Examples Of Conscience In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In a study conducted in Berkeley, “In a study of more than 600 young men and women conducted at Berkeley, researchers concluded that one’s perceived social status — or lack thereof — is at the heart of a wide range of mental illnesses,” (Anwar). The head nurse, Miss Ratched, used her words and knowledge of the mental patients to weaken their confidence and force them into submission. She made them feel small in society, resulting in the men believing that they don’t belong. Harding had even compared Miss Ratched to Adolf Hitler. Regardless of the evilness associated with these two people, there is the fact that they both accomplished gaining power, which is something a majority of people want. Another form of sadism shown in the novel was the electric shock therapy (EST) and lobotomy, both of which were used to “cure” mental patients. McMurphy and Bromden were subjected to a series of electric shock therapies and later on, McMurphy undergone lobotomy. “The procedure was not reserved for the most hopeless cases but instead applied to ‘difficult’ patients, becoming a way to control behavior rather than to relieve symptoms of mental disorder,” (Haycock and Cataldo). Although the morality of these treatments are questionable, these helped establish power in the asylum by using fear. A person would need to have no regret to force a person to have psychosurgery and with the actions of the hospital workers, this borders on sadistic and psychotic behavior. However, this raises the question of whether people labeled as psychopaths are the only ones who accomplish their

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is a book written by Ken Kesey about a group of men living in an unforgiving mental ward, filled with many unjust guidelines and rules. In that book, it tells the story of Chief Bromden, a patient at a mental ward, and Randle McMurphy, another patient who has recently been admitted into the mental ward. When McMurphy arrives, he begins to stir up trouble with Nurse Ratched, who controls everything and everyone in the ward. McMurphy goes against most, if not all, the rules that the nurse has in place because he realizes that her rules are unfair, and that her actions and behavior are not justifiable. McMurphy doesn't believe in a world full of conformists, where everyone is the same, and where life revolves

Who would have thought the new patient, McMurphy, would be the person who saves the other patients? In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy’s impact on the patients is evident. Before his arrival, the patients were under the strict rule of Nurse Ratched. They did not know how to stop her anger. McMurphy, like the other patients, is also mentally unstable and has made questionable decisions in the past. Despite McMurphy's alleged flaws, he inspires the men with a rebellious attitude, helps the patients increase their confidence, and make the patients realize they have a place in life outside of the ward.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, considers the qualities in which society determines sanity. The label of insanity is given when someone is different from the perceived norm. Conversely, a person is perceived as sane when their behavior is consistent with the beliefs of the majority. Although the characters of this novel are patients of a mental institution, they all show qualities of sanity. The book is narrated by Chief Brodmen, an observant chronic psychiatric patient, who many believe to be deaf and dumb. The question of sanity becomes apparent when McMurphy, a confident gambler, who might have faked psychosis in order to get out of the work farm, is assigned to the mental hospital. He quickly stirs up tension in the ward for Nurse Ratched by encouraging the men to have fun and rebel against her rules.

Atticus lives by a code: let your conscience be your guide. That’s why he takes on the case at the heart of the story, the defense of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Scout tells Atticus that most people in the town think it’s wrong to defend the accused man. But Atticus explains that “they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” If he didn’t take the case, Atticus tells Scout, “I could never ask you to mind me again.”

The 1950s, the context of which One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, was written, was called the Era of Conformity. During this time, the American social atmosphere was quiet conformed, in that everyone was expected to follow the same, fixed format of behavior in society, and the ones who stand out of being not the same would likely be “beaten down” by the social norms. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey argues that it is immoral for society to simply push its beliefs onto the people who are deemed different, as it is unfair and could lead to destructive results.

In the ward, the only individual capable of undermining Nurse Ratched’s power is Randle McMurphy. By blatantly disregarding the nurse’s strict rules, standing up for himself, and encouraging other patients to do so, he creates a situation that jeopardizes the order Nurse Ratched has created. When McMurphy manages to get a fishing trip approved, granted he gets ten other patients to sign up, Nurse Ratched uses malicious methods to thwart his plans: “The nurse started steadily bringing in clippings from the newspapers that told about wrecked boats and sudