Fear In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Have you wondered just how far your fears could push you? Primal fears have a direct effect on mental illnesses. Some of these common fears apply more than others; such as separation, loss of autonomy, and ego-death. Ken Kesey, Jon Krakauer, Edgar Allan Poe, and William Faulkner all demonstrate how one’s mental stability can be swayed by inner and unconscious fears. Separation detaches a person from a place they are connected to, causing them to feel alone. In addition, loss of autonomy restricts a person from their normal abilities. Ego-death, the third main fear, shames a person for something they have done or something they believe in. These all cause a person’s mental state to be altered. The primal fears could affect one’s mental state by driving them to loneliness, depression, or general insanity; causing them to be outcasted by society.

This causes someone to grow lonely and forces the mind to occupy itself. As demonstrated in Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the patients are taken out of their normal lives to be put in ward. Narrator Bromden expresses that “some of us who were Acutes when we came in, and got changed over” (Kesey 12). He illustrates that being surrounded by other insane people could drive one a to higher extent of instability than originally admitted with. Correspondingly, Faulkner exemplifies the mental instability through separation in his short story “A Rose For Emily”. Emily is mentally separated from the townspeople, and is stuck in the time period of when she was once beautiful. Because of her isolation and her actions that followed, the people around her portray her as mentally ill. The isolation from society causes people to think of them differently. As for themselves, they become unknowing to what is happening outside their mental or physical separation and grow lonely and