...Kesey had close affiliations with the counterculture that dominated the decade. In its own way One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the twentieth-century Romantic manifesto, a ululation for the death of the individual before this rebellion went out of style and individualism along with it. This book verbalized what many where thinking: that the truly crazy in the world were the ones who wanted power while the truly sane were the ones who sought to be individuals and rebelled against authority. Because of this pronounced effect on society the book was a major contributor to the backlash against the entire psychiatric system in the early 1960s. As a result, state institutions began reducing their resident numbers and granting admitted patients more rights within the institutions. In addition to this change in the system, the book also pushed the development of more effective anti-psychotic drugs, thus allowing more patients to be treated within their own homes and live normal lives. Yet for many health professionals the book also had a profound negative effect, consequently changing the overall...
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...Ms. Latasha Keith HUMN401-1305B-01: Literature and Film Professor Bonnie Ronson January 19, 2014 Unit 2 Individual Project – Canonical Classics of Literature Section 1- Introduction Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is set at an Oregon asylum in the 1950s (NovelGuide.com). The book is a study in the institutional process of the human mind, a critique of Behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles while exploring themes of individuality and rebellion against socially imposed repression (NovelGuide.com; SparkNotes.com; CliffsNotes.com). These themes and ideas were the topic of discussion during the publication of this novel because the world was introduced to communism and totalitarian regimes. The novel was published in 1962 and received with immediate success (SparkNotes.com). Section 2 – Biographical Information La Junta, Colorado is the birthplace of novelist Ken Kesey. He was born in 1935 and grew up on a small farm in Oregon and Colorado with his family. He married his high school sweetheart in 1956 and they had three children together (Lone Star College). He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon where he participated in wrestling and theater in 1957 (Lone Star College; SparkNotes.com). In 1959, Kesey enrolled in a creative writing program at Stanford University, the same year where he began volunteering with the Stanford Psychology Department (CliffsNotes.com; Lone Star College). The Stanford Psychology...
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...Judith Guest’s novel, Ordinary People, and movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos Forman, both share a number of traits that correlate with one another . Such traits include vulnerability, perfection, and emotional imbalance. Both Ordinary People and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest captivate the emotions of the audience by addressing these three traits through a point of view, setting, and imagery. Since Ordinary People has two perspectives of a father and son, the point of view in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focuses on Nurse Ratched’s confrontation with Billy. Furthermore, the vulnerability that Con develops after the death of his brother also applies to Billy when Nurse Ratched humiliated him in front of the other...
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...One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest As a child, the adults in my neighborhood would always say “stop acting like a crazy person, or else people are going to think you’re really crazy”. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy does exactly what the old people of my community said not to do; he pretends to be crazy. The reason he does this is to avoid the punishment of jail time, he pleads insanity and ends up in a mental institution. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was released in 1975, it was directed by Milos Forman. It starred Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, Louise Fletcher as Nurse Rathced, and Danny Divito as Martini. Randle McMurphy is under the impression that he would rather serve time in a mental institution, than serve jail time, is admitted as a patient and attempts to play the role of an insane person. Immediately he realizes that the people who are his peers in the community have problems that go a lot deeper than his. He seems to be able to reach out to the clients and in the end; his demise is one person’s freedom. McMurphy teaches Chief, a Native American inmate how to fend for himself, and he encourages the other patients to rebel against the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched does not like her authority to be challenged, and a power struggle begins between she and McMurphy. McMurphy pulls many stunts during his stay at the hospital, but the one that sends her over the edge is when McMurphy throws party and brings prostitutes to the mental...
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...In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey exposes us to the world of mental illness and mental wards. Kesey exposes us to two therapeutic strategies, external discipline and solipsism. Although Nurse Ratched was technically the medical professional, McMurphy inspired the healing by encouraging self healing and helping them escape Nurse Ratched’s control. As the person who had been on the ward the longest, Nurse Ratched dominated the ward as the leader, even though she was unqualified to hold that level of jurisdiction on the patients’ medical treatment. She controlled the ward by making everything fit into the molds she desired. The ward was the world that she could make perfect with rules, schedules, drugs, staff, and fear. By ordering...
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...The protagonist is usually the main character, the one that tells the story from memory, but in some instances, like in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the main character is simply the narrator. Bromden is sometimes hard to understand,“Chief Bromden narrates, however, in ways that continually confuse the reader until he comes to appreciate how the logic of storytelling characteristic of a native point of view can manipulate different modes of discourse” The real protagonist was Randle McMurphy. Throughout the story, Chief Bromden describes the ward to the reader, but this only classifies him as the narrator. Randle McMurphy, a main character that came to the ward after pleading insanity, teaches the men how to find themselves. He shows them that they aren’t crazy and they could leave the ward when they were all ready, another lesson McMurphy taught the men. Nurse Ratched, an evil women that intimidates and mistreats the men, runs...
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...One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest After reading the book and watching the movie, it’s clear that there are many differences in the type of direction the author and director were going in. For the book Kesey had Chief be the narrator, which I think helps the audience understand why chief is the way he is. It lets the audience be more compassionate and open minded to why he pretends he’s deaf and dumb. In the movie they only have one part where chief explains why to McMurphy about what happened to him and his family while growing up. Obviously when filming a movie it can be very tricky to tell the story through the perspective of a dumb and deaf person, but I do think they could have done a better job in showing why chief acts this way. There...
