One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

The Process of Becoming Sane

An individual’s struggle toward understanding and awareness is the traditional subject for the novelist. In an essay, apply this statement to one novel of literary merit.

Have you ever awakened from a deep sleep and had no conception of where you were or what anything around you was? The analogy of having a foggy head explains what it is like to not be able to comprehend the aspects around you. In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey uses the metaphor of a cloudy brain and exaggerates it using the character Chief Bromden. Chief has been admitted into an insane asylum because of his inability to “fit into” society in the 1960s because he is an abnormally tall Indian. “I been here on the ward longer’n

The author decides to have Chief Bromden narrate this novel even though he is not the most reliable person to explain exactly what he witnesses. However, Kesey starts the text off right away by showing this when Chief explains, “It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen” (8). The author uses this quotation to allow the readers to know that the story they are about to read will be exaggerated from reality. The choice of having an inconsistent narrator who is not the story's protagonist was an intention the author made to show the common subject of an individual’s process to awareness. In the movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the director switches the narrator to McMurphy, and therefore, shows that if the novel were to not be in Chief’s perspective we would have no idea the process that Chief had gone through during the storyline. In One Flew Over the

Starting Ken Kesey’s novel, Chief had always portrayed himself as “deaf and dumb” (1). The notion of this was used by the author to connect with how much control Chief felt like he possessed. For example, for a small section in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest whenever we were in the presence of Nurse Ratched, she was regarded as huge through Bromden’s eyes and even nicknamed the “Big Nurse” because she maintained so much control over the patients. Consequently, this meant that Chief’s life was controlled by Ratched, therefore, he felt like he had no individuality, which was why the author always had him portrayed as small through his own eyes. In addition, due to the fog from the medication, his mind would exaggerate the aspects he would witness. “She blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor” (5). The reader can infer that the nurse was not actually blowing up but instead just infuriating, however, the author utilizes this quote to represent the fact that the haze in Chief’s head is prohibiting him from perceiving