One Flew Times The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

In this modern age of fluctuating self-esteem and an overwhelming desire for acceptance from the highly critical surrounding society, every person in some way, shape, or form seeks to embed themselves into a niche where they can find solace and a place of belonging. Society’s opinions of its members very often leave a lasting impact on a person, in which they internally impede their true selves as a result of society’s critique. One Flew Times the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey explores this phenomenon, where a group of mental health patients are continually handicapped and constrained by the controlling psychiatric hospital that surrounds them. Throughout the course of the novel, there is a main motif of what it means to be a rabbit versus a wolf.

He is sent away for three weeks as a result, but when he returns, he is wheeled in on a gurney and is left over by the Vegetables, as he had been lobotomized. In lieu of his seeming defeat, his memory stayed with the patients while he was absent and provoked them to change things for the better at the ward. Nurse Ratched does not have the same power over the hospital that she used to given that she temporarily loses her voice, as “she tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls...” (321). The patients learned to grow out of their fear and used the spirit of McMurphy as reassurance of their actions; Nurse Ratched’s little written commands could not effectively control the patients anymore. McMurphy is eventually murdered by Chief in the middle of the night by suffocation to eliminate any chance of Nurse Ratched trying to turn McMurphy into an example of what happens when she is crossed. The nurse at this point has no more ammunition to use against the patients, and in turn, takes her place as a rabbit of the ward like the