Allusions In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The significance of allusions in literature is further seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kesey’s most apparent biblical allusion is seen within Bromden’s depiction of the Combine, he states, “... endless machines…swarming with sweating, shirtless men running up and down catwalks, blank faces and dreamy in firelight thrown from a hundred blast furnaces,” (Kesey 86). The gloomy atmosphere as well as the mechanical and brutal nature of the ward, is perhaps an allusion to Hell and Dante’s novel Inferno, as the character Virgil guides people through Hell which parallels the role of the Public Relation’s man who guides visitors through the ward. The ward, of course, is symbolic of Hell itself as it is the center of the machine which attempts