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One Who Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

In: Novels

Submitted By ccv09
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Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, takes place in an Oregon psychiatric institution. On the surface, the major characters in this book all seem like your average mental health patients and that their stories are all open and shut cases about people who are institutionalized because they are simply crazy. However, this is a book that deals with social issues that give a reader the opportunity to understand the complexity of who we are, how different we are from one another, and what influences each one of us. Inside the mental institution, each character could be the same as anyone else outside the walls in which they are confined. These characters represent a microcosm of what exists in everyday life in the outside world. In the “real world” as we know it, there are paranoid people like Chief Bromden; obsessive compulsives like George Sorenson; or someone like Randy McMurphy, who chose the mental institution as the lesser of two evils to pay for a crime he committed. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the most prominent social conflict emerges through the character of Randle McMurphy. McMurphy was the protagonist in this book and he was the one who showed the patients the way to rebuff the system, laugh, and defy authority through humor. The patients began to find strength in his leadership. However, McMurphy came to realize that the very people he was defying were the same people who would determine the timeframe of his release from the hospital. When McMurphy decided to play it safe and stop bucking the system, the other patients who looked up to him were very disappointed because they did not have him to support them and they were not strong enough to fight the system alone. I never believed in the philosophy that we are our “brothers’ keeper (28).” But, because everyone relied on McMurphy to stand up and help them fight the horrible Nurse Ratched, gave me a better understanding of how we have an obligation in the roles we play in other people’s lives. He was the protagonist in the story and encouraged all of the patients to rebel against authority. His conflict was his unwillingness to take on the responsibility of the other patients after encouraging them to rebel and leading them in the rebellion. However, after Mc found out that all of the other patients could leave when they wanted to and he could not, made him choose conformity rather than defiance of authority. McMurphy no longer wanted the responsibility the patients had placed upon him and he didn’t come to Billy Bibbitt’s rescue when the hospital staff chastised him severely. This resulted in Bibbitt’s suicide. This was devastating to McMurphy. And, McMurphy came to realize, as I did, that somehow we are our brothers’ keeper if we create a pattern of dependence, then we are obligated to stand up those persons until they are able to stand by themselves. The identity crisis in which Chief Bromden struggled with was another issue that gave me a better understanding of complex social conflicts. The Chief is the son of a Native American tribal chief and a white woman. After the marriage of his parents, his father assumed his wife’s name. Chief Bromden struggles to understand why his father, a big strong and well respected man would relinquish is identity to take on another. Chief Bromden narrates the story simply because he knows about everything that goes on the ward and in the hospital. He is paranoid and yet, he pretends to be a deaf mute. Everyone on the staff believes that he is a deaf mute and talks freely around him. As a result of his father’s inability to deal with his identity issue, Chief Bromden felt the same sense of psychological emasculation. Chief Bromden felt that this was another encroachment of the white society on Native Americans. However, I would imagine that Chief Bromden’s father changed his name for many reasons relating to money and how the financial world outside of the reservation would perceive him as a serious businessman. But, what I have come to understand is that no matter how much money you have, you still need to have pride in who you are and what you stand for as a person.

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