The Happy Man Kesey Analysis

Does true happiness exist? Happiness is a pleasant emotion that one appears to have, it is acquired through countless stimuli, whether they are material or emotional. Having a temporary happy mental state may reflect judgments by a person about their overall well-being. The Happy Man by Naguib Mahfouz shows that happiness is an overwhelming feeling that makes one not function properly in society and in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest happiness is unattainable, and patients being confined in the mental hospital have a sense of freedom that society can not present to them. When compared, these two pieces of literature give insight on how societal, personal and emotional factors can affect the mental health of an individual or group.
When he encounters problems at work or remember events from the past he would face them with a sense of happiness and express these concerns as if it is nothing important. For instance, the reminder of his dead wife did not cause him to shed any emotions and recalling the event seem to be unreal to him “The event appeared to him as a series of movements without any meaning or effect, as though it happened to some other woman, the wife of another man, in some distant historical age.” (PG) The happy man also has a son who is staying in Canada “I’ve often begged him to come back out of pity for me in my loneliness and to serve his country.” (PG) “The first letter his son had sent him saying that he wanted to emigrate to Canada. The sound of his guffaws as he paraded the bloody tragedies of the world before him” (PG)” Let him live where he’ll be happy. I’m quite happy here-as you can see, inconceivably happy…” (PG). Having no family left to stay with him “He [also] did not feel like meeting any friends.” “No, he did not need anyone, nor did he want to spend the evening talking.” In his society, this inconceivably happiness does not go away, instead it is like a dangerous plague that consumes every part of his body system. On the other hand, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the hospital head nurse Nurse Ratched suppresses the individuality of the patients by controlling aspects of their lives and forcing them to conform to the hospital by establishing a successful system for the men to snitch on each other by writing their reports in a notebook. She encourages the men to turn against each other, calling the practice 'therapeutic.' Nurse Ratched should be promoting her patients’ sanity, but instead her tyranny directly subverts their mental health. She keeps the patients docile,