One Flew over the Cucoos NestEssay Preview: One Flew over the Cucoos NestReport this essayONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NESTOne of the main themes throughout the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is societal repression over the individual. The book is written by Ken Kesey and based around patients lives within a mental institution. Kesey uses the novel to voice his opinion concerning the oppressive nature of control those who enforce the control. Such a repressive feeling is amplified by the setting of the institution, the patients and Keseys tone throughout the novel.
The setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a mental institution, in the countryside of Oregon during the 1960s. At this time young Americans began to challenge conformity and live their lives around peace, love and drugs. LSD was a drug used both during the political uprising and in the novel as treatment for mental disorders. Kesey discusses how the world within the ward mirrors the world outside. One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest contains examples of behaviour and attitudes displayed by characters within the clinical environment of the psychiatric ward, which can be compared to behaviour found within contemporary American society. Notions of leadership and hierarchy within a class, sexism, and crime and punishment play a vital role in the telling of the story. Chief Bromden, the books narrator, darkly and fearfully portrays the institution. Within the walls of the harsh, bleak institution are several authority figures known as the “Combine” to the Chief. They control, direct, and manipulate every aspect of the lives of the patients. Nurse Ratched, who controls the Chiefs ward, is the ultimate authority figure–a menacing, cold, callous, larger-than-life authoritarian who will stop at nothing to make sure the “Combine” maintains firmly in power. Kesey, through the Chiefs narrative, creates a gloomy, hopeless world; a world where the facilitys patients have nothing to look forward to except the inexorable clutches of insanity.
The patients are exposed to painful treatments enforced by Nurse Ratched. The electroshock therapy table is shaped like a cross, with straps across the wrists and over the head. Ellis, Ruckly, and Taber who are classified as Acutes has their lives destroyed by electroshock therapy. It serves as a reminder to the rest of the ward what happens to those who rebel against the ruling powers. If the patients are not sent to electro-shock therapy they are given a lobotomy. This is done to restore order and emphasize Nurse Ratcheds power and control.
The patients of the ward are also exposed to humiliating therapy treatments courtesy of Nurse Ratched. The group therapy sessions are a manipulative technique used to fuel the anger inside the patients heads. Nurse Ratched does this to keep the patients in the institution and to prove their constant insanity to Doctor Spivey.
Chief Bromden is a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, diagnosed as incurable, who is afraid of his own shadow. He imagines himself to be small and weak even though he stands at six feet and seven inches tall. He pretends to be a deaf-mute in order to protect himself. This shows how repressive Ratched and society have made him feel. He is a Colombian Indian, born of a White mother and an Indian father. He was the first patient in the ward, arriving at the hospital fifteen years earlier. After Bromden realizes Ratcheds intentions for McMurphy was to keep him in the institution for the rest of his life, he kills him using McMurphy as a martyr, not wanting him to experience the same fate as the other patients.
Bronchow makes his case that Ratcheds is a child of “a white man in black” who has no remorse for his actions. He argues that McMurphy was the result of Ratcheds self-hatred against his mother:
“Brenton has not only died from a schizophrenic psychosis but he has been treated with drugs and alcohol for months. Why was he punished? Was this a part of his conscience to be left there or to be left with the consequences?”
Branchow admits to living the path of Ratcheds (whom he believes represents “a clear case” that does not prove that he is a child of a white man in black). This has, however, given way to his argument that “when you’re a child of a white man in black, you’re not alone.”
We don’t know what motivates the young boy to kill his parents, but it can be an example of the child being a child who cannot take care of herself. This is a common theme of child crime cases in the 1980s, when the FBI investigated the abuse of young boys as an “innocent act,” and its focus was on the boy’s mental instability.
Cultural stereotypes persist, and the boy does nothing wrong. This seems to be the case with all young men who want power.
Borneo Child-Murder Victim: A Mexican immigrant, born on August 26, 1981. Anorexia
His real name is Joseph Gascán-Arcerez. We read about him briefly in the October 1981 issue of the New Yorker. “His parents were all Mexican. He was the first child that was given a special education.” On September 13, 1981, his family moved to the small town of Ciudad Juárez in Latin America.
As a young adult, Gascán-Arcerez’s father was a professional soccer player and the son played in Mexico’s national team. He died in a fire in Ciudad Juárez on June 26, 1983. He was five years old at the time of his death, and his parents, who were Mexican immigrants, were in the U.S. and didn’t know that.
Two days before his death he was living in the Ciudad Juárez community. He lived with his friends in a tent next to a street food restaurant. In the afternoon of May 5, 1983, two men entered him and asked him for his passport pictures. This was after he arrived at the Ciudad Juárez Central Agency of Public Security, where he was asked to show their identification papers. At the counter, the men found his passport,
Randall Patrick McMurphy comes to the ward totally