One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Theme Analysis

In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey provides a storyline about personal experiences he saw occur in a mental asylum. Ken Kesey worked as a staff member in an insane asylum in Oregon. When he wrote the book, he was providing personal memories about the patients and other workers into a story. The entire novel is about patients that are checked into a mental asylum, and their unwillingness to act against the nurse. Throughout the novel, there is a theme of “manipulation” implied. The theme that manipulation is only a powerful tool if the victim is weak enough to not resist it is revealed through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and the patients in the mental institution. The reader can first imply that manipulation

As soon as he sees Billy laying there dead, he is speechless. He looks at Nurse Ratched and she tells McMurphy that he is the one at blame. McMurphy freaks out on Ratched and begins to grab her neck with both of his hands and strangle her. Randle McMurphy rips open Nurse Ratched’s uniform, revealing her breasts, which shows her femininity (The Litcharts Guide To One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). Ratched’s “tyrant-like” personality is no longer powerful in the institution. The manipulative behavior of the Nurse is finally defeated and all of the victims are now powerful and willing to fight against her power. Due to Nurse Ratched using her manipulative skills allowing McMurphy to attack her, he is then sent to Disturbed and receives a lobotomy. Several patients check themselves out of the institution before McMurphy even arrives back at the ward. Once he finally returns, his friends do not believe that the lobotomized individual is in fact McMurphy. Chief Bromden knows right away that he is indeed McMurphy, and begins to suffocate him (Evans 48-50). Suffocating Randle McMurphy allowed Chief to put McMurphy out of misery once and for all from Nurse Ratched and her wicked schemes of manipulation in the