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Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

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Throughout the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey incorporates what were commonly viewed as mental illnesses of the 1960s and shows means by which they were treated. Narrator Chief Bromden was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder. Chronic meaning severe and continuous, with minimal anticipation of it getting better or going away. Keeping him hospitalized, the nurses continue to put Bromden through different treatments. Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis that is marked by a strong tendency to dissociate oneself from reality. People suffering from schizophrenia may experience “delusions, hallucinations, and trouble with thinking and concentration “(Parekh). Treatment for schizophrenics remains lifelong, even when symptoms decrease. Psychological therapy and medicines may help manage this illness. Antipsychotic medications are the most commonly prescribed drugs, “thought to control symptoms by affecting the brain neurotransmitter dopamine” (Pruthi). Antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications help for some patients as well. …show more content…

ETC, also known as electroshock therapy, is a brief electrocution to produce a seizure. In the novel, Bromden went through many electroshock therapies. After a shock treatment, he feels he is “living in that foggy, jumbled blur…that gray zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying” (Kesey 160). Similarly, psychosurgery is brain surgery, such as lobotomy, which is done by cutting into the prefrontal lobe of the brain, damaging it. Lastly, insulin shock therapy is repeatedly injecting patients with large doses of insulin, resulting in daily comas for prolonged weeks. Medications, however, are the foundation of schizophrenia treatment today, for the reason that the older methods are not normally carried out any

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Batman and The Joker, legendary rivals, but what would Batman be without The Joker to fight? This back and forth quarrel betweens heros and villans is comparable to the conflict between nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, a rambunctious new addition to the Ward constantly antagonizes nurse Ratched, who has an extremely strict policy when it comes to following the rules. Ken Kesey skillfully utilizes both direct and indirect characterization to multiple layers to McMurphy and ratched’s personalities.

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Throughout the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, a psychoanalysis is made through the character, McMurphy. There are several things you can infer from McMurphy through his speech and actions. McMurphy instantly perceives himself to be something he is not. When he first walks into the ward he says, “Since I'm thinking about taking over this whole show myself...maybe I better talk with the top man,” (19). Typically when someone is introduced to a new place, they are hesitant on how to respond.

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Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest By Ken Kesey, is a profound and moving tale of a group of mentally challenged men; set in the 1960’s. The characters are all patients or staff with the walls of a mental hospital. All the patients in the hospital suffer from different mental illnesses. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is very sad at times, but enlightening.

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Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest follows the power struggle between Nurse Ratched, a head nurse in a psychiatric ward, and Randle Patrick McMurphy, a felon pretending insanity to escape prison. Ironically, though Nurse Ratched holds position as caretaker, she actually does the complete opposite and inflicts pain on the patient's. When McMurphy then goes on to realizes that he is at Nurse Ratched’s mercy. He begins to submit to her because he wants to leave. However, when he finds out that she is the one who causes Billy Bibbit to commit suicide.

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Ken Kesey was born on September 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. He attended the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in speech and communication in 1957. He enrolled in the creative writing program at Stanford University in 1958, where he developed lifelong friendships with a number of authors. It was during this time he participated in army experiments involving LSD and guinea pigs. These experiences inspired him to write his first novel.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest written, by Ken Kesey, is a novel that takes place in a psychiatric hospital during the 1950s and is told through the perspective of Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic patient within the ward. Patients in this ward are divided into two categories. There are Chronics. These are patients that have no hope of being treated or cured. Secondly, there are acute patients who are still treatable and capable of some independent functioning.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has two main settings-the institution and the “outside” that the patients experience on the fishing trip (Kesey). Inside the walls, the patients have no authority, no control over their decisions, and no sense of freedom. When they go on their fishing trip with McMurphy, they quickly realize that they have entered a realm in which they are not familiar. When people notice the green scrubs they are wearing, and realize they are from the asylum, the patients can tell that most of the people they encounter are uneasy. This realization leads Bromden to ponder the thought of actually having power on the outside.

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Shortly after Randle McMurphy “whipped” Nurse Ratched in group therapy in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator, Chief Bromden, acquiesced the truth that it was only a temporary victory, with the heavy, recurring fog returning quickly, now feeling “as hopeless and dead as [Chief] felt happy a minute ago”, noting “the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in. And I’m glad when it gets thick enough you’re lost in it ad can let go, and be safe again” (Kesey 113). In Kesey’s novel, the fog serves a multitude of purposes, chiefly Bromden’s psychological state and the suppression his individuality and willpower by the hospital throughout the novel.

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The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells the story of a group of patients in a 1960s psychiatric hospital. The novel is told from the perspective of one of the patients who, up until the very end of the story, is mute. This character is named Bromden and because of the fact that he doesn’t speak, people think he is deaf. Bromden is in the psychiatric hospital because, although its is unclear whether he actually is skitzophrenic, he has been diagnosed as such. Bromden and many other psychiatric patients live in this ward, under the “command” of Nurse Ratched, nicknamed “Big Nurse”.

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Ken Kesey author of the fictional novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962 has taken the opportunity to write about the hippy culture and how society shames difference. Readers are taken to a mental institution in Oregon in the 1950’s and experience what it is like for the outcast people. The men in the ward are run by Nurse Ratched and have lost control of themselves. Majority of these men are in the mental hospital because they have checked themselves in, but not McMurphy he is a convict there for psych evaluation. Do to Nurse Ratched the men loses control over themselves and they haven’t realized till McMurphy walked through the door.

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Ken Kesey uses his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to describe the lives of patients in a mental institution, and their struggle to overcome the oppressive authority under which they are living. Told from the point of view of a supposedly mute schizophrenic, the novel also shines a light on the many disorders present in the patients, as well as how their illnesses affect their lives during a time when little known about these disorders, and when patients living with these illnesses were seen as an extreme threat. Chief Bromden, the narrator of the novel, has many mental illnesses, but he learns to accept himself and embrace his differences. Through the heroism introduced through Randle McMurphy, Chief becomes confident in himself, and is ultimately able to escape from the toxic environment Nurse Ratched has created on the ward. Chief has many disorders including schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and, in addition to these illnesses, he pretends to be deaf and dumb.

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