One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

The literary fiction novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, focuses on a mental hospital in Oregon, and the patients that live there. It is told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic, who compares society to a delusion he calls the Combine. The hospital is ran with strict rules, which are carried out by Nurse Ratched, or as the patients call her, Big Nurse. In the beginning of the book, another main character, Randle McMurphy, is transferred from a local jail into the hospital. Upon arriving, he immediately challenges the rules, and even sneaks in a prostitute. Because of his defiant nature, he often butts heads with the Big Nurse. His actions get bolder as the story progresses, and he is sent to Disturbed. Nurse

An example of this struggle is that the meetings that happen every day slowly shift from the Big Nurse running it, to McMurphy. The patients do not know who to follow. They have a choice to either succumb to the Combine, or live their life, as McMurphy wants them to. The Big Nurse is not happy about the shift of power, and tries to maintain order. Bromden describes McMurphy as different than the rest of the patients. “McMurhey wasn’t like that. He hadn’t let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he’d let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit” (140). McMurphy did not let others tell him what he could and could not do. He did not let the Combine determine his life. The patients look up to him and eventually start to follow him. For example, they started to gamble for money, question the Big Nurse, and drink. “Harding had even got the tub room back open and was in there dealing blackjack himself, trying to make that airy thin voice of his sound like McMurphy’s auctioneer bellow” (268). They continue to act like him, even when he is in Disturbed. He had pulled them out of the fog, and the patients were able to express themselves. The Big Nurse and the Combine are losing, and she uses a lobotomy as a last

The Red Scare and the Beat Movement had conformity at their core, and hence, it would be a reasonable topic for the book. The Combine, or the machine that runs the world, molds people to fitting into society. People who are out of place, or cannot conform, are sent to the hospital. The patients though, do not suffer from debilitating, mental conditions. They may have a hard time keeping up with the demands of society due to their disability, but they are not a threat to the public. The death of McMurphy represents that the Combine will always win. The patients are too scared to act out against the strict rules because they are afraid of receiving a lobotomy, or being sent for electroshock therapy. They conform to the rules of the hospital even though they disagree with them. People, like the patients, are too afraid to do what they want because they might be rejected, and therefore, make decisions with others in mind. They conform to social norms, and prove that the Combine, like society,