...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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...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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...In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey focuses on how modern society oppresses those who do not fit into the mold of what is considered normal. In the mental ward that the book takes place in, Randle McMurphy continually rebels against the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, who symbolizes modern society in Kesey’s book. McMurphy, although unaware in the beginning of the horrible experiences the patients go through at the hands of Nurse Ratched, starts an uprising against Nurse Ratched and ends up sacrificing himself so his fellow patients can gain their freedom. Initially entering the asylum, McMurphy was not insane. He chose to go to the hospital instead of serving a six month sentence at a work camp because he thought it would be easier. In the beginning, McMurphy is immediately labeled as different; unlike the other patients who have been forced to repress their emotions due to Nurse Ratched, McMurphy is described as a big, vulgar, sexual, funny man whose loud laugh shocks the patients. This shows two things; one, McMurphy does not truly understand the pain or suffering that comes from being oppressed by a society yet, which leads to the second point. Because McMurphy is both not oppressed and still has his...
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...Anthony Miley 5/29/14 Period 7 One flew over the cuckoo’s nest “ One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” This book was written by and was the first for ken kesey. He has also written the great nation. I believe this is an interesting book because the protagonist of the story is mentally ill, but manages to fight to change the rules in the mental asylum. After taking a closer look at the life and work of ken kesey, it is apparent that this writer deserves recognition as a profound American author. With hard work and determination ken kesey has written one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, which leaves behind a powerful message that can be either be neither ignored nor forgotten. The quote used in the previous paragraph is on which this story is based upon. This book is about a man who is sentence to be in a mental prison and sees the men in there are suffering from the head nurse. He faces the nurse’s authority, and tries to overthrow her rules. This book is seen as a classic novel. Ken Kesey was born in la junta, Colorado, but grew up in Springfield, Oregon where he spent his time in public schools, later intended the university of Oregon in Eugene. He received the Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Stanford University and a saxton fellowship, and won the Fred Lowe scholarship awarded to the outstanding wrestler in the northwest. Ken Kesey was a prankster. He was king of the merry pranksters that traveled the west coast that staged happenings. He also...
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...One flew over the cuckoo’s nest “ One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” This book was written by and was the first for ken kesey. He has also written the great nation. I believe this is an interesting book because the protagonist of the story is mentally ill, but manages to fight to change the rules in the mental asylum. After taking a closer look at the life and work of ken kesey, it is apparent that this writer deserves recognition as a profound American author. With hard work and determination ken kesey has written one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, which leaves behind a powerful message that can be either be neither ignored nor forgotten. The quote used in the previous paragraph is on which this story is based upon. This book is about a man who is sentence to be in a mental prison and sees the men in there are suffering from the head nurse. He faces the nurse’s authority, and tries to overthrow her rules. This book is seen as a classic novel. Ken Kesey was born in la junta, Colorado, but grew up in Springfield, Oregon where he spent his time in public schools, later intended the university of Oregon in Eugene. He received the Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Stanford University and a saxton fellowship, and won the Fred Lowe scholarship awarded to the outstanding wrestler in the northwest. Ken Kesey was a prankster. He was king of the merry pranksters that traveled the west coast that staged happenings. He also appeared apart of and star of the...
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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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...Anthony Miley 5/29/14 Period 7 One flew over the cuckoo’s nest “ One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” This book was written by and was the first for ken kesey. He has also written the great nation. I believe this is an interesting book because the protagonist of the story is mentally ill, but manages to fight to change the rules in the mental asylum. After taking a closer look at the life and work of ken kesey, it is apparent that this writer deserves recognition as a profound American author. With hard work and determination ken kesey has written one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, which leaves behind a powerful message that can be either be neither ignored nor forgotten. The quote used in the previous paragraph is on which this story is based upon. This book is about a man who is sentence to be in a mental prison and sees the men in there are suffering from the head nurse. He faces the nurse’s authority, and tries to overthrow her rules. This book is seen as a classic novel. Ken Kesey was born in la junta, Colorado, but grew up in Springfield, Oregon where he spent his time in public schools, later intended the university of Oregon in Eugene. He received the Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Stanford University and a saxton fellowship, and won the Fred Lowe scholarship awarded to the outstanding wrestler in the northwest. Ken Kesey was a prankster. He was king of the merry pranksters that traveled the west coast that staged happenings. He also...
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...Ken Kesey accurately depicts one of the most unique theories of the subconscious mind in his 1975 novel “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. With the central setting in a psychiatric hospital One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest clearly depicts Sigmund Freud's Theory of the Id, Ego, and Superego. The characters throughout the book depict these separations of the Id, Ego, and Superego and we see how they work together to create a functioning whole much like our own brains do everyday. Randle Patrick McMurphy is depicted as the Id. His sexual remarks, swearing, and gamble is parallel to the Id, which is our human desire. We all are born with impulses whether right or wrong and Randle is a clear example of our need to get what we want at any cost. "You can't run around here—in a towel!" "No?" He looks down at the part of the towel she's eye to eye with, and it's wet and skin tight. "Towels against ward policy too? Well, I guess there's nothin' to do exec—" (Nest, 1975). Randle is impulsive and dangerous and...
