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Cuckoo's Nest Symbolism

755 Words4 Pages

CJ Johnston
Pd.3

In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey, claimed to shed a light on human nature throughout the book. I think this light was, the combine is everywhere and you can’t escape it, he shows this through the fog and the symbolism of religion. If you apply this idea to your day to day life. We go to school monday-friday from 8-3:20 you don’t act out in school or skip school because you're scared of the consequence, which in theory makes it part of the combine. One might argue that's only on weekdays though and it’s only for a short period of time. What about the roads, why don’t you go 60 mph down a 25 mph road? You know you can get pulled over and stripped of your license and if you keep doing it they can threaten put you in jail. So as you can see the combine is everywhere in real life. And only a few people have ever …show more content…

Jesus was unarguably one of the biggest combine breakers ever. He went against everyone and it ended up cost him his life at the end. We see many ideas that relate McMurphy and Jesus. “McMurphy led the twelve of us toward the ocean”(Kesey 239). This quote is from when McMurphy took the twelve men on the fishing trip. If you're familiar with the bible Jesus had 12 disciples or followers. Another similarity is the last supper, Though it wasn’t a supper the men threw a final party before McMurphy did what ultimately led him to his death. I think what Kesey was trying to convey by using McMurphy as a Jesus figure is even if you break the combine you're really just joining another combine. If you're familiar with church now a days it is a pretty big combine you follow the 10 commandments and you won’t go to hell. So one of the biggest combine breakers, Jesus, now is apart of one of the biggest combines. So once again we see the combine is everywhere and you can’t escape

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