321) until McMurphy’s lobotomy, which destroys him and what he stands for, to the point that the patients consider “it” (p321) “nothing like him” (p321). While the ending of the novel is left somewhat ambiguous and can be interpreted in a number of ways, the general impression is that overall, McMurphy is victorious over Nurse Ratched, which is supported by Bromden’s impression that there is “no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won”
Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is a novel that dramatically portrays insanity. Chief Bromden is a Native American who pretends to be deaf and mute, in order to narrate the novel. This novel begins with the coming of a new admission Raddle McMurphy he is introduced to an insane asylum where chief has been a patient longer. McMurphy is intelligent and observant. He stirs up the ward immediately by introducing friendly competition, gambling and encouraging the men to rebel.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gender Studies In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is taken place in 1962. The book is about a mental ward hospital with different types of patients and it is divided into acutes, chronics, and vegetable. Nurse Ratched controls the ward. The narrator is Chief Bromden who is a huge, manly half-native who is presented as a deaf patient.
The literary fiction novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, focuses on a mental hospital in Oregon, and the patients that live there. It is told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic, who compares society to a delusion he calls the Combine. The hospital is ran with strict rules, which are carried out by Nurse Ratched, or as the patients call her, Big Nurse. In the beginning of the book, another main character, Randle McMurphy, is transferred from a local jail into the hospital. Upon arriving, he immediately challenges the rules, and even sneaks in a prostitute.
Instantly you can feel the fear of the narrator, Chief Bromden, whom is also a patient. Early in the novel the nurse is described as strong and powerful, “Practice has steadied and strengthened her until now she wields a sure power that extends in all directions…”(Kesey 23) The sure depth of her power is illustrated here. Chief Bromden believe that Nurse Ratched is the face of the Combine - the machine he depicts as society. The Chief, believes that the Nurse is only part of the system not the broken system in and of itself.
She controls all every little detail that goes on within the ward, every little secret every little action is highly monitored by Nurse Ratched. But one day a man, named McMurphy, was brought in handcuffs and as soon as they’re removed, he breaks into one of Nicholson’s patented madman
In his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey masterfully combines metaphors and imagery into a piece of art. The story is narrated from the viewpoint of Bromden, a chronic, who is the longest living member of the ward. This perspective introduces an unconventional view of what turns the gears of typical conformist society. During his confinement, Bromden is introduced to McMurphy, a rambunctious hothead who symbolically challenges the beliefs of the patients. The resulting novel uses the fog, the machine, the Combine, and religious imagery as a culminating analysis of societal problems and the people who cause them.