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...In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the terms hero and villain are not mentioned, but are shown descriptively and symbolically throughout the book. One of the key characters of the story is a christ like figure that gives hope to the other characters. The antagonist of the story has an authoritarian way of running things and will go to extreme measures to get what she wants. Nurse Ratched is the villain because she uses her power to manipulate and oppress the patients since she determines their fate in the ward. An instance where this is shown is on page 64. The quote that supports this is when Harding said, “The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong.” This was said after McMurphy dared to ask...
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...One needs to be honest, know right from wrong and have respect for others and without these basic principles do not expect anything good to come from a person. He or she will abuse power when it is given, as they does not see it as wrong. In Ken Keseys’ One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest both Nurse Ratched and McMurphy abuse their power over the other patients in the ward. They have different ways and motive but it all comes down to personal gain. Power is easily abused when the person possessing it is never challenged, actively seeks it and feels entitled to it. It could be said that the abusers are fully aware of what they are doing, but although aware of it, that does not mean they are doing it just because they can. The distinction between the use and abuse of power is a matter of perception. Abusers generally do not see themselves as abusing, merely using it to pursue their goals. People start abusing power when they are surrounded by sycophants or “yes people” and gradually start seeing the world through a distorted lense that filters out critical input. Unchecked power is blinding and corrupting because the person in power is normally disconnected from from the people they have power over. Throughout the begining of Keseys’ novel Nurse Ratched...
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...nurse throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey reveals Nurse Ratched’s authoritative demeanor she holds throughout the ward. The ward runs on a policy-based system that Nurse Ratched has created to ensure the floor works like a machine. But, now that McMurphy has become a part of the ward, he is determined to mess up, even the littlest bit, of Nurse Ratcheds system. Specifically, when Nurse Ratched walks into the ward she finds McMurphy standing in nothing but his towel with his toothbrush in his hand. Nurse Ratched is becoming “madder and more frustrated than ever” because she expected an aid to have “[issue] a change of greens” to McMurphy (89). Here, Kesey has brought...
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...The majority of individuals in society are often deceived by fallacious beliefs on those suffering with a psychological illness. The novel, One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, educates readers on the prominence of proper education on mental health, as well as, the severity of the treacherous treatments directed towards the predominantly oppressed group. The renowned tale is narrated by Chief Bromden, who is described as a “deaf and dumb” Native- American, inhabiting the Oregon Psychiatric Institution. Conversely, the protagonist of the novel, Randel McMurphy, is introduced as a polar opposite to the majority of the ward’s patients. McMurphy, distinguished as an American of Irish decent, proclaims to be a well-known gambler,...
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...Ken Kesey was born in 1935 in Colorado. In 1946, his family moved to Oregon, where he become champion in wrestling, both in high school and college (Ken Kesey Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography). He attended Stanford University and later in 1960 Kesey volunteered in the experiment organized by U.S army, in which he was using drugs such LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and then reporting on their effect. He also spent some time communicating with patients in the hospital's psychiatric ward. It was an experience which encouraged Ken Kesey to write his 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” (the book I’m reading right now), which examined the abuses of the system against the individuals and the theory that patients weren’t insane, but...
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...control. In the story “The One Who Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” the constant theme of good vs evil is reminded throughout the story. Whether it be nurse Ratchet vs all who will oppose her authority or questioning if the punishment is justifiable. In the story nurse Ratchet (the antagonist) is epitomized as an evil tyrant, wanting every muscle movement to proceed in the manner that she wants you to do. "So [Nurse Ratched] really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an...
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...The struggle for power is one of the greatest struggles a person may face, this is seen throughout the entire novel, One flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. The desire for power is what ultimately leads to the death of the protagonist, Randle McMurphy, who spends a majority of the novel trying to remove Nurse Ratched’s authority. He manages to corrupt the minds of some of the other patients to turn against Nurse Ratched’s dictatorship. These instances contribute to the overall theme of the novel: one of the strongest drives is the desire for power. From the beginning McMurphy is different, he speaks with confidence. The narrator Chief Bromden thinks, “Still, even though I can’t see him, I know he’s no ordinary admission… when they tell him about the shower he don’t just submit with a weak little yes, he tells them right back in a loud, brassy voice that he’s already pretty damn clean, thank you,” (10). He begins to learn that Nurse Ratched does not like change, because change can often lead to conflict. Nurse Ratched states, “I recall some years back we had a man, a Mr. Taber, on the ward, and he was an intolerable ward manipulator. For a while,” (25). This passage shows Nurse Ratched has had people like McMurphy...
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...The passage which illustrates McMurphy’s greatest triumph of the men showing that they are prepared to face society is stated as, “While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther….in wave after wave after wave,” (249-250). In this quote, the men are on a fishing expedition and McMurphy begins to laugh freely which the patients followed, signifying that although being labeled as lunatics, laughter is the one thing keeping them sane. Their laughter portrays how they’ve gained freedom as they opened up, learned to laugh at themselves, each other, accepting the world as it is, for its flaws and its strengths, as it says, “part of them, laughing with them-and somehow not with them,” (250). Earlier in the novel, laughter in the ward was rare, as they were under Nurse Ratched’s control....
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