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Oppression In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

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Pervagatus Oppressio “Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!” -Dennis Literature exists to express, and thus is tied to the oldest and finest art in human expression, complaining. Complaints can take many levels, from the trivial to the hefty and legitimate. Literature then is often used to illustrate some issue, be it political, social, antisocial, intrinsic, extrinsic, people not being friendly enough, people being overbearing, people being people, men being men, imagined, concrete, abstract, modern, postmodern, post-postmodern, meta-post-postmodern, timeless, classical, the faults of the young, the faults of the old, the faults of the very old and now dead, endemic, exdemic, tenacious, …show more content…

Two notable novels that center around themes of oppression, Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest seem to give very different messages, the former detailing the oppression of women by overbearing men and the latter describing the opposite, these messages can be taken together, showing that both men and …show more content…

The first step towards a successful oppression is isolation. Isolation from friends and family is widely announced as a warning sign in domestic abuse, and is present in both novels. The Congo of The Poisonwood Bible is distant from America and civilization in general, and the characters receive only basic news and communication in their small village. The ward in Cuckoo’s Nest, is only slightly more accommodating, generating isolation yet allowing visits, though all communication is monitored. It is when the patients are able to leave the ward temporarily for the fishing trip that the most healing

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