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…
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.…
Show how a pairing of two texts this year gave you an understanding of how authors can present similar ideas in different ways.…
“Power is the strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. It is being able to place a circle of power at your own feet and not take power from someone else’s circle.” In John Knowles A Separate Peace Finny has the power to do whatever he set his mind to without having to second guess himself or listen to what others tell him. Finny’s physical attributes and popularity made him someone that others looked up to and someone who wasn’t ever bothered. In the form of his roommate Gene however it didn’t come so naturally. Gene wasn’t like Finny so what Gene would do was try and be more powerful by becoming more like Finny. Similar to Finny, R.P McMurphy was also a powerful man in his own way. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy’s attitude and actions make him someone for the other people in the mental institution to look up to. His power of resisting Nurse Ratched was one that other patients tried to develop and want to do on their own. What the quote states is something that I agree with and is seen through out novels in history. In both Ken Kesey’s and John Knowles novels, a hint of jealousy or envy could be showing which in time could lead to others some being so power hungry that it my lead to some others demise.…
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…
As I recently completed reading your world fame story, “One who flew over the Cuckoo's Nest” which explains the first person perspective of a patient who joins and becomes a friend with a stubborn rebel who rallies himself with the other patients to dethrone a nurse obsessed with power in the Mental Ward. Overall with certain confusing aspects of the story, the book is a well written piece of history.…
BEfore McMurphy arrived, the patients believed in everything Big Nurse said and continued to follow the rules without hesitation. However, as McMurphy starts to mock the rules and give the patients opportunities to speak up, they become me vocal, and power starts to shift within the ward. In the beginning of the text, everything is controlled by Big Nurse, as said in the text when she says, “Of course, you may take the suggestion up with the rest of the staff at some time, but I'm afraid everyone's feelings will correspond with mine” (98), implying that her word is final. At this time, McMurphy is asking politely to watch the baseball game, and Big Nurse uses her power to decline without hearing his reasoning.When they throw a party in the ward, however, without any supervision, Big Nurse is nowhere to be found. All the patients come together and decide to get drunk, invite a prostitute, and have fun. Without regard to the rules, Chief starts to realize that as he partied, “ it came to me as a kind of sudden surprise that I was drunk, actually drunk, glowing and grinning and staggering drunk for the first time since the Army, drunk along with half a dozen other guys and a couple of girls—right on the Big Nurse's ward!” (311). This is the moment when the patients finally completely let loose and have fun. This is important because even though McMurphy plans everything, the patients don't back out like usual and finally let loose. By the end of the text, the power shift from the ward to the patients becomes more…
In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the narrator, Bromden, is seen as a weak character who is submissive to the authority in the mental facility. Nurse Ratched or Big Nurse runs the mental facility with fear and is only challenged when Randle McMurphy becomes a patient who rebels against her system. The section in the story where McMurphy and Bromden are about to receive punishment after rebelling relates to the overall story as the readers can see how Bromden is changing to become a stronger person with McMurphy’s influence. He starts off as a powerless and scared patient and ends up growing as a person by seeing that he has the power to control his life and make decisions on his own. Throughout the book, the theme that with someone to lead or set an example, others can stand up for themselves after being oppressed is seen.…
There have been many struggles in history between authority and those who oppose it. The most obvious and most common example is revolutions against governments. We live in a society where stability and assimilation are not just recommended, but also enforced. We have the right for civil disobedience, so long as it is non-violent and within reason. In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, R.P McMurphy, a "brawling, gambling man" enters a mental asylum in Oregon, and begins to wage war "on behalf of his fellow inmates". However he finds himself at odds with Nurse Ratched, a strict, manipulative and methodical woman who runs the ward like a "precision-made machine". The book follows McMurphy's actions that constantly clash with the Nurse, and what she represents: authority. By the end of the book, there are many…
