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Ken Kesey's View Of Mental Illness

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In the 1950’s scientists asked the general public about their immediate perspective regarding mental illness. A widespread outlook was formed that concluded “the public’s orientation to...[be] largely uninformed by the current psychiatric thinking of the day” (Jo C Phelan 188) many of the “public[s] conceptions were suffused with negative stereotypes, fear, and rejection” (Jo C. Phelan 188). This revealing survey validates Ken Kesey’s rebellious views regarding the societal construct planted in the public’s mind during the 1960-70’s. An ample amount of the brain, including mental illness, wasn’t yet established or treatable so abrupt personality disorders caused the public to conjure and materialize their own adjudications. Tragically a communal …show more content…

Comically comparing the “five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine...so fresh from the factory they’re still linked together like sausages (Kesey). By comparing the houses to sausages from a machine it shows the mechanization and social norm society has over the public. A stressed uniformity is being strained onto the public by having all the houses identical. Similarly, the houses can also represent the individuals living inside. All individuals mechanized living their life as ordinary, familiar, and recurrent as they can. The concrete fear of being original represented by the houses diffuses into the public’s mind that individualism is inferior. As a result, Bromden amusingly remarks on the complications the students must have to find their houses in the forest of indistinguishable homes. This emphasizes the way society expected the perfect American to be, all indifferent and equivalent. Consequently, making it more recognizable if something were to be out of order. In result, those who are different are more susceptible to harm and labeled as "neurotic" rather than to an "average" person” (Jo C Phelan …show more content…

Daniel J. Vitkus, who wrote “Madness and Misogyny in Ken Kesey One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, clearly excites how the novel “represents madness as a construct that serves the hegemonic ideology of American capitalism” (Vitkus pg 65). Madness was only a stereotyped ideology that was constructed by the government. Kesey took the extra step and attempted to discern the state of mind of a mentally ill individual. The power the government had to control the social norms was largely prevalent and Kesey bordered experimenting with reality and hallucinations to challenge the communal stereotype of madness. Kesey religiously experimented with drugs such as marijuana, peyote, and LSD, Kesey used this pathway to discover a “unconventional vision, outside of "straight," sane thinking, [which] could provide a pathway to freedom from the psychic impoverishment of mainstream culture” (Vitkus pg 67). As a result of the intense use of drugs and his time spent in Veterans Hospital, Kesey had the opportunity to see the world with “lucidity” and share compassion with the mentally insane who he believed viewed the same visions he experienced on drugs. Which is why he can relate with the patients who also viewed society as unjust and uniformed. As a result he wrote One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s nest who pitied the inadequate because he was also on the same

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