One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay Example for Free

One Flew all over the Cuckoos Nest EssayOne Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest claim in 1962 is a fiction refreshed by Ken Kesey. The novel is set in an Oregon asylum and serves as a study of the institutional practice and the hu objet dart mind. Its curious approach lays the foundation for a discussion concerning truth, as not each event described by the narrator is attainable truth in the books reality, such an evaluation is made by the reader. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is the creation of twain the personal experiences of the author, Ken Kesey, and the particular culture in which it was written. Kesey developed the novel as he attended Stanford University as a graduate student in their Creative Writing program as the winner of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. The novel was partly inspired by Keseys part-time job as an dapper in a Palo Alto veterans infirmary. It was more(prenominal) everywhere as a student at Stanford where Kesey started participating in experiments for the ps ychology department that involved the exercise of LSD. This affair of LSD had driven Kesey to yield fallacys while working as an orderly.Kesey imagine seeing a large Indian mopping the flooring of the hospital this hallucination prompted Kesey to include the character brain Bromden as the novels narrator. What is the character of Bromden? How he regain his sanity? A tall, half-Indian patient of in the ward, headsman Bromden is the patient who has been considered the longest in the institution. until now though others believe that he is indifferent(p) and mute, promontory Bromden instead prefer not to speak, originally for the reason that others ignored him and then stunned of fear of draw Ratched. knob Bromden is said to be the narrator of the novel.With the aid of McMurphy, he started to speak once more and reassert himself against cherish Ratched and her workers. Chief Bromden speaks to McMurphy and so whizr overcomes his schizophrenia throughout his influence, dist inguishing himself for the physical giant and mistreated man he has always been. Chief Bromdens background has had an intense impact on his character. Society never treated him with the respect every person deserved, and not being competent to face up to it, he was forced into hiding out in a mental institution. The abandon from society all through his life turned the Chief into a paranoid, unconfident and reserved man.The reader gets a loyal look of Chief Bromdens paranoia in the start of the novel. General Discussion The One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest novel in somewhat sense structures a bridge among the bohemian beatnik movements of the 1950s and the 1960s counterculture movement. Kesey was significantly motivated by the beatnik culture around Stanford, and in the novel Kesey deals with a number of themes that would be important in the counterculture movement, as well as notions of freedom from repressive authority and a more emancipated observation of sexuality.Kesey himself became an extremely influential counterculture figure as piece of the Merry Pranksters. Chief Bromden is a half American Indian. His father was a chief named teeing ground Ah Millatoona, which referred as The-pine-that-stands-tallest-on-the-mountain. That is why he is capable of using the title chief. He took on his mothers last name of Bromden. He spent his festering up stage in the Columbian gorge. The chief is massive and tall and would appear very unapproachable and threatening to those who meet him. He was committed to the hospital institution and has been there for longer than anybody else, for over 15 years.Chief Bromden was put in there after human beings War cardinal. The chief was an electricians assistant in a training camp prior to the army shipped him off to Germany. It is possibly due to working with electronics and the added tension of going to war that has led the chief to have such a harmful preoccupation with electronics. The chief has led everybody in the hosp ital, both(prenominal) staff and patients to think he is deaf and wispy. As a new-fangled child he was for all time ignored, by fellow students and adults, this could have been for the reason that he was so strange looking, being half American Indian and appearing so big and threatening yet being quite shy.I had to keep acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all Chief Bromden said. He felt aband sensationd by his peers all through life and so as an adult decided that as battalion acted like he was invisible he might as well vanish, It wasnt me that started acting deaf, it was people that rootborn started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all Chief Bromden said. So acting to be deaf and dumb was most possible a defense mechanism. For him, his silence is also exceptionally potent. As he is capable to hear all that went on in the meetings where the doctors and nurses talk about the coming(prenominal) of the patients.The doctors and nurses dont hesitate t o decl be anything in front of him for the reason that they assume he cant hear. Chief Bromden said They dont bother not talking out clarion about their hate secrets when Im nearby because they think Im deaf and dumb. The process and experiences that Chief Bromden has to go through in order to regain his sanity is discussed below. In the start-off chapter, Kesey sets up the formation of the mental institution where the novel takes place. The authority figure is obviously take up Ratched, as yet kn throw merely as capacious restrain, a woman whose character seems hardly human.Kesey makes the whole thing about Nurse Ratched mechanical and automated, such as her robotic movements and accurate speech. She is a representation of bureaucratism and authority in general. Conversely, even within this first chapter there are signs that behind this apparently inhuman facade there is some great instability. Chief Bromden appears to believe that Nurse Ratched is ready to snap at the black boys at any minute, and her big breasts, the one absurd part of her appearance, illustrate that she is unable of to the full separating herself from typical human distinctions.The black boys, the workers at the institution, serve Nurse Ratched out of terror on the other hand, their most well-known characteristic is an absolute annoyance for all around them. Unlike Nurse Ratched, they are cruel, if only for the reason Nurse Ratched is incapable of feeling any satisfaction from the pain she inflicts. This makes them a more immediate threat to patients such as Chief Bromden, but also more at risk. They go through from the same human failings that Nurse Ratched has concealed. Even though Chief Bromden is the narrator of the tale, his descriptions cannot be entirely trusted.He is communicately unreliable, as shown when he hallucinates the Air Raid and the muddiness machine. The obnubilate symbolizes Bromdens own mental clarity it will reappear whenever Chief Bromden turn into less stable and recede every time he becomes more coherent. It is significant that Chief Bromden is silent, for he stands for the more passive elements of society that submit to authority which is Nurse Ratched. In chapter three having illustrates the support staff of the hospital, Chief Bromden turns to the patients who occupy the institution.The majority of the patients are Acutes, meaning that they have the likelihood for rehabilitation and release, but Bromden makes the significant fleck that they also have the risk of becoming worse for the reason of their stay at the hospital, as established by Ruckly and Ellis. Kesey makes obvious the lines of disagreement between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched signifies rules and order, while McMurphy symbolizes anarchy and disobedience. Yet a more significant characteristic that McMurphy displays is showmanship.In this chapter he grasps for attention, acting like a politician on a campaign stop. This trait will cause McMurphy to be a n easy seat for those in the institution, mainly Nurse Ratched. Chief Bromden releases the critique of the mental institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to a larger societal critique. The social criticism of the events in the novel generally entails the idea that the institution is a microcosm for the entire society, but Kesey moreover makes the precise connection between the institution and other societal organizations.The mental institution is intended to repair damage done by schools, churches and families, however operates under the similar conditions as these organizations and thence suffers the same problems. In chapter six Chief Bromdens jot that Nurse Ratched can direct the clocks at the ward show that Chief Bromden is oftentimes unreliable as a narrator, but nonetheless remains constant with Ratcheds domineering and controlling personality.Harding, the president of the patients council and a college graduate, continues to serve as an informative device it is he who gives inside information to McMurphy the causes for various events at the institution, such as the music. Kesey establishes another contrast between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in this chapter. His confrontation with Nurse Pilbow, one of Ratcheds nurses, underscores that Ratched signifies sexuality, as compared to the passionless and reserved Nurse Ratched. In chapter seven, this chapter once again serves to demonstrate that Chief Bromden is an unreliable narrator.Even though several of the details of his observation are true, others are mainly fantasy Bromden worries that the workers are using the Vegetables for terrible experiments and will do the same to him. On the other hand, Kesey makes it unquestionably clear that Bromden is having a hallucination in this chapter when Mr. Turkle, the night discovererman, wakes him. In chapter twelve Kesey demonstrates these chapters in short succession. Two of these include little more than a paragraph. This serves to show the dissociat e nature of Chief Bromdens observations.He presents only short glimpses of events that transpire in the institution, none of which include any great importance. The most significant point that Chief Bromden makes is that the insanity as illustrated by the fog is a comfort for the patients. It permits them to recede from the complexities of reality that McMurphy wants them to face. In chapter fifteen Kesey uses Chief Bromden mainly as a narrator who illustrates external conditions, and hardly gives insight into Chief Bromdens own psychology. On the other hand, in this chapter Kesey gives several indication of the origin of Chief Bromdens psychological problems.Bromden relates the imaginary fog machine of the mental institution to the fog that surrounded him throughout wartime. This point out that Chief Bromden probably suffers from shell-shock caused by his war experience, and it is this shell-shock which driven him to lose his grip on sanity. Kesey in addition gives a similar psycho logical deconstruction of Billy Bibbit. The beginning of Billy Bibbits problems leads to a strict Freudian interpretation. He is the creation of a domineering mother who controls his all action, as well as deciding which woman is suitable for him to marry.That the first word Billy Bibbit stuttered was mama is an obvious indication that she is the cause of his problems. His mothers obvious collaboration with Nurse Ratched is additional evidence that Billys mother is the cause of most of his troubles. McMurphy assumes the part of a revolutionary in this chapter. When he rebels against Nurse Ratched by breaking from the recognized schedule to watch the World Series, McMurphy at last abandons the rules and regulations of the ward. This rebellion take place, though, only after it is obvious that McMurphy cannot take part in the apparently democratic system that Nurse Ratched controls.This is a significant point, for it reveals that McMurphy is not a casual anarchist bent on breaking down any system of governance, but rather a man driven to rebellion by an unjust system around him. Even though Nurse Ratcheds claim that the vote is democratic, her vote consists the Chronics, who have no capability to make a cerebral choice required of voting. This guarantees that Nurse Ratched can keep the status quo, despite the clear support for McMurphy. When McMurphy shatters from his schedule to watch the World Series, he makes an ultimate break from the government of Nurse Ratched.It is a revolutionary measure on the level of the institution. The vote for the World Series is a defining moment for Chief Bromden, for it is the first point through which he reasserts himself as a functioning person. He does this in the course of his vote for McMurphy, the first ultimate, responsive action that Chief Bromden takes throughout the novel, and continues this pattern when he unites with McMurphy and the other Acutes in the protest against Nurse Ratched. This underscores a foremost theme of the novel, the importance of rational choice.It is the capability to choose that determines ones status as a rational human being. