One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a lively con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rambunctious antics and sporadic bouts with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for themselves, to challenge conformity to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man R.P. McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy revitalizes the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's stranglehold on the ward, and, in a way, represents the feelings of the author on society at the time.
Before R.P. McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution. Men line up to receive their medication, they do puzzles and play cards, and the evil head nurse and her muscle, a group of big black fellows, carry patients off to be shaved or for electroshock therapy. The people can't do anything about it, though. After all, some of them are …show more content…
He represented the free spirited hippies who believed everyone deserved a shot at happiness, while the nurse represented the man, corporations, those who wanted everything to be uniform and nothing to be spontaneous. McMurphy slowly converts everyone to his side. They've hated the big nurse for so long, but they never had a leader to help them become vocal until now. Kesey had plenty of experience with this counterculture. The Chief, the narrator of the book, was actually inspired by LSD. Ken Kesey had himself worked at a hospital as an orderly, and his experimentation with drugs led to a hallucination of a large Indian man sweeping the halls. Many of the characters in the book were inspired by his old job. He was even sued by a lady who believed Nurse Ratched was based off of her and made her look
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a lively con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rambunctious antics and sporadic bouts with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for themselves, to challenge conformity to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man R.P. McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy revitalizes the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's stranglehold on the ward, and, in a way, represents the feelings of the author on society at the time.
Before R.P. McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution. Men line up to receive their medication, they do puzzles and play cards, and the evil head nurse and her muscle, a group of big black fellows, carry patients off to be shaved or for electroshock therapy. The people can't do anything about it, though. After all, some of them are …show more content…
He represented the free spirited hippies who believed everyone deserved a shot at happiness, while the nurse represented the man, corporations, those who wanted everything to be uniform and nothing to be spontaneous. McMurphy slowly converts everyone to his side. They've hated the big nurse for so long, but they never had a leader to help them become vocal until now. Kesey had plenty of experience with this counterculture. The Chief, the narrator of the book, was actually inspired by LSD. Ken Kesey had himself worked at a hospital as an orderly, and his experimentation with drugs led to a hallucination of a large Indian man sweeping the halls. Many of the characters in the book were inspired by his old job. He was even sued by a lady who believed Nurse Ratched was based off of her and made her look