One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
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. Kesey lived in a time of social upheaval. He was in fact one of the leaders in a movement that challenged the social, political, and legal systems of his youth, and was known at the time as a youths revolution. “McMurphys antics may also be seen as an allegory for the time in which the novel was written.” exhibiting the rebellious and challenging nature of the youth in their resistance to the conformity of society. (Moss and Wilson, 292)
“The combine” is a phrase coined by the mute Chief Bromden that lends a malicious intent to the invisible pressure of society that to him is physically crushing people into submission. In this night he knows that they come and install machinery in peoples heads that controls them, making them conform. Those people then move on and install the same machinery in the heads of their neighbors, and the combines influence spreads. This is his realization that no matter how strong an individual may be, slowly everyone will be conformed; the press of society cannot be escaped. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the backwaters of society where the resilient non-conformists remain; in the mental institutions, the domain of Nurse Ratched.
Those in the asylum are those that the combine could not assimilate as easily – those that refused to conform to the rules laid form by the civil, judicial, and sociological systems of, as Jim Kamp put it in his Reference Guide to American Literature, “[their] conformist postwar American society shaped by materialistic consumer values.”1 This non-conformity is displayed most logically in a series of memories that Bromden relates, in particular his fathers refusal to sell his tribes land to business men because he valued the beauty of the waterfalls and the simplicity of his life. These values were foreign to the white man, who could not comprehend his reason. This is Bromdens introduction to the bizarre expectations of society, and it is also an insight for the reader into the way that Kesey perceived society to work.
Sternest of all these business people was a woman. Not just the leader of the trio, but in also the most powerful, deceitful, and manipulative, a type of woman encountered often in the novel. She is full of commercial versions of smothering maternal instincts, which sees to be Keseys favorite way of portraying the creping but powerful effect of the combine. When this book was written (1961-62) women in powerful corporate positions was not unheard of, but was certainly uncommon. Therefore Keseys choice to make this businessperson female is very telling. The books antagonist, Nurse Ratched, shares all of the same characteristics as this woman, adding further weight to the suggestion that Keseys gender choices were not accidental. Both of them represent models of efficiency in their clean and ordered work ethic and appearance.
At that time, women were also home makers. Feminism was only beginning to take root, and certainly wasnt in full swing for a few more years. Their efficiency around the house, working with mechanical precision developed from years of practice and repetition, was perfect for his representation of the combine working with mechanical precision to conform the inmates. Understandably, as Kamp2 noted, “[the character of Nurse Ratched provoked] negative comment from feminist critics twenty years later.” because it laid down a judgment on women as a whole, and even if this judgment was not the one that they commonly fought, they resented the implication that women were cold and calculating just as much as they were offended by others saying that a women role was in the home.
Not only are these women very proficient in their jobs, but they also appear to be paragons of society in the rest of their life. Nurse Ratched in particular does her best to conceal her well endowed chest, because it was a symbol of her sexual development, somewhat of a taboo topic in the mainstream society in which Kesey found himself. From the point of view of the patients, ” sex is the cure for nurse Ratched”, a testament to her self-denial in the name of society. McMurphys attack on her results in him exposing her breast, which was a very weakening blow as it revealed to everyone her weak humanity. (Smith and Verma)
One has to wonder what gave Kesey this unconventional view of women as
The staff of the ward, like the rest of the world, is lost to the combine, but Bromden knows that he is not, because he can appreciate the subtle pleasures that nature has to offer. A waterfall that he sees in a painting – he doubts that the men in suits can even hear the water or smell the fresh breeze anymore. (Kesey, 111)
The long term strength of the combine is first and most powerfully revealed to us in