One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest We, being members of society do not have the
authority to judge whether people are sane or insane. Some may say that others
are insane but we are all a little bit crazy. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
a novel written by Ken Kesey deals with these topics and is a well-written piece
of literature that will be enjoyed by generations to come. It will become a
timeless classic simply because of the great combination of the setting and the
characters and how they both support the themes found throughout the story. The
setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a backdrop which makes it easy
to see the wickedness of the world and people in general. The hospital, Dr.
Spivey says, “is a little world inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of
the big world outside.” Most of the action in the novel takes place in a world
that is indeed limited and specific. It is but one ward of one hospital in
Oregon. The world of the Cuckoo’s Nest is in many ways a cartoon world that is
filled with colorful characters and laughs, in which good and evil are clearly
defined. Far from being a place of healing, the hospital is a place of fear
where patients do not laugh and fear the consequences of anything they speak of.
The setting of this novel allows the characters to develop freely and they are
even a little off the wall which is a good attribute that will be admired by
future readers. McMurphy teaches the rest of the patients how to be sane. Above
all, this sanity consists of the ability to laugh, to laugh both at your self
and at the world that is often ludicrous and cruel. Chief Bromden says, “ He
knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in
balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.” As McMurphy is
strapped to the treatment table (shape of a cross), a parallel is drawn between
him and Christ, both sacrificed themselves for the good of others. His sole
reason for living has been the other patients’ need for him. His example has
given the patients enough courage to brave the outside world, but he returns
from a lobotomy a ruined man. One of the most important clues to the character
of Nurse Ratched is that her name rhymes with ratchet, which is a piece of
machinery. Nurse Ratched (whose name also carries the echoes of rat and
wretched), has transformed herself from a human being into a machine that
demands complete control and order of everyone. The Chief describes the nurse
as, a mechanism of terror, able to control the hospital with her “beams of
hate”, which shows the Nurse as the embodiment of pure evil. She represents
forces that influence us all. The Nurse and her new patient (McMurphy) are in
every way opposed to each other; she demands control, while he seeks freedom.
She is the voice of common sense but McMurphy never lets rules or common sense
stand in the way of good fun. This ongoing conflict symbolizes the struggle
between good and evil. Our guide to the world of the Cuckoo’s Nest is the
towering Chief Bromden. The Chief’s seemingly random and irrational
hallucinations, confusing at first, gain clarity when we see they are carefully
organized to give us an understanding of the hospital we would never receive
from a traditional narrator. He has convinced everyone around him that he is
deaf and dumb, he tries to flee reality by thinking back to his happy childhood
but in moments of great stress, a dense fog engulfs him. He sees his father
“shrink” in his mind, the diminishing is a literal and physical one, from a
proud Indian Chief to a man stripped of his name. The Chief has always possessed
his own reserves of courage; it just took McMurphy to remind him that he did.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is as much the Chief’s story as it is
McMurphy’s and it is only because of his final victory that we are able to
hear the story of the Cuckoo’s Nest at all. The hidden meanings and
representations of characters is definitely one of the reasons why this is such
a great book. Ken Kesey displays many themes in, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest, to help the reader gain a greater understanding of his message. The
biggest being: What is craziness and what is sanity. The patients in the ward
have been declared mentally ill by society and in some cases even by themselves.
However, Dr. Spivey and the residents display no more courage or rationality
than do their patients… Nurse Ratched’s devotion to rules above all else can
be seen as some kind of illness, one she shares with much of society.
Unrestrained sexuality is a big part of McMurphy’s (and Kesey’s) idea of
sanity. Where sane men and women are not afraid of sex, many of the patients are
in the hospital at least in part because their sexuality has been devastated.
The Chief’s return to sanity is signaled in part by an erection. Billy defeats
his controlling mother and Nurse Ratched when he loses his virginity to Candy.
Even Nurse Ratched hides her sexuality by trying to hide her large breasts with
her heavy white uniform. Kesey seems to share the same point of view, which the
author of the Rocking Horse Winner had. That was, we do not pay enough attention
to our sexuality. These themes and may others are consistent and scattered
evenly throughout the story, which again emphasizes the quality of this novel.
The setting was explained with the greatest of detail, the characters were
always true to their nature and the themes dealt with in this novel were in fact
very real. A quite disturbing piece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, makes
you think about how people in such institutions live. However, as grim as his
descriptions of the hospital may be, Kesey is not simply writing a book that
criticizes such mental health facilities, for we realize that the outside world
is not much better.