Reaction to The Lobotomist Peter E. Doria Gateway Community College The television program The American Experience on PBS ran a section on a man named Walter J. Freeman; a doctor who was the best known for mainstreaming a controversial surgical procedure called a lobotomy. The surgical procedure was used to treat mental illness by severing the frontal lobes of the brain. It was believed mental illness was caused by physical defects in the brain (Goodman, 2008). Freeman believed that he had found the cure for all mental illness, the lobotomy. This in hind sight was a radical procedure that was combined with an individual who was driven by a hunger to become famous and desire for notoriety to create a monster comparable to the likes of Josef Mengele and Carl Clauberg.
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).
Throughout the novel “One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest”, the Combine is Chief Bromden’s interpretation of the institution and the society surrounding the ward. Author Ken Kesey portrays Chief as another ‘cog in the machine’ as Nurse Ratched purposes to oppress and tyrannise the patients throughout the ward to maintain a conforming society. The novel is portrayed through the at times unreliable and unjustified eyes of Chief Bromden. Kesey’s ideologies of the manipulating and mechanistic ways of the Combine are directly linked with Chief Bromden and his viewpoint. Chief Bromden’s perceives the Combine as an all-powerful, spying and secretive commune that watches and controls everything around the ward and identifies the Big Nurse as the head of the Combine.
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.
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.
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
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Pages 24- 3 -operation of ward; staff& routine -treatment of patients medically, mentally & physically EST treatment Sexual harassment -Nurse Ratched; total authority and control - black boys operate on hate -patients have no backbone -foreshadowing of events Important passages Nurse Ratched’s control, treatment and reaction to disruption of her ward “I recall some yea s back we had a man a Mr. Taber, on the ward, and he was an intolerable Ward manipulator. For a while” she looks up from her work, needle half filled in front of her face like a little wand. Her eyes far-off and pleased with the memory “Miisitur Tay-bur” she says……. She cuts the
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kasey starts off with one of the patients Chief Bromden whom is narrating the events that take place in the ward. The whole institution is controlled by Nurse Ratched a bitter, hostile women whom is revolting towards the patients. The novel leads off with a new patient McMurphy entering the ward who has a major impact on the patients. Being said he encourages the men to go against all the rules dictated by Nurse Ratched. He then starts to place a bet with the patients how he can crack Nurse Ratched without getting displaced and being sent for electroshock.
n the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author, Ken Kesey, chose a patient who suffers from schizophrenia like symptoms to narrate the story. The novel is seen through Chief Bromden and how he interprets the insane asylum he lives in, which he calls "the Combine." Chief is very observant and gives detailed descriptions on everything in the ward. The other patients are under the impression that he is deaf and dumb. This allows him to eavesdrop throughout the entire hospital and know exactly what’s going on at all times.
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.