One Flew over the Cuckoo`s Nest

One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a tale of rebellion against the obvious authority cloaked within the walls of an insane asylum and redemption through it. The setting is one played out many times before in various hero stories. A man enters a foreign place, meets oppressed indigenous people, decides to help them see the light, and gives his life for the greater good. In this case the protagonist is not the narrator, but rather McMurphy, a con-man and gambler who fixes his way out of hard labor and into a seemingly cushy hospital setting. Little does he realize he just signed his freedom away to Gestapo dressed as nurses.

From the moment he steps into the hospital his freedom is questioned. The nurses acting as dictators, especially Nurse Ratched, try to take complete control of every patient, of every aspect, and the more one struggles the harder their life becomes. For McMurphy what is a challenge to established sanction in the beginning, becomes a fight for the freedom of all patients in the end. The power of the nurses dictatorship runs in three themes throughout the book; false diagnoses of illness, women emasculating men, and social destruction of natural impulses and drives.

The emasculation of men is a theme found through out the entire novel. Not only are the men weakened through embarrassment, but also destroyed through castration. Seeing the men gathered for their talks with the nurses was just one of the many ways the men were destroyed emotionally. Bromden himself commented on this torture of patience which in a sense took their balls.

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The struggle there is not against just one woman but an entire system. A matriarchy set up with easily controllable subordinates to Ratched and watchdogs who are the men full of anger working underneath her. This power struggle is not an unknown phenomenon to the men there as most of the patients have had controlling women in their lives before. One great example of this is the mother of the narrator who is a woman that took control just as the women of the hospital. Bromdens mother turned his father into an alcoholic weakling and even made him take her last name further weakening the chief.

Another example came later in the novel when McMurphy commissioned a prostitute to sleep with Billy. This form of therapy did seem to help him recover, however Nurse Ratched threatened to tell his mother because of which he committed suicide. This idea of suicide was not the only one as another of the patients castrated himself and others commented that all a man had to do was wait a bit.

Moving further into the oppression of men we step into the realms of the destruction of impulse. The novel makes a strong distinction between the natural and the mechanical. Bromden, being a man of the land and the son of a Native American chief, is the embodiment of nature trapped within social confines. He is born free as he hunts with his father as a child until the government buys out the land and so starts his battle to regain his place in nature.

The hospital and the staff are all seen as agents of the unnatural. The staff is described as consisting of mechanical parts and the hospital it self has is a machine at the control of Ratched. Bromden goes on to describe a fog machine that is used to fill the hospital and cloud the vision of the patients. This of course is symbolic for the clouding of judgment and in effect the manipulation of sanity as a mind unable to see clearly will not be one to make sound decisions.

McMurphy’s entrance into the hospital is a representation of natural impulse and raw sexuality clashing directly with the mechanical. As he walks in he laughs and Bromden comments how that is the first real laugh he has heard in long time. Later in the novel McMurphy brags about his conquests of a young girl which led to his incarceration adding to social constraints presented in the story. As the novel nears end McMurphy does free many of the patients which symbolizes the return to the natural and a weakening of authoritative grip when they walk out of the hospital. This however, is directly tied in to him loosing his mind via lobotomy.

This brings the final theme for the subjugation of freedom found within the story; false diagnosis. Sometime before McMurphy ever stepped foot in the asylum there was a rebel before him. Though this man did not seem to challenge the system as harshly as McMurphy he was not a roll over either. He did, however question the process which is evident from his inquiry to the medication he was taking. He was treated via intense electro shock therapy and lobotomy from which he lost his ability to reason, his fighting spirit, and indeed his personality. The man became a human cow for which he was later released and praised as cured by Nurse Ratched.

This was an erroneous diagnosis as the man was perhaps as healthy as most. The issue was brought up in the novel stating that a man of sound mind questions, however it is insane to do so at the challenge of authority as majority rules. The case was very much the same for McMurphy. When he rebelled he was not seen as a man rebelling but a patient loosing a grip on reality. Though, it is unclear whether Nurse Ratchet really saw it that way, it would seem that she was too concerned with having absolute control to care for the peoples well being. This in turned caused to the patients treated inhumanly within the hospital and leant to the fear of leaving.

What happened in the hospital was tragic and in many ways analogous to a dictatorship of a nation. When a dictator has absolute control of a country the people must have a fear instilled in them in order to remain in control. This is how the hospital operated with Ratched unchallenged based on the fear of what she may do to the men there. This was the case until McMurphy showed them to live out side the confines of a mental prison of fear.

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