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in a very important sense centers on the conflict between McMurphy, who characterizes this capability for choice, and Nurse Ratched, who does not permit persons to determine decisions for themselves. In chapter sixteen the fog that Chief Bromden declares to see is a symbol of his incoherence and incapacity to assert himself, therefore when Bromden makes the decision to join the other men in dispute of Nurse Ratched, the fog vanish.This decision comes at a cost, on the other hand by making choices Chief Bromden becomes susceptible, as he realizes. He loses the protection of the fog for the privileges of human choice. Chief Bromdens choice to present himself once again as deaf and dumb is a strategic move that serves both himself and, for the biography intentions of the story, Kesey. Bromden uses the perception that he i s deaf and dumb as a scheme to deflect harassment by the black boys, but this perception also permits Chief Bromden access to circumstances such as the staff meeting that would usually remain secretive.Kesey grants Bromden access to the staff meeting to gives better insight into both Nurse Ratched and the perceptions of McMurphy. In chapter seventeen Kesey demonstrates the change in Chief Bromden in this chapter, when the character awakes and watches the dog outside the window. This shows that Chief Bromden is now more aware of the outside world. He can conceive of existence outside of the institution, as he could not before. McMurphy is the primary cause of this change.In chapter twenty four Chief Bromdens stories about his childhood reveal that he, like Harding and Billy Bibbit, undergoes to some academic degree from a domineering female figure. Like Billy Bibbit, Chief Bromden is frightened by his mother, whom he describes as twice as tall as his father, who was himself a big ma n. Chief Bromden point out that his mother dominated both him and his father, causal to the problems that both faced. It is from his father that Chief Bromden developed the thought of the Combine.The story that Chief Bromden tells McMurphy supplies a huge deal to a psychological analysis of the character. He appears to be deaf and dumb mainly for the reason that he has been frightened by others around him, whether heartless inspectors or his domineering mother. However Chief Bromden reasserts himself once McMurphy proves him some degree of kindness and respect. Chief Bromden is possibly the best example that Kesey provides of the beneficial effect that McMurphy has on the patients in the institution. Kesey indicates later even when McMurphy discusses the control panel in the bath room.He gives Chief Bromden the thought that he might be able to raise the control panel and throw it all the way through the window, permitting an escape. The one question that remains is what will induce Chief Bromden to carry out this action. In chapter twenty seven Nurse Ratched does achieve a victory over McMurphy in this chapter, but whatsoever victory she has will be short-term. The shock treatment does not radically affect Chief Bromden he rapidly regains a sense of lucidity subsequently and returns to rationality.More significantly, the nurse who treats McMurphys wounds makes the significant point that other nurses are contradicted to Nurse Ratcheds behavior. Even though Nurse Ratched keeps a tight grip on her specific ward, she is susceptible within the very institutional structure she uses against her patients. In chapter Twenty-Nine the final chapter of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest culminates in a pyrrhic triumph for Nurse Ratched but a final triumph for the martyred McMurphy.The argument between the two characters aligns on sexual lines, as set up by the disagreement between Nurse Ratched and Billy Bibbit that instantaneously precedes it. McMurphys attack on Nurse Ratc hed results an exact exposing of the Big Nurse. Once again the sexual connotations are tough, for when he attacks her he reveals her breasts, the one sign of her femininity. This also relates back to Hardings previous suggestion that sex is the cure for Nurse Ratched this chapter demonstrates that, if it is not the cure, it is surely a potent weapon against her.The outcome of this fight, nevertheless, is the final dehumanization of Nurse Ratched. When she proceeds to the ward, she is incapable of mouth and hence has lost a foremost sign of humanity. This neatly parallels Chief Bromden, who in the path of the novel recovers his voice and his humanity. McMurphy apparently loses his battle against Nurse Ratched when she commands a lobotomy for him, but the victory is hollow she loses power over the ward as the other patients free themselves of her grip and willingly leave the hospital.This moreover fits in well with the Christian symbolism of the novel even though McMurphy dies for hi s reason, his disciples leave the hospital to live in accordance to his teachings. They achieve the strength and the liberty to make independent choices that McMurphy proposed. Chief Bromden best exemplifies this. Throughout the course of the novel he has regained his voice, and he makes the ultimate step in the direction of self-realization at the novels end. By moving the control panel, Chief Bromden fulfills McMurphys desires and reasserts himself as a member of society.