One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay

The novel One Flew Over the repeats nose (Kesey, 1962) is narrated from the point of view of a grapheme c eithered The headland who is an inmate of the intellectual initiation in which the score takes place. The book sluttishs with a scene where the read/write head is sweeping the floor and ends with the caput escaping from the asylum, and so the changing perceptions of the top dog atomic number 18 a key to the main messages of the book. The character who occupies most of the action in the book is a rebellious newcomer called McMurphy.It is McMurphy who is the catalyst for the change in the Chief, showing him a both a different federal agency to front the asylum and a number of strategies of resistance which ultimately allow the Chief to break free. This paper will analyse how the Chief perceives the asylum in the early stages of the book, focusing especially on the concept of the Combine. later on that Murphys view of the terra firma will be presented, along with his various resistance strategies. In conclusion the Chiefs rewrite view of the Combine will be analysed, showing what has changed in his understanding of the world of the asylum, and of the world in general.At the start of the book it is not immediately evident that the Chief is workforcetally ill. He explains that he is half(a) Indian and chooses to be deaf and dumb Im ingenious enough to fool them that much (Kesey, p. 9) His separation from the world of large(p) is presented as a deliberate defence against oppression, but the reader may umbrageous that it is a symptom of a mental illness like paranoia or schizophrenia. It is a feature of the book that medical descriptions be avoided, and the reader is left to experience out for him or herself whether or not, or to what extent the characters be ill or mad.The Chief imagines the grown Nurse having indicators that extend via wires which nevertheless he hindquarters see I see her sit in the centre of this web of wires lik e a watchful robot, tend her internet with mechanical insect skill (Kesey, p. 27). He imagines that she is working to fancy the world outside the institution also, suggesting that there is a wide conspiracy against him and the other inmates called the Combine which he defines as a huge organization that aims to fix the Outside as well as the Inside (Kesey, p. 27).This analogy deeds both as a description of a delusion, with no stem in reality, and as an artistic representation of an institution (the asylum) and a wider supercilious connection (conservative American society in the early 1960s) which operates on a rigid and in boilan basis. At the start of the book the Chief, and through him the reader, tactual sensation this cold, hard, autocratic force and see the inmates as victims of its power. One way of make this chilling force constantly present in the narrative is the Chiefs use of vocabulary relating to machinery to describe all of the asylum personnel.The threeso me black boys who are line of battlelies working for the Big Nurse speak with the hum of black machinery (Kesey, p. 9) and the most frightening of all is Nurse Ratched herself She works the hinges of her elbows and fingers She starts moving,when she rumbles recent shes already as big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind her in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel and her smiles going out before her like a radiator grill. (Kesey, p 79). These are in human being images used to describe the leaders of an inhuman regime.The arrival of McMurphy into the story makes a huge impression on the Chief who, despite his huge size, is cowering and fearful of the cold and all-controlling power of the Combine. The first impression is of McMurphys blaring brassy voice (Kesey, p. 14) Chief significantly makes a connection amid this voice and the voice of his Indian father He talks a little the way Papa used to, voice loud and spacious of hell Shortly after this the ward is stu nned by the sound of McMurphys laughter, which is strange to them because no one ever laughs in this oppressive place.So much of McMurphys verbal behaviour is a surprise to the ward his laughing, singing and ironic banter are all examples of a language the inmates have forgotten the meaning of. This is one of the most crucial aspects of McMurphys influence. He reminds the inmates of a different kind of communication with place and with each other that is free and spontaneous, unconcerned nigh the hierarchies of the asylum context, and winning everything less seriously than the authorities intend things to be taken.McMurphy mocks people, including his friends, in order to show that there is more than just one way of visual perception things, and that the asylums regime is ridiculous when viewed from outside perspectives. He argues with the Big Nurse, and he laughs at her rants and rages. This is a subversive attitude, and it sparks new thoughts in all the inmates, setting off a chain reaction of awareness that cannot be stopped.The first meeting of McMurphy and the Chief is also an important moment in the book, and this measure the Chief is struck by the touch of McMurphys strain It rang with blood and power (Kesey, p. 25). Later, when sweeping out the sleeping area, the Chief notices a smell that he has never encountered before in all this time on the ward the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. (Kesey, p. 83). It is as if the Chief is redisc overing through the presence of McMurphy, all the graphic human senses which had been dulled or switched out of commission by the Combine.Just by being himself McMurphy reawakens the warm, human qualities of the inmates and shows them how to use these qualities against the hard, cold machinery of power. The world that McMurphy represents is offered as a contrast to the regimented, controlled environment of the ward. There is nothing particularly radical about what he represents, for example setting up a voting transition to determine the television viewing schedule for the inmates, but in the inverted regime of the Combine this appears to be a shocking suggestion.Drinking, smoking cannabis and sex with prostitutes are, in the world outside the asylum, quite ordinary and natural expressions of normal masculine behaviour in large sections of the community. It is the abuse of power by the Big Nurse in talking to Billy Bibbits mother that turns the antics of the inmates from a prank into a tragedy. In every society it is common for young males to push boundaries and experiment with things that are forbidden by teachers, parents and authority figures.It is part of normal growing up. The irony of the asylum is, that it takes an oppressed youngster like Billy and then just when he catches a glimpse of sexual and other kinds of freedom via McMurphy, crushes his spirit so entirely that he takes his own life. The book depicts a struggle for power over the inmate s As the many symbols and images indicate, the central theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is the restoration of the inmates individual and collective potency. (Lupack, 1995, p. 94).Whether as group, or as separate individuals, McMurphy encourages the inmates to take back the power that has been unjustly stolen from them by the institution. Some critics have seen McMurphy in religious terms, as a character who sacrifices himself in order to save his brothers The fishing scene is an extended figure of Christ and his disciples, and instance of McMurphy as fisher of men. (Hicks, 1981, p. 174). Hicks points out that there are images of the cross and the crown of thorns in descriptions of the electric shock table, and that McMurphys men are physically cannibalizing him (1981, p. 5) by wearing him out more and more as he transfers his power and energy over to them. It is true that as McMurphys influence grows, more and more of the inmates rebel or pretermit themselves, or in the cas e of the Chief, make a spectacular melt but this is a book that does not come with a blessed ending and salvation in a heavenly future. McMurphy is turned into a lobotomized shell of his old self which the Chief kills out of mercy, as an Indian would kill an injured animal.The future of the other characters is not known. The freedom that the Chief gains is a freedom from the real and imagined wires and connections (Kesey, p. 254) that he rips up when he throws the control box out of the window. In conclusion, then, it appears that the Chief has changed his view of the Combine. He leaves the delusions and the asylum behind but he still moldiness navigate his way in the outside world. It remains to be seen how he will tractor trailer the Combine-like injustices and oppressive forces in the wider world.He does not have his mentor McMurphy with him, and must only go back to where he started and try to reintegrate into a community that has been oppressed and exploited by the building of a great(p) dam. The great difference at the end of the book is that that he wants to go back to his old haunts just to bring some of it clear in my mind again (Kesey, p. 254) and thanks to the example shown by McMurphy, he can now do this with courage and clarity, seeing possibilities of collective resistance sooner than just being isolated and crushed by overwhelming institutional power.