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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 Cuckoo's Nest Literary analysis How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers? One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a book that deals with the struggles of mental illness and conformity. Randle Patrick McMurphy also known as McMurphy has just been out into a hospital for the mentally ill, where he intends to take over and make the head nurse, Nurse Ratched crack under pressure from his shenanigans and wild antics. Next is Chief, Chief has been at the hospital the longest, the story his told through his eyes and schizophrenic thoughts. Though Chief is in the story he can be unreliable because of the schizophrenia and possible ptsd from being in world war two causing hallucinations throughout...
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...Character: Chief Bromden (Chief Broom) is the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Attending for over ten years, he is the longest patient to stay the psychiatric hospital in Oregon. Bromden’s hallucinations brought him into the ward, in which he also gets paranoid and bullied. Because of these hallucinations, he must be medicated. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden reveals how the other patients believe he is deaf and cannot speak, however he is not. In the first chapter, Bromden writes, “They don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much” (Kesey 3). Bromden himself does not know if what he is seeing is true or not and lies to his inmates about his disabilities, proving how he is an unreliable narrator....
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...the release of the movies: Cool Hand Luke (1967) and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). In Cool Hand Luke, Lucas Jackson is placed at a southern prison where as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, R.P. (Randle) McMurphy was placed in a mental institution. They were the rebellious and Christ-like figures that were chained into a restricted society. One will see through the many similarities between the two movies’ including the characters, conflict, symbolism, and theme. The similarities between the...
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...different races change over time. Although I feel that the media makes a more conscious effort to remove degrading racial stereotypes from films, the acknowledgement of the existence of these stereotypes confirms that they are still present. After watching a movie from three different time periods, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Stand and Deliver (1988), and Our Family Wedding (2010), I have found that representation of race in film has largely remained the same, while the acknowledgement of existing stereotypes has become more obvious. The 1960’s-1970’s was a time characterized by Irish Mob Wars (Durney 2000), Hollywood conservative backlash films, and the ongoing misrepresentation of American Indians in film (Larson 2006). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie is about a criminal who pretends to be crazy so that he can serve his sentence in the relatively comfortable confines of an insane asylum rather than a prison. We see the results of the historical events represented in characters from this movie such as Randle Patrick McMurphy, Mr. Turkle, the ward’s guards, and Chief Bromden. The Irish have been infamous for their mafia and organized crime, especially in the Cleveland area. Perhaps their most publicly recognized contribution to the media’s fascination with violence is the Mob Wars of the mid-1970’s (Durney 2000). These huge displays of violence prepped the audience of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to easily accept the character of McMurphy, an Irish American...
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...Gender Roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest The 1950’s was a decade characterized by traditional gender roles of women as homemakers downgraded to the domestic sphere and men as economic providers. With the arrival of the 1960’s, however, stereotypical gender roles were challenged and the American society underwent a variety of social transformations. American writers, such as Ken Kesey, responded to the change through writing. Kesey’s response to the times was his 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is not only a social commentary about mental illness, but also a response to changing gender roles. By demonizing powerful women and uplifting powerful men, his novel promotes sexism and ultimately holds the misogynistic stance that powerful women must be subjugated. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the female characters can be divided into two extreme categories: "ball-cutters" and whores. The negative portrayal of powerful women can be seen in the problematic relationships that the male patients have with their mothers. Bromden, the half Native-American narrator, has a mother who constantly undermines his father, the chief of the Columbia Gorge tribe and a once-powerful man. Bromden’s mother dominates her husband and her son by acting in non-traditional ways, such as using her maiden name for the family’s last name rather than using her husband’s, which convinces Bromden’s father that he is weak and helpless. Because she herself is white, she is ashamed...
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...In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Randle McMurphy struggles to free himself under the dominating power of Nurse Ratched. The power struggle between the two demonstrates the need for free will. When McMurphy enters the halls of the mental ward in Oregon, he finds a group of men beaten into obedience by the head nurse of the ward. Nurse Ratched’s power over the patients extends beyond their actions into their minds. She controls their every second from where they have to be at eight o’clock in the morning to what their beliefs are. McMurphy disrupts this routine by openly disregarding the rules that Nurse Ratched placed. Throughout the novel, McMurphy continuously attempts to eliminate Nurse Ratched’s power in the ward. The first thing that McMurphy does when he is placed in the ward is to introduce himself to every patient. This unusual behavior allows McMurphy to gain the trust of the other men. McMurphy helps to unite the men and works to become the leader. Through this turn of events, readers see the power struggle between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy begin. Nurse Ratched retains her power by hiding her...
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