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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

2290 Words10 Pages

Regan Kelley

Mr. Irby

English 3

17 May 2023

Morality in Literature

The definition of morality is the separation of right and wrong to a person or society. Each person and society have their own set of rules that they follow regarding morality. However, some of these rules have become universal. For example, murder is wrong or the golden rule treat people how you want to be treated should be applied to everyone. Although Ken Kesey portrays adequate imagery, similes, and characterization in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest it does not make up for the offensive language, generalization, and sexual situations in the book that go against those universal moral rules. That is why the novel should be banned from the school curriculum. …show more content…

The books narrator is Chief Bromden who is a Patient there who has been there for many years. He is an interesting narrator because he pretends to be deaf so all the other patients feel like they can say anything around him which gives him access to lots of information. The hospital is run by Nurse Rachet who, at least in the point of view of Bromden, is a dictator type and rules with an iron fist. Then the main character comes in McMurphy who a child rapist is who went to the mental hospital instead of jail. He gets the hospital to change and bend to his will through his charisma and unwillingness to give up. One change he made is getting nurse rachet to allow some of the patients to go on a fishing trip where they drink and have prostitutes. This eventually causes McMurphy to get lobotomized and then killed by the narrator Chief …show more content…

Many people think that Ken Kesey provides great characterization throughout the book. However, the characterization is very demeaning and is not positive growth for the character. The first example is Billy Bibbit and his character growth throughout the whole book Nurse Rachet makes a point of scaring and controlling Billy because he has a deep seeded fear of his mother and all women. This is solved in Ken Kesey’s book by supposedly making a man out of him and convincing him to sleep with a prostitute. Once he caught with the prostitute, he still gets scared of Nurse Rachet and does not just accept what he did and blames it on Mcmurphy, so the character development is being no less scared of women just paying to sleep with one and then getting the rest of the people in the hospital in trouble for his mistake. Not only does he not change he makes horrible acts in the process. This is just part of the book that makes it unfit to be taught in a school. Some school districts have already banned it like Belluve district who banned it for not being decent for school (Sutherland). The next example of the so-called characterization is the fog that chief Bromden specifically talks about. He describes it as a safe place for him and all the other patients when it’s just an addiction. “It is possible to become "addicted" to positive behavior” (APA PsychNet). At first the medicine is a positive behavior and is

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