One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel that features Randle McMurphy as an unscrupulous anti-hero in a mental hospital ward. Harrison Bergeron is a short story that highlights the main character, Harrison Bergeron, as an anti-hero in a fully dystopian society. McMurphy can be classified as charismatic and charming at times, but is very rebellious and wants to suppress his arch nemesis, Nurse Ratched. Harrison Bergeron has an unmatched obsession for overthrowing the government which attempts to suppress individual talents and people’s unique abilities. Both Randle McMurphy and Harrison Bergeron are what are known as unscrupulous anti-heroes. They both live in poor settings but rebel in different, public, ways.

Randle McMurphy and Harrison

In both novels, the situation that the characters are placed in is fertile ground for any unscrupulous anti-hero’s perfect rebellion. In McMurphy’s case, Nurse Ratched has a chokehold on all the patients and almost all the staff, even though she isn’t the formal leader. She is a master manipulator, and through this, creates a sense of total powerlessness. “All twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years” (Kesey 81). McMurphy constantly disobeys her wishes and plots events, ranging from minor to major, that rebel against the Nurse. In Bergeron’s case, the government enforces harsh equality by handicapping their citizens with both physical and mental limitations. Bergeron goes against this by trying to break through these binding handicaps to free himself and others around him from the curse the oppressive government puts on him. “The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs” (Vonnegut 5). The quote portrays an example of Bergeron trying to break through the government’s dictatorial

In both texts, the anti-heroes do not care about what they have to do to achieve their rebellion. They create a lot of collateral damage to reach their goals, as does any unscrupulous anti-hero. In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy is shut down by Nurse Ratched through punishment and direct handling. He’s viewed as a dangerous threat and lots of actions are taken to stop him from becoming the authority figure. “What the Chronics are—or most of us—are machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot” (Kesey 13). In Harrison Bergeron, a much different approach is taken. The government is terrified of Bergeron and uses physical force to eliminate their threat, therefore killing him to maintain an “equal” society. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?” …A siren was going off in George’s head” (Vonnegut