One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962 is a fiction novel by Ken Kesey. The novel is set in an Oregon refuge and serves as a survey of the institutional pattern and the human head. Its funny attack lays the foundation for a treatment refering truth. as non each event described by the storyteller is possible truth in the book’s world. such an rating is made by the reader. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the creative activity of both the personal experiences of the writer. Ken Kesey. and the peculiar civilization in which it was written.

Kesey developed the novel as he attended Stanford University as a alumnus pupil in their Creative Writing plan as the victor of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. The novel was partially inspired by Kesey’s parttime occupation as an orderly in a Palo Alto veterans’ infirmary. It was furthermore as a pupil at Stanford where Kesey started take parting in experiments for the psychological science section that involved the exercising of LSD. This usage of LSD had driven Kesey to hold hallucinations while working as an orderly.

Kesey imagine seeing a big Indian wipe uping the flooring of the infirmary ; this hallucination prompted Kesey to include the character Chief Bromden as the novel’s storyteller. “What is the character of Bromden? How he recover his saneness? ” A tall. half-Indian patient in the ward. Chief Bromden is the patient who has been considered the longest in the establishment. Even though others believe that he is deaf and deaf-and-dumb person. Chief Bromden alternatively prefer non to talk. originally for the ground that others ignored him and so out of fright of Nurse Ratched. Chief Bromden is said to be the storyteller of the novel.

With the assistance of McMurphy. he started to talk one time more and confirm himself against Nurse Ratched and her workers. Chief Bromden speaks to McMurphy and earlier overcomes his schizophrenic disorder throughout his influence. separating himself for the physical giant and mistreated adult male he has ever been. Chief Bromden’s background has had an intense impact on his character. Society ne’er treated him with the regard every individual deserved. and non being competent to confront up to it. he was forced into concealing out in a mental establishment. The wantonness from society all through his life turned the Chief into a paranoiac. unconfident and reserved adult male.

The reader gets a speedy expression of Chief Bromden’s paranoia in the start of the novel. General Discussion The One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest novel in some sense structures a span between the Bohemian beatnik motions of the 1950s and the 1960s counterculture motion. Kesey was significantly motivated by the beatnik civilization around Stanford. and in the fresh Kesey trades with a figure of subjects that would be of import in the counterculture motion. every bit good as impressions of freedom from inhibitory authorization and a more liberated observation of gender.

Kesey himself became an highly influential counterculture figure as piece of the Merry Pranksters. Chief Bromden is a half American Indian. His male parent was a head named Tee Ah Millatoona. which referred as The-pine-that-stands-tallest-on-the-mountain. That is why he is capable of utilizing the rubric head. He took on his mother’s last name of Bromden. He spent his turning up phase in the Columbian gorge. The head is monolithic and tall and would look really unapproachable and endangering to those who meet him. He was committed to the infirmary establishment and has been there for longer than anybody else. for over 15 old ages.

Chief Bromden was put in at that place after World War two. The head was an electrician’s helper in a preparation cantonment prior to the ground forces shipped him off to Germany. It is perchance due to working with electronics and the added tenseness of traveling to war that has led the head to hold such a harmful preoccupation with electronics. The head has led everybody in the infirmary. both staff and patients to believe he is deaf and dense. As a immature kid he was for all clip ignored. by fellow pupils and grownups. this could hold been for the ground that he was so unusual looking. being half American Indian and looking so large and baleful yet being rather shy.

I had to maintain moving deaf if I wanted to hear at all” Chief Bromden said. He felt abandoned by his equals all through life and so as an grownup decided that as people acted like he was unseeable he might every bit good vanish. “It wasn’t me that started moving deaf. it was people that first started moving like I was excessively dense to hear or see or state anything at all” Chief Bromden said. So moving to be deaf and dumb was most likely a defence mechanism. For him. his silence is besides exceptionally powerful. As he is capable to hear all that went on in the meetings where the physicians and nurses talk about the hereafter of the patients.

The physicians and nurses don’t hesitate to declare anything in forepart of him for the ground that they assume he can’t hear. Chief Bromden said “They don’t bother non speaking out loud about their hatred secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb. ” The procedure and experiences that Chief Bromden has to travel through in order to recover his saneness is discussed below. In the first chapter. Kesey sets up the formation of the mental establishment where the novel takes topographic point. The authorization figure is evidently Nurse Ratched. as yet known simply as Large Nurse. a adult female whose character seems barely human.

Kesey makes the whole thing about Nurse Ratched mechanical and automated. such as her robotic motions and accurate address. She is a representation of bureaucratism and authorization in general. Conversely. even within this first chapter there are marks that behind this seemingly cold frontage there is some great instability. Chief Bromden appears to believe that Nurse Ratched is ready to snarl at the black male childs at any minute. and her large chests. the one absurd portion of her visual aspect. illustrate that she is unable of to the full dividing herself from typical human features.

