The concept of justice is dependent on a character’s view point on a situation. Randel McMurphy is the latest addition to the psychiatric ward, and is able to witness the extent in which the patients are being neglected with fresh eyes. In response to the injustices that McMurphy observes, he takes it upon himself to be the one to stand up to the authority of Nurse Ratched, as Kesey writes, ““Just what I said: any of you sharpies here willing to take my five bucks that says that I can get the best of that woman—before the week’s up—without her getting the best of me?”” (Pg. 66). While it is in McMurphy’s nature to gamble, he is also a man of justice.
All of the patients on the ward presume that Mcmurphy
To begin, similar to how Aquinas asserts that spiritual truths in the Scriptures are related through the use of figurative language, Kesey’s work utilizes figurative language to enrich and more effectively express its thematic content. For instance, consider when McMurphy, who provides much wisdom to both his fellow patients and the reader, dramatically imparts to the men the virtues of selflessness and sacrifice. Late in the novel, McMurphy is provided with a difficult ultimatum—he may apologize to Nurse Ratched, but lose the esteem of the men and, consequently, all of the progress he has made in building up their self-esteem, or he may suffer electroconvulsive therapy until he is willing to come to heel. McMurphy, of course, chooses martyrdom for the sake of the men. The importance of selflessness and sacrifice is effectively communicated to the reader by McMurphy’s decision, but this lesson gains more import as a result of McMurphy being developed as a symbol for Christ.
McMurphy is a man who comes to the ward, destined to change it forever, and to restore the power taken from the patients by Nurse Ratchet. [1] His actions and motives during the text to follow what he has set out to do, follow a liking to another anti-hero who plans to change the course of someone else’s life, through his own actions. Ferris Bueller – the main character in the popular 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” – like most anti-heroes, has a bad side, [2] which in his case is easily forgiven as his enemies are considered ageist and worse than him. The same can be said for McMurphy when he acts out against Nurse Ratchet and the staff on the ward, because although McMurphy is flawed and has continuous bad behaviour, these people are seen as worse than him so his actions are forgiven easier than theirs.
McMurphy was able to defy authority and break down the ward’s structure. He knew that standing up to Nurse Ratched would help all of the patients. “She must be conquered before the men can evolve into psychologically healthy individuals. McMurphy, as the embodiment of the Hero, accomplishes that task for them, leading to the liberation of Chief Broom, Harding, and the other men who gain strength from his sacrifice and flee on the trail that McMurphy blazes for them. In his conquest of the Shadow, he has provided the men a rite of passage into personal power and individuation that they obviously skipped in the normal course of development.
In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a perfect example of a tragic hero. Throughout the novel McMurphy sets himself up to be the tragic hero by resenting Nurse Ratched’s power and defending the other patients. He can be classified as a contemporary tragic hero, but he also includes elements of Aristotle’s tragic hero. McMurphy’s rebellious nature and ultimate demise are what truly makes him as a tragic hero.
Due to their disorders, the characters were routinely subject to stereotyping and unjustified categorizations. Most of the patients had settled with the oppressive nature of the sanitarium until Randle McMurphy was introduced. When McMurphy was admitted into the hospital, he immediately displayed his anti-authoritative tendencies, which were completely foreign to the environment. McMurphy’s actions soon persuaded them to question authority and society as they never had before. The patients had grown accustomed to the humiliation brought on by the head nurse (and woman in charge of the facility), Miss Ratched.
Little does he know that he’s about to save the patients from themselves and from the Big Nurse with his own self-aware strength. McMurphy is a character who knows who he is and what he wants. He waltzes among the praises and attention others give to
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.
In the struggle between freedom and power, McMurphy’s sacrifice allows freedom to prevail. His leadership in a rising rebellion parallels many of the countercultures that arose during the 1960s. His rebellion fights against Nurse Ratched in the way that the countercultures fought against the government and society in the past to the present. The men in the asylum are unknowingly unhappy before the arrival of McMurphy. Through his antics, the men are saved from society in the form of Nurse Ratched’s regime.
Before the age of vaccines, antibiotics, and hygiene, there was a time of utter confusion and delay. Daily life threatened Earth’s inhabitants as diseases reigned over the merciless humans. Victorian England faced especially significant challenges as many different pandemics and epidemics swarmed over the industrial society all at once. These diseases shaped the Victorian England that we know today.
The whole asylum could be described as one big machine that creates an unnatural state for human beings and is running smoothly, until one day an outside force comes in to shake things up. Rather than being an evil person, Nurse Ratchet is a part of this perfect machine, like a cog in a watch, who represents authority and power in an oppressive society. Jack McMurphy is the free-spirited outside force that does what he wants, when he wants, disrupts order and constantly undermines Nurse Ratchets authority. The patients in the ward are the by-product of the manufacturing process and represent the weak individuals in a society that cannot fend for themselves. The patients believed they were already in a utopia, until McMurphy introduces his ideal
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).
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.
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.