The advancement of technology over the last decade has been used to further security methods in society. Devices such as surveillance systems in stores have caught suspects and decreased crime, but only by a mere 0.05% (Welsh, Farrington) (specifically in Chicago, which currently has 15,000 cameras throughout the city). So, does this implementation of surveillance really make people behave? The texts “Panopticism” by Michel Foucault and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey both focus on how to make people behave. Foucault's theory explains that if surveillance is used on people in seclusion, the authorities will claim ultimate control. Kesey’s novel challenges this theory once new ward member McMurphy is transferred in, as he provokes…
In the novel, McMurphy coming to know that all the patients on the ward are not not committed while he is meaning that they can leave whenever they want to unlike him exemplifies the stage of despair, darkness, and hopelessness. The stage is also exemplified when he finds out that Nurse Ratched is the one who decides when he will be able to leave the ward exemplifies the stage of despair, darkness, and hopelessness. After he realizes this, he starts to stop being rebellious which sets him back on his quest and main goal of helping the patients. McMurphy feels obligated to the Nurse and feels hopeless against her because he wanted to to leave and be able to help the patients out. He feels hopeless against Nurse Ratched after finds out that she decides if he leaves or not because he had always been rude and rebellious towards her the minute he first came in to the ward. He fears that she will use this reasoning against him so he doesn’t leave the ward. McMurphy feels that he has to do anything that Nurse Ratched wants and stop being rebellious if he wants to get out of the ward quickly. This can be seen when Harding says, “Why friends, you don’t suppose there’s anything to this rumor that Mr. McMurphy has conformed to policy merely to aid his chances of an early release?” (166). Here Harding is telling the other patients on the ward about how their “savior” McMurphy has lost and conformed to Nurse Ratched’s rules. He is saying that McMurphy conformed to Nurse Ratched and stopped trying to get rid of Nurse Ratched’s power and authority just because he found out that he is committed and that she is the one who decides whether he get to leave early or not. This supports the fact that this is the stage of hopelessness because him coming to the acknowledgement of Nurse Ratched being the one that decides…
Power is a great story line for many novels throughout the ages. Also power is a horrible life guide that many people live with throughout their lives. Within the novels One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Wuthering Heights, it is easy to recognize different cases of power and how power hungry individuals work. Nurse Ratched, featured in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a power obsessed middle-aged nurse who is the head of a mental institute and thrives off of the power she creates over the residents at the facility. Another version of power would be one of creating fear and a longing for revenge. In the novel Wuthering Heights, a, once orphan boy named Heathcliff fell in love with a young lady, which betrayed her and left him. He then felt compelled to…
During one of the Group Meetings before McMurphy arrives, Nurse Ratched is using her tricks to make the patients admit how they feel and say what they had done. She says, “‘Am I to take it that there’s not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted?’ She reached for the log book. ‘Must we go over past history?’”(45). After using the tactic of fear, all of the patients start talking about everything they had done. At this point in the book, Nurse Ratched holds all the power within the ward. She can make the patients do almost anything she wants them to do. Chief has always seen Nurse Ratched the same; he sees her as a scary, powerful nurse who has control over his life. The first mentioning of Nurse Ratched is at the very beginning of the book. Chief hears her coming and thinks, “I know it’s the Big Nurse”(4). It is not the context of the quotation or what happens in the quotation that matters. It is what Chief calls the Nurse. Because she is the one in charge of the entire ward and holds the most power, at that moment, she is known as the “Big Nurse.” Not only does she literally have the word “Big” in her name, but it is capitalized, which adds onto her repeated motif of size. Unfortunately for her, Chief is able to change his perception of her “almighty”…
"...With liberty and justice for all". All across the United States, these final words of the pledge of allegiance are uttered daily, but to what extent are they really meaningful? Should they really be saying, "...With liberty and justice for all that are willing to conform"? Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is the by-product of many factors. Although there are many themes behind this novel, the key premise behind the novel is that the society that we call 'liberated' may not be as free as it is made out to be. Kesey establishes this theme through the manipulation of setting, and indirect characterization of McMurphy. Kesey uses the explicit setting of an imaginary, machine-like mental asylum to correspond to the non-specific realities of the real world; he uses the surroundings of the mental asylum to demonstrate just how hypocritical society can be, and by creating McMurphy to break these rules, the readers can sympathize with the characters trapped in the novel, thus further understanding Kesey's perspective of humanity's pressure to kowtow.…
Describe at least one idea that was worth learning about. Explain why the idea was worth learning about in the text.…