The black male child. the workers at the establishment. function Nurse Ratched out of panic ; on the other manus. their most well-known feature is an absolute hatred for all around them. Unlike Nurse Ratched. they are barbarous. if merely for the ground Nurse Ratched is incapable of experiencing any satisfaction from the hurting she inflicts. This makes them a more immediate menace to patients such as Chief Bromden. but besides more at hazard. They go through from the same human weaknesss that Nurse Ratched has concealed. Even though Chief Bromden is the storyteller of the narrative. his descriptions can non be wholly trusted.

He is clearly undependable. as shown when he hallucinates the Air Raid and the fog machine. The fog symbolizes Bromden’s ain mental lucidity ; it will re-emerge whenever Chief Bromden bend into less stable and withdraw every clip he becomes more consistent. It is important that Chief Bromden is soundless. for he stands for the more inactive elements of society that submit to authorization which is Nurse Ratched. In chapter three holding illustrates the support staff of the infirmary. Chief Bromden turns to the patients who occupy the establishment.

The bulk of the patients are Acutes. intending that they have the likeliness for rehabilitation and release. but Bromden makes the important point that they besides have the hazard of going worse for the ground of their stay at the infirmary. as established by Ruckly and Ellis. Kesey makes obvious the lines of dissension between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched signifies regulations and order. while McMurphy symbolizes lawlessness and noncompliance. Yet a more important characteristic that McMurphy shows is showmanship.

In this chapter he grasps for attending. moving like a politician on a run halt. This trait will do McMurphy to be an easy mark for those in the establishment. chiefly Nurse Ratched. Chief Bromden releases the review of the mental establishment in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to a bigger social review. The societal unfavorable judgment of the events in the novel by and large entails the thought that the establishment is a microcosm for the full society. but Kesey moreover makes the precise connexion between the establishment and other social organisations.

The mental establishment is intended to mend harm done by schools. churches and households. nevertheless operates under the similar conditions as these organisations and hence suffers the same jobs. In chapter six Chief Bromden’s suggestion that Nurse Ratched can direct the redstem storksbills at the ward show that Chief Bromden is often undependable as a storyteller. but however remains changeless with Ratched’s tyrannizing and commanding personality.

Harding. the president of the patients’ council and a college alumnus. continues to function as an expositive device ; it is he who gives inside informations to McMurphy the causes for assorted events at the establishment. such as the music. Kesey establishes another contrast between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in this chapter. His confrontation with Nurse Pilbow. one of Ratched’s nurses. underlines that Ratched signifies gender. as compared to the passionless and reserved Nurse Ratched. In chapter seven. this chapter one time once more serves to show that Chief Bromden is an undependable storyteller.

Even though several of the inside informations of his observation are true. others are chiefly fantasy ; Bromden worries that the workers are utilizing the Vegetables for awful experiments and will make the same to him. On the other manus. Kesey makes it unimpeachably clear that Bromden is holding a hallucination in this chapter when Mr. Turkle. the dark watcher. wakes him. In chapter 12 Kesey demonstrates these chapters in short sequence. Two of these include little more than a paragraph. This serves to demo the confused nature of Chief Bromden’s observations.

He presents merely short glances of events that transpire in the establishment. none of which include any great importance. The most important point that Chief Bromden makes is that the ‘insanity’ as illustrated by the fog is a comfort for the patients. It permits them to withdraw from the complexnesss of world that McMurphy wants them to confront. In chapter 15 Kesey uses Chief Bromden chiefly as a storyteller who illustrates external conditions. and barely gives penetration into Chief Bromden’s ain psychological science. On the other manus. in this chapter Kesey gives several indicant of the beginning of Chief Bromden’s psychological jobs.

Bromden relates the fanciful ‘fog machine’ of the mental establishment to the fog that surrounded him throughout wartime. This point out that Chief Bromden likely suffers from shell-shock caused by his war experience. and it is this shell-shock which driven him to lose his clasp on saneness. Kesey in add-on gives a similar psychological deconstruction of Billy Bibbit. The beginning of Billy Bibbit’s jobs leads to a rigorous Freudian reading. He is the creative activity of a tyrannizing female parent who controls his all action. every bit good as make up one’s minding which adult female is suited for him to get married.

That the first word Billy Bibbit stuttered was ‘mama’ is an obvious indicant that she is the cause of his jobs. His mother’s obvious coaction with Nurse Ratched is extra grounds that Billy’s female parent is the cause of most of his problems. McMurphy assumes the portion of a radical in this chapter. When he rebels against Nurse Ratched by interrupting from the recognized agenda to watch the World Series. McMurphy at last wantonnesss the regulations and ordinances of the ward. This rebellion take topographic point. though. merely after it is obvious that McMurphy can non take portion in the seemingly democratic system that Nurse Ratched controls.

This is a important point. for it reveals that McMurphy is non a insouciant nihilist set on interrupting down any system of administration. but instead a adult male driven to rebellion by an unfair system around him. Even though Nurse Ratched’s claim that the ballot is democratic. her ballot consists the Chronics. who have no capableness to do a rational pick required of vote. This guarantees that Nurse Ratched can maintain the position quo. despite the clear support for McMurphy. When McMurphy shatters from his agenda to watch the World Series. he makes an ultimate interruption from the ‘government’ of Nurse Ratched.

