Character Analysis: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Nearly every aspect of an average persons’ life is influenced by the media, government, or other authoritative figures, this including their personality. With social media, magazines, celebrities, and many other outlets, millions of people can see day in and day out the way they are supposed to be; pleasant, attractive, successful. Clearly, one can recognize how anyone in our society that does not fit this mold suppresses his or herself. On rare occasions will he or she embrace their eccentricities at full force. In Ken Kesey's breakthrough novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, these few people would be the one’s who would break the ever-churning machine’s that Chief Bromden hallucinates; the one’s to overthrow the fictitious Combine and

McMurphy is a character described by Chief to be similar to his father, and in the end they both meet with the similar fate. As soon as he sets foot in the mental hospital, he lets everyone know he is in charge. He gambles with the other patients and soon becomes a sort of idol to them. He represents the outside world and all of its freedoms and possibilities. In another sense, he represents the freedom that comes from knowing oneself and not being ashamed. Since the other patients held McMurphy in such a high regard for these characteristics, McMurphy takes on a somewhat fatherly responsibility for these patients. Quick to notice Nurse Ratched’s tactic of pitting the other patients against each other during group therapies, he becomes bent on trying to overpower her. Although he has little to no personal gain from this, he is respected by his friends. As Harding points out, “...society’s chastising was [not] the sole force that drove one crazy…” (Kesey, 308); in McMurphy’s case it is the dependence his peers have on him. McMurphy has never cared about social standards, however he does care about others. By trying to support others that are being weakened by society’s power, he himself is weakened by society’s

He expresses this when telling McMurphy that he has always been “different” and was made “sick” not by his eccentricities, but by “... the feeling that… society was pointing at [him]… chanting, ‘Shame. Shame. Shame.’” The story insinuated that Harding is homosexual, or at least an exceedingly effeminate man in 1960’s America, a time when this behavior was not accepted. As a result of this, Nurse Ratched attacks him for “...not being man enough…”(Kesey, 64). Even more so than Nurse Ratched, Harding’s wife is emotionally abusive towards him at home and constantly picks on his weak characteristics in front of others. Harding checks himself into the mental hospital to be cured of who he is, and he reveals that most of the patients there have done the same. Harding and the rest of the patients were so weakened by society’s opinions of them that they view the mental hospital as an escape. As he puts it, this is “...society’s way of dealing with someone different” (Kesey, 308). Kesey uses Harding to spell the theme out for the reader; “[Shaming is] society’s way of dealing with someone different.” Society ‘deals’ with Harding, McMurphy, and Chief simply for their differences. These characters are made to feel ashamed of who they are, feel isolated due to who they are, and have who they are used against them. What makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest such