In most cases, someone who tries to cope with a painful experience manages with it differently than Bromden did. After facing over 200 electro-shock treatments, witnessing his father’s alcoholism, and becoming a skeptic of the ward and its goals, Bromden describes himself as if he had improved from all of these experiences. As the novel progresses, Bromden becomes stronger and taller to the point where ESTs did not affect him. This allows the reader to detect that Bomden is, in fact, an unreliable narrator. Why would one believe someone who has been ill from childhood and faced trauma
In the movie “The Snake Pit” the main character Virginia Cunningham apparently suffers from some mental breakdown and is involuntarily committed to a mental health facility where she is treated with electroconvulsive shock treatments, physical restraints and sedation. In the movie “The Soloist”, the main character, Nathaniel Ayers is a middle age man apparently suffering from Schizophrenia. The unrelenting voices in his head torment him. He has been chronically homeless, estranged from his family and vulnerable for decades. One could argue that Mrs. Cunningham was in a safe environment albeit dank, dreary and prison-like, but she was “protected” from harm during this most difficult time in her life.
Didion (1994) stated, ““Three, four, maybe five times a month, I spend the day in bed with a migraine headache, insensible to the world around me(para. 1).” Immediately I am put in Didion shoes being a victim myself of another kind of headache issue myself. The use of Pathos is quite clear within the first sentence not to let alone this entire essay. Didion (1994) stated, “It was a long time before I began mechanistically enough to accept migraine for what it was: something with which I would be living, the way people live with diabetes(para. 3).” This statement grasps at many readers roots as most of us either know someone with or have diabetes.
Women as castrators, society’s destruction of natural impulses, and false diagnoses of insanity are some of the themes which are reinforced by the Chief’s madness and hallucinations in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The main weaknesses of using Chief Bromden as the narrator of the novel are due to the fact that the Chief continuously describes his hallucinations as if they were present and constantly has flashbacks of his past which can be confusing. Additionally, his opinions on the events and characters that take place at the ward can be a biased opinion of the Chief. This particularly interferes with our knowledge and understanding about what is actually happening at the ward. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one very confusing thing that interferes with our understanding of reality and fantasy is Chief
Some other forms of treatment is rehab, and family therapy also other people suffering from the same disorder also sometimes hospitalization is required to make sure that the medication works and the symptoms will go away. All these treatments are great compared to how they treated schizophrenia patients before the revolution of mental health came about. Before medications were given to treat schizophrenia people were committed to insane asylums and tied down and left for
In the first possible way that fiction can be used to tell the truth is by understanding and reading into or about the events in a fiction story. If you know the truth behind the actual story it is very revealing to how it is in reality. For example, in the story One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is related to Ten Days in a Mad House in the revealing way of how the patients are treated by the doctors and especially the nurses in the institutions. Both of the nurses were abusive and or either threatening. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ratched was the mean and threatening nurse who would tell her insane patients that they would electroshock therapy if they didn’t obey or if they were misbehaving.
The Counterculture obviously relates to Kesey theory of drugs being the key to an individual liberation. When Kesey was in the process of writing the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest the Korean War was still a fresh memory, and then in shock came World War II after. According to Kesey war can cause trauma to patients. Following the daily beast article many of the patients in the nove One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest suffered from war trauma. For example, “Old Colonel Matterson thinks he’s still in World War I, Billy Bibbit suffered a breakdown in ROTC training when he couldn’t answer the drill officer’s command without stuttering, and McMurphy, who received a dishonorable discharge in the Korean War for insubordination” (American Dreams).
The power struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is the main conflict in the novel because it affects everybody in the hospital also each use their power over the patients and nurse staff in different ways throughout the hospital. This has happened a lot through out history as well. The main purpose of everything that the two do to each other or the people around them is to establish power. However the power they gain or already have can be taken away or ignored easier than it was to establish. McMurphy does not always have power within the hospital; he loses it at some points but gains it back after.
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is the story of a man named Chief Bromden and his experiences on an extremely problematic ward of a mental hospital during the mid 1900’s. Early in the novel, when it becomes evident that Chief is a classified schizophrenic, it raises the question of whether or not anything in the novel is actually happening, or if all the events that unfold are just creations of his imagination. There are a large number of events that took place in the novel that are clearly hallucinations, but there are also things that happen that could have actually happened outside of Chief’s mind. One instance early in the novel in which Chief Bromden shows his mental hallucinations is when he refers to the fog machines in the ward. The appearance of fog throughout the novel is associated with Chief’s fear of the Nurse Ratched and the orderlies.
01 December 2011 Misleading Reality of the Ward Psychiatric hospitals, other well known as wards, are institutions that treat the mentally ill. The patients admitted into these wards attend group and individual therapy sessions to interact and reflect to undergo improvements (dictionary.reference.com). In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest scribed by Ken Kesey, the ward is portrayed as a microcosm of the outside world. This psychiatric hospital in Oregon is peculiar in a sense that it boycotts all codes of conduct that these institutions abide by. After analyzing the ward, it is verified that this center is seen as a detriment rather than rehabilitation.