Gambling and Taking Risks in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest operates as an entertaining and interesting novel on a pure surface level. There’s a good story, well-developed characters and fresh language. It has all the workings of a good novel, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest isn’t just a good novel. It’s a great one, because Kesey uses Chief Bromden’s perspective to let imagery flow out of the novel and have it all come back to one theme: individuality and its repression by society. This idea is highlighted by the image of gambling vs. playing it safe, whether in literal card games or as a way of living. The mental ward’s new patient, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a self-described “gambling fool” (12)1, while his opposer, “Big Nurse” Ratched, forces the “Acute” patients to play it safe by trying to keep the ward in order with her mechanical routine. As McMurphy influences the men on the ward to be individuals, gambling becomes a part of the everyday routine. Eventually, the men on the ward begin taking gambles outside of card games until the novel’s climax. The novel begins with Chief mopping and lurking in the background as a quiet observer. Ever since he’s been on the ward until later in the novel, Chief acts as what he calls “cagey” and doesn’t talk, which makes everyone assume he’s deaf and dumb. He doesn’t take the chance of telling anyone because he’s afraid that the staff will punish him after he’s heard enough of their secrets. He mops the ward and submits himself to the fog that he hallucinates. While the other men talk and walk around, they’re not much better than Chief. They play Pinochle and occasionally bet for matches, which is all that Big Nurse allows, but they never enjoy themselves and don’t even let themselves truly laugh. When McMurphy enters the ward, he announces that he “figure[s]...to be the sort of gambling baron on this ward” (19) and that the Army taught him his “natural bent”, which is to play poker. Right off the bat, one can tell that