Randle McMurphy, a boisterous man with much self confidence and a humorous personality, otherwise known as the wise-guy hero, tries to reform the institution by rebelling against authority. While he tries to rebel against authority, his humorous personality also enlightens the patients and the ward in general. However, Nurse Ratched is not comfortable with this at all because she feels that McMurphy is a manipulator. Her controlling personality tends to clash with his easy going personality. As Nurse Ratched tries to enforce the rules, McMurphy is ready to rebel against them.
I’m afraid the vote is closed.” The institution of the mental hospital does not allow for emotional or mental development in the hopes of conditioning them to be unobtrusive in conventional society. In direct opposition to conformism is McMurphy in his capacity as an agent of change. Through his extroversion and confidence, Mc Murphy inspires defiance and a shrugging off of the institution among the patients. The effects of individualism can be seen in McMurphy’s protégé Bromden, who finds it in himself to embrace his difference, and come out of the comfortable but unsatisfying shell of deafness and dumbness. Bromden also finds the mental
AP English Summer Assignment After reading both books, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Ten Days in a Mad House it is possible to say that fiction can be used to reveal the truth just as non-fiction stories. Both books were used to reveal how people, nurses and doctors or any other workers, can be cruel to the patients at the mental institutions. But, at the same time, a fiction story can be false about revealing certain events that take place in an institution. With that being said, it can and cannot be used to reveal the truth. 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.
In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey, takes a place in a mental hospital. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, the patients and institution staff assume that he is deaf and dumb. The patients in a mental hospital were controlled by Nurse Ratched who known as a Big Nurse. She is a cold and precise woman, and she is a head of the ward. Because Nurse Ratched put fear the patients’ heart, they obey her every demand.
She replied, “No. I don’t agree. Not at all.’ She smiles around at all of them. ‘I don’t agree that he should be sent to Disturbed, which would simply be an easy way of passing our problem on to another ward, …’ She waits but nobody is about to disagree” (Kessey 156-157). This would be exemplary use of bandwagon by Ken Kessey, as the doctors chose to say what they thought was in acquiescence (4) with Nurse Ratched’s best interest.
This movie shows how the status quo dealt with non-conformity by the mores of the day. Some were also intrigued by the unique, egocentric patient named McMurphy and how, for a time, he created chaos and havoc in an otherwise orderly, methodical and systematic mental ward. To top it off, McMurphy wasn’t even a candidate to be a mental patient he was just able to feign symptoms which allowed him to undergo an evaluation to be admitted to a mental hospital instead of serving his sentence working on a prison farm. We can’t leave out the public’s interest in mental illnesses either. People are fascinated about what drives people to the brink of madness.
Randle McMurphy is a convict, accused of statutory rape charges, who feigns mental illness in order to be relieved of his work detail. Once McMurphy is admitted into the asylum he befriends several other patients and becomes a hero figure to them through his rebellion towards Nurse Ratched and her strict order she has instilled into the asylum. He is a very social individual and free spirit who accepts the other patients as inmates. McMurphy is non judgmental and does not make the other patients feel like social outcasts. He is a foil to the character of Nurse Ratched, who tries to create order by playing on the weaknesses of the inmates in an attempt to get them to conform to social norms.
Cept he don’t never hardly beat them.” (P. 22) Bromden: Psychologically abused by Nurse Ratched and the mental hospital. He lives in fear of ‘The Combine’ and is convinced that she runs the hospital. He has been affected by shock therapy treatment and decides to be ‘cagy’ and pretend to be deaf and dumb. Point 2 (Isolation): Celie: Isolated from the rest of society and forced to work all day and tend to the children. Albert does not allow Celie to see Shug Avery sing at the Juke Joint, and forces her to stay home.
Human Behavior One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest 4/28/11 After watching the movie “ One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” I noticed relations to Psychology and the behavior behind labeling a disability. Randall Mcmurphy, the main character, was put in the institution due to reckless behavior in jail that concerned the correction officers, he was sent to be watched to see if he could be labeled with having a learning disability. Throughout the film the head nurse watches over the students in the institution, Nurse Ratched, she is a very deceiving women and very strong spoken, this upsets McMurphy and they begin having arguments frequently about certain situations that Mcmurphy doesn’t agree with. These sense are what label the students to being disabled. One scene the students were all in their circle doing their normal discussion talks about issues they might have with their life that Nurse Ratched leads, as they were discussion and issue everyone in the group began to get very nervous about the topic and Cheswick got upset and began outraging about his cigarettes.
In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, a ward of a mental hospital and its inhabitants create an attractive metaphor for the controlling nature of American culture. Throughout the novel, the story of Randal McMurphy, conveyed through symbolism, a new patient in the ward as he battles against the head of the ward- Nurse Ratched. As the fight between these two powerful forces ensues, it becomes more than just a classic case of rebelling against authority. Kesey’s story invites the reader to consider just how vague, or previously vague, the line is that separates and treatment from tyrannical control. Symbolizing a valiant struggle between free will and conformity, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a powerful, electrifying, and important piece of American literature.