It all begins in an insane asylum with a half-Native American schizophrenic named Chief Bromden pretending to be deaf and dumb to avoid the typical harassment the other patients go through by the Black Boys, three African American patients conditioned to be Nurse Ratched’s bodyguards (more like lapdogs), and Nurse Ratched herself, the big breasted, fine-aged nurse who is known as “Big Nurse” in the asylum for having the reputation of running the asylum. The Black Boys are beginning their ritual shaving, as they do every morning, and they decided to start with Chief Bromden. In fear, Bromden goes to hide in the broom closet and he begins reminiscing about his past, growing up on the Columbia River with his father. This memory is cut abruptly when one of the Black Boys finds him in the closet; they put him in the chair to begin shaving him, then a fog begins to cover the room… As the fog clears up, he is relieved because he thought he was taken to the Shock Shop, the room where patients are given electroshock treatment. Right as he begins to relax on the chair, a brand new patient is admitted to the mental institution. He is known as Randall McMurphy, an Irish Ginger who has had a problem with gambling. When he gets there, Ratched makes it her mission to get the Black Boys to shower him, but he continually avoids getting that shower and introduces himself to all of the other patients. He shares his story about how he came from a work farm called “Pendleton” and that he is at this institute because he is “a psychopath”. After introducing himself to all the Acutes and Chronics, Acutes being the patients with temporary or short-term conditions and Chronics being the patients with more severe mental disorders, he circles the Acutes, asking for the “bull goose loony”, which is his fancy lingo for “whomever is in charge among the patients.” Billy Bibbit, one of the Acutes who has a stuttering problem, tells McMurphy that a…
My character for the project was Dale Harding. I want my short story to be a prequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The setting will be inside the ward after a meeting. The meeting was focus once again on Harding’s wife and Harding is reflecting back on the meeting. He is laying down in his bed before sleep reflecting on his day. He is completely blind to how Nurse Rachet is playing them and he beginnings to overthink his situation with his wife. At first he denies it and then become more and more irritated with his situation with his wife. Eventually his issues spiral out of control from just his wife to everything going on in his life. He realizes everything in his life is not right, that everything is pointless. By the end of the story…
When a student is told to find a university level novel to read, what are they to do but scour the Internet for “short, easy, university level novels”? After extensive research, my group chose the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. This book elicited great response from my group members and me, for its interesting plot and subject. After reading the first part, a common theme I noticed throughout the book is oppression, more specifically, political and industrial oppression.…
Mcmurphy breaking the picture window was a turning point in the story. The picture window was a prized possession of Nurse Ratched. It was the difference between her and the patients. She was on one side of the window while the patients were on the more unfortunate side. In a therapy session, R.P breaks the window, in the movie and in the novel, to get cigarettes. The glass breaking wasn't only a turning point in the story, but also for Mcmurphy. McMurphy became a larger than life character to the patients.…
The movie is based on Ken Kesey’s best-selling novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We discover in the film that the Chief is not really dumb and deaf, Billy can speak without stuttering and others do not have to live under the harsh rules of Nurse Ratched. McMurphy will cure them, not by giving them pills and group sessions but by encouraging them to be guys. To go fishing, play basketball, watch the World Series, get drunk, get laid, etc. The message for these mental disturbed men is to be like R. P. McMurphy.…
Original Summary: McMurphy wishes to go on a fishing trip with the other patients and a prostitute he knows, but Nurse Ratched denies him permission. The doctor later ends up allowing them to go, but Chief has an internal conflict within himself on whether or not he should go with them and risk revealing that he isn’t actually deaf and dumb. Later that night, Chief accidentally reveals to McMurphy that he can hear and talk, and when McMurphy tells him that he should expose everything he hears, Chief says that he isn’t bold enough like McMurphy to do that. McMurphy makes a deal with him, that if he pays Chief’s fee for the trip and helps make him stronger, then Chief has to help him lift a control panel in the tub room. The next day, when the group goes and stops at a gas station, the attendant tries to take advantage of them, but McMurphy says they’re crazy killers, causing the patients to see that they can use their illnesses to their advantage. After the trip, McMurphy sees that Billy is attracted to the prostitute, later setting up a date for them…
As we continue to read and analyse One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we stumble upon several powerful episodes that bring new dimensions to the book and challange our perception of its characters. In my opinion, among those breaking points is a scene that depicts Mack Murphy’s attempt to lift the Control Panel. That episode not only holds a profound metaphoric meaning, but also becomes critical for all the characters in the novel.…
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…
“She did not renounce all that she had learned, but she understood that shehad deceived herself in thinking that she could be what she wished to be” (236).…
He starts realizing how he still has the ability to stand up for himself no matter how much Nurse Ratched works to put the patients down and instill fear in them. Throughout the book, one can observe how he changes from a weak patient pretending to be disabled to an independent man who escapes the facility. This development occurs because McMurphy has influenced him. The recurring theme that oppressed patients can stand up for themselves, with someone to encourage and set an example for them is seen with the changes in Bromden. In other words, Bromden becoming less scared and able to stand up for himself is all due to the influence of…
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the author Ken Kesey, portrays sanity versus insanity, and maybe most predominantly, who gets to determine what qualifies as sane versus insane. The ward’s mentally ill patients happen to be the “different” people in society, which is why they are institutionalized. Chief Bromden considers this social economic society as “the combine” because it reminds him of a huge machine. Chief Bromden thinks that the combine is going to turn into a dehumanized society where people act like robots and do not think for themselves. The people who do not conform to this dehumanized society end up in the ward. It is "a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches..."(Kesey 40). The combine is a made up establishment that portrays how society was during the 1950’s.…
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey's shows a real problem which is power. Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy are in a war together to gather eachothers power. As John Adman stated, "Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increase." This once again relates to power equals corruption. This is due to the fact that people want to be bigger and better than everyone else. Right off the back you can see the idea of men, great men, being bad is evident in the book.…
Ken Kesey wrote the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, about a new inmate at a mental institution through the point of view of one of the inmates. J.D. Salinger wrote the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, as narrated by a teenage dropout. Neither of the novels have the same setting nor the same type of characters. However, both novels contain a theme of coming of age for the characters as expressed through situational irony, sexual themes, and the motif of laughter.…
Have you ever wondered the difference between sanity and inanity? The difference might not seem to big when you think about it but in all reality, being sane is almost looking at completely normal compared to being insane, and having many too just one mental illnesses and seeing complete non normal. Reading One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and listening to Eyln Saks, Ted talk you can see how insanity can effect ones life. Just because you are diagnosed with a mental illness does not make you completely insane. In both stories, the main characters are diagnosed with schizophrenia.…
One flew over the Cuckoo's nest is a feature film that focuses on the issue of democracy being important to society. Democracy is the people's freedom to choice their ruler. In the film Randal Patrick McMurphy also known as McMurphy is a representative of democracy and Mildred Ratched also known as ratchet is a dictator standing in the way of achieving democracy. This theme is evident through the traditional narrative techniques of symbolism and foreshadowing shown through the conventions specific to a feature film of camera techniques, behaviour and costume. The types of power that Randal and Ratched have covey to the viewer the significance of what they symbolise and why.…