It is a radical step on the degree of the establishment. The ballot for the World Series is a defining minute for Chief Bromden. for it is the first point through which he reasserts himself as a working individual. He does this in the class of his ballot for McMurphy. the first ultimate. antiphonal action that Chief Bromden takes throughout the novel. and continues this form when he unites with McMurphy and the other Acutes in the protest against Nurse Ratched. This underscores a first subject of the novel. the importance of rational pick.

It is the capableness to take that determines one’s position as a rational homo being. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in a really of import sense centres on the struggle between McMurphy. who characterizes this capableness for pick. and Nurse Ratched. who does non allow individuals to find determinations for themselves. In chapter sixteen the fog that Chief Bromden declares to see is a symbol of his incoherency and incapacity to asseverate himself. hence when Bromden makes the determination to fall in the other work forces in difference of Nurse Ratched. the fog vanish.

This determination comes at a cost. on the other manus ; by doing picks Chief Bromden becomes susceptible. as he realizes. He loses the protection of the fog for the privileges of human pick. Chief Bromden’s pick to show himself one time once more as deaf and dumb is a strategic move that serves both himself and. for the narrative purposes of the narrative. Kesey. Bromden uses the perceptual experience that he is deaf and dense as a strategy to debar torment by the black male child. but this perceptual experience besides permits Chief Bromden entree to fortunes such as the staff meeting that would normally stay close.

Kesey grants Bromden entree to the staff meeting to gives better penetration into both Nurse Ratched and the perceptual experiences of McMurphy. In chapter 17 Kesey demonstrates the alteration in Chief Bromden in this chapter. when the character awakes and watches the Canis familiaris outside the window. This shows that Chief Bromden is now more cognizant of the outside universe. He can gestate of being outside of the establishment. as he could non earlier. McMurphy is the primary cause of this alteration.

In chapter 20 four Chief Bromden’s narratives about his childhood reveal that he. like Harding and Billy Bibbit. undergoes to some grade from a tyrannizing female figure. Like Billy Bibbit. Chief Bromden is frightened by his female parent. whom he describes every bit “twice every bit tall” as his male parent. who was himself a large adult male. Chief Bromden point out that his female parent dominated both him and his male parent. causal to the jobs that both faced. It is from his male parent that Chief Bromden developed the idea of the Combine.

The narrative that Chief Bromden tells McMurphy supplies a immense trade to a psychological analysis of the character. He appears to be deaf and dense chiefly for the ground that he has been frightened by others around him. whether hardhearted inspectors or his domineering female parent. However Chief Bromden reasserts himself one time McMurphy proves him some grade of kindness and regard. Chief Bromden is perchance the best illustration that Kesey provides of the good consequence that McMurphy has on the patients in the establishment. Kesey indicates subsequently even when McMurphy discusses the control panel in the bath room.

He gives Chief Bromden the idea that he might be able to raise the control panel and throw it all the manner through the window. allowing an flight. The one inquiry that remains is what will bring on Chief Bromden to transport out this action. In chapter 20 seven Nurse Ratched does accomplish a triumph over McMurphy in this chapter. but whatsoever triumph she has will be short-run. The daze intervention does non radically affect Chief Bromden ; he quickly regains a sense of clarity later and returns to reason.

More significantly. the nurse who treats McMurphy’s lesions makes the important point that other nurses are contradicted to Nurse Ratched’s behaviour. Even though Nurse Ratched keeps a tight clasp on her specific ward. she is susceptible within the very institutional construction she uses against her patients. In chapter Twenty-Nine the concluding chapter of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest culminates in a pyrrhic victory for Nurse Ratched but a concluding victory for the martyred McMurphy.

The statement between the two characters aligns on sexual lines. as set up by the dissension between Nurse Ratched and Billy Bibbit that outright precedes it. McMurphy’s onslaught on Nurse Ratched consequences an exact exposing of the Big Nurse. Once once more the sexual intensions are tough. for when he attacks her he reveals her chests. the one mark of her muliebrity. This besides relates back to Harding’s old suggestion that sex is the remedy for Nurse Ratched ; this chapter demonstrates that. if it is non the remedy. it is certainly a powerful arm against her.

The result of this battle. however. is the concluding dehumanisation of Nurse Ratched. When she proceeds to the ward. she is incapable of speech production and hence has lost a first mark of humanity. This neatly parallels Chief Bromden. who in the way of the novel recovers his voice and his humanity. McMurphy seemingly loses his conflict against Nurse Ratched when she commands a leukotomy for him. but the triumph is hollow ; she loses power over the ward as the other patients free themselves of her clasp and volitionally leave the infirmary.

This moreover fits in good with the Christian symbolism of the novel ; even though McMurphy dies for his ground. his adherents leave the infirmary to populate in conformity to his instructions. They achieve the strength and the autonomy to do independent picks that McMurphy proposed. Chief Bromden best exemplifies this. Throughout the class of the novel he has regained his voice. and he makes the ultimate measure in the way of self-fulfillment at the novel’s terminal. By traveling the control panel. Chief Bromden fulfills McMurphy’s desires and reasserts himself as a member of society.