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Madness In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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Irrational madness can be good Being mad and acting out doesn't always come with negative outcomes.As crazy as it sounds not only bad things happen when someones mad. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Randle Patrick Mcmurphy is seen as eccentric. Mcmurphy is the leader of the other patients in the ward. This madness in Mcmurphy gives the men hope throughout the novel. The irrational behavior can be judge as reasonable in many cases. Mcmurphy is a big, loud and confident man. He’s different from many other patients in the ward. When he first entered the ward he was laughing and telling jokes. He is a man that believes in freedom and independence. Mcmurphy is seen as being mad because of his violent behavior. Some of examples of this …show more content…

The patients dont question his violence with Nurse Ratched because no one has ever standed up to her. Nurse ratched is the reason they dont have confidence in themselves. As McMurphy stays longer, the other patients become more aware as to what is happening. Before McMurphy came in the ward the men believed everything that was done to them was for their own good Nurse Ratched was able to manipulate the men and had full power to boss them around. After McMurphy came he was able to show them that Nurse Ratched uses their weakness against them and was just a manipulator. All of McMurphy violent behavior was for the men to better themselves. He prepared them for real world outside of the ward. He helped them not to get pushed around and to not be afraid to do what they want. Mcmurphy’s madness is made reasonable as it provided the patients with hope and helped them return to a sane lifestyle. By the end, McMurphy managed to release many of the patients to their normal senses, Even though it caused him to lose his freedom.The irrational behavior can be judge as reasonable in many

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In addition to setting, McMurphy did what wanted, when he wanted, always being loud and disruptive (“One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest” 3). He admits himself into the ward only to get out of working on the work farm. Because McMurphy is not actually insane, he’s not fond of the rules of that are set in place on a daily basis; He doesn’t follow the “god damned policy” (Kesey 89). By acting the way he does, he gets under the skin of the Big Nurse, who is in charge of keeping a set routine Acutes and Chronics, such as “Six-forty-five the shavers buzz and the Acutes line up in alphabetical order at the mirrors, A, B, C, D….” (Kesey 26).

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1274 Words | 6 Pages

Shortly after this act, McMurphy then brings the patients of the ward on an unauthorized fishing trip. Not only is McMurphy rebelling against Nurse Ratched, he is rebelling against the ward and the associated doctors like Dr. Spivey. For the men of the ward, this acted as an unconventional therapy and appeared to be effective. This method is not accepted by Nurse Ratched or the ward. “McMurphy 's twelve followers grow physically and spiritually as they appreciate the humour and pain of the human predicament” (Safer. n.d).

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1508 Words | 7 Pages

He was trying to break Ratched, but now he realises that he needs to be careful and not give her a reason to send him up to disturbed. An example of McMurphy not acting irrationally was when Cheswick started yelling during a group therapy

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358 Words | 2 Pages

She controls all every little detail that goes on within the ward, every little secret every little action is highly monitored by Nurse Ratched. But one day a man, named McMurphy, was brought in handcuffs and as soon as they’re removed, he breaks into one of Nicholson’s patented madman

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987 Words | 4 Pages

In the end, even though McMurphy suffers a great deal, he is shown as a capital figure he is willing to sacrifice what he has in order to save the other men in the hospital. One of the main times the men decide to defy the nurse and ward rules is when they decide to plan a fishing trip. This is an absolute crucial part of McMurphy’s story because of the fact that it references directly to the bible, Matthew eight. In the story, Jesus goes out on a boat with his twelve disciples when they are hit by a storm. It is not very different

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1669 Words | 7 Pages

In the novel, McMurphy attacks the nurse brutally and attempts to kill her, “doctors and supervisors and nurses prying those heavy red fingers out of the white flesh of her throat as if they were her neck bones, jerking him backward” (Kesey 319). Also, the narrator shows mercy towards McMurphy by smothering him in his sleep, “and scissor the kicking legs with mine while I mashed the pillow into the face. I lay there on top of the body for what seemed days. Until the thrashing stopped” (323).

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997 Words | 4 Pages

On several occasions, McMurphy’s wild temper benefits him in his battles with the Big Nurse for control of the mental ward. QUOTE. McMurphy wishes to live his life on his own terms, not that of the social standard, and he spreads this mentality to the others in the ward. This is one reason why the others look up to him so much. He helps them regain some control over their lives during his stay on the ward.

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755 Words | 4 Pages

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, considers the qualities in which society determines sanity. The label of insanity is given when someone is different from the perceived norm. Conversely, a person is perceived as sane when their behavior is consistent with the beliefs of the majority. Although the characters of this novel are patients of a mental institution, they all show qualities of sanity. The book is narrated by Chief Brodmen, an observant chronic psychiatric patient, who many believe to be deaf and dumb.

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Then he brings up new rules and ideas, for instance when wanting to change the cleaning and t.v. times so that they would be able to watch the World Series (Forman/Kessey). Lastly, he comes up with the idea of taking the men fishing and later on throws a party inside the ward. In the end the fact McMurphy was successful and he “had things going his way for a good long while” (205) proves that he was well determined and is sane. Overall the amount of freedom that Mcmurphy held for himself and without having any trouble of getting that freedom stripped away from him by the Nurse verifies his sanity.

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454 Words | 2 Pages

The first time he is asked about his mental state he is very upbeat, joking, and has a lot of questions. After being institutionalized for sometime he begins to act differently and less like himself. He becomes quieter and more reserved although not completely losing himself quite yet. McMurphy fits in quickly with the other patients but has a hard time adjusting to the schedule.

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765 Words | 4 Pages

The normality of the patients culminates in the fishing excursion – just about the most normal activity one can engage in. By treating his peers as ordinary, normal human beings, not specimens needing examination, McMurphy has cured them of many of their supposed psychological afflictions. Through this passage, we understand what effect McMurphy has on the patients. In the ward, the most powerful decides whether a person is sane or insane. For most of these men, they simply cannot deal with the shame of not fitting into what is conventionally normal

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1264 Words | 6 Pages

The paper attempts to analyze the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by considering the term paranoia as a postmodern condition that prevails in most of the American novels since 1960s. The paper proceeds from the analysis of the term paranoia and then examines how the concept suits the novel’s settings. Paranoia is one of the more prominent issues taken up by contemporary North American novelists since 1960. Writers as divergent in matters of style and subject as Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Diane Johnson, Joseph McElroy, John Barth, Kathy Acker, Saul Bellow, Marge Piercy, Don DeLillo, William Gaddis, Ishmael Reed, and Margaret Atwood have also attempted to represent paranoid characters, communities, schemes, and lifestyles; history, technology and religion in their novels, says Patrick O’ Donnel in the article titled Engendering Paranoia in Contemporary Narrative(181) . Leo Bersani in the article titled Pynchon, Paranoia and Literature states that the “the word paranoia has had an extraordinarily complex medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic history” (99).

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547 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s, McMurphy disagreed with many of The Ward’s policies and was the first patient to stick up for their freedom. This brought out the antagonist Nurse Ratched who tries to stop him.

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1288 Words | 6 Pages

His rebellious and free mind makes the patients open their eyes and see how the have been suppressed. His appearance is a breath of fresh air and a look into the outside world for the patients. This clearly weakens Nurse Ratched’s powers, and she sees him as a large threat. One way or another, McMurphy tends to instigate changes of scenery. He manages to move everyone away from her music and watchful eye into the old tube room.

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1010 Words | 5 Pages

Another point to note was that McMurphy seems abnormal among the patients. Especially with his laugh, I kept thinking that he might be mentally ill and not fake it (Kesey). But if you just imagine his behavior outside of the asylum, then it seems normal. This phenomenon is well known in psychology. It says that person once convicted of mental illness have an uphill battle to prove that he is not.

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