He runs a card table, captains the ward's basketball team, comments on Nurse Ratched's figure, incites the other patients on the ward to conduct a vote on watching the World Series on television, and organizes a supervised deep sea fishing trip. His reaction after failing to lift a heavy shower room control panel (which he had claimed to be able to) – "But at least I tried." – gives the men incentive to try to stand up for themselves, to do their best instead of allowing Nurse Ratched to take control of everything they do. The Chief opens up to McMurphy and reveals late one night that he can speak and hear. A disturbance after the fishing trip results in McMurphy and the Chief being sent for electroshock therapy sessions, but even this experience does little to tamp down McMurphy's rambunctious behavior.
Essay Outline Opening Sentence/Hook: “Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will.” – William Clement Stone Thesis Statement: Due to the subversive oppression they have endured for most of their lives, the main characters from “The Color Purple” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” find help from rebellious individuals to stand up for themselves and live better lives. First Body Paragraph Topic Sentence: Firstly, Celie and Bromden are forcefully oppressed through abuse, isolation and the prejudices of racism and sexism. Point 1 (Abuse): Celie: Physically abused by her husband Albert. Celie says he ‘beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don’t never hardly beat them.” (P. 22) Bromden: Psychologically abused by Nurse Ratched and the mental hospital.
Because Nurse Ratched put fear the patients’ heart, they obey her every demand. However, when the new patient McMurphy who comes from a prison work farm to the hospital, the Big Nurse Ratched starts to lose the power she has over the patients. At the end, the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, cost McMurphy’s health, his freedom, and, finally, his life. In the novel the obvious differences between two characters mostly shown in their personality, the way threading the people and their sexual view. First of all, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy have totally different personality and different point of view.
Initially, it’s just for fun, but his sense of injustice at the treatment of the patients leads him into a real battle for their good. He animates the dull monotony with games, pranks, and excursions, but encounters stiff opposition from Nurse Ratched, whose system provides her with pills and electroshock to maintain control. What he finds out only later is that Ratched has the power to keep him there indefinitely. McMurphy gradually forms deep friendships in the ward with a group of men which includes Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), a suicidal, stuttering teenager whom Ratched has humiliated and dominated, and "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson), a huge Native American. Believed by the patients to be deaf and unable to speak, Chief is mostly ignored but also respected for his enormous size.
Laughter is so deeply ingrained within human society that it’s impossible to imagine life without it. However, laughing is exactly what the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are unable to do. This stems from their fear of Nurse Ratched, in front of whom they dare not even giggle. This all changes when McMurphy arrives, as his boisterous and humorous attitude completely changes the attitude and outlook the patients have on life. In this book by Ken Kesey, McMurphy’s interactions with the patients and encouraging of laughter help the patients develop from fearful individuals to courageous men.
Their sarcastic remarks to the powerless victim are evocative of the sarcasm Alex and his gang used on the victims that they beat and sometimes raped. Whilst Alex is suffering from the movie clips, Doctor Brodsky simply says ‘Excellent, excellent, excellent.’ Here, the Doctor is clearly portraying how he does not wish to show any sympathy towards helpless Alex, as he did do to his previous victims. The detail in which Alex goes into whilst in distress is extremely intense and vivid. Alex says ‘I was sweating a malenky bit with the pain in my guts and a horrible thirst and my gulliver going throb throb throb.’ For me, the repetition of the word ‘and’ explains to the reader just how many feelings of pain and discontent Alex is going through. Words such as ‘sweating’ ‘guts’ and ‘thirst’ are all words that we associate with labour and hard work and that is exactly what Alex seems to be going through.
Nurse Ratchet takes pleasure in being feared by the patients. The patients fear her wrath and punishments, as well as her humiliation tactics. The greatest example of this is Billy Bibbit who is an Acute patient in the ward that stutters and eventually commits suicide due to Nurse Ratchet’s methods of mortification. She thinks very highly of herself, one patient states, “I hope you are finally satisfied, playing with human lives- gambling with human lives- as if you thought yourself to be a god” (266). Nurse Ratchet is finally brought down from her high throne when McMurphy, the new patient, injures her vocal cores from strangling her.
The novel also contains elements of contemporary tragedy: McMurphy emerges as a tragic hero due to his rebellious nature and ultimate demise. Despite his flaws, McMurphy has a redeeming influence on Chief Bromden and the other patients. Chief Bromden’s role as first-person narrator allows the reader a glimpse into the inner workings of the hospital in a way that a more traditional, sane narrator could never do. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden is undoubtedly depicted as insane, being prone to hallucinations and paranoid thoughts. His hallucinations are full of fantastic images of machinery, wires, and other devices that the nurse uses to control the patients on the ward.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a energetic con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rowdy tricks and random attacks with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for them, to challenge traditional values to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy rejuvenates the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's control on the ward, and represents the feelings of the author on society at the time. Before McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution.
Vladimir Williams Dr. Steve McKenna Writing 102 December 6, 2012 Complex Character Development in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was influenced by his work in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in the 1960’s. Kesey was very much influenced by the individuals he encountered in the hospital. The story was also very much affected by the time period in which it was written, when younger people in the United States were beginning to challenge the authority imposed on them. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a seemingly simple, humorous, and somewhat disturbing account of life in a ward for the mentally insane. On the surface, it is a story about the oppression endured by patients in the ward and a man, McMurphy, who seeks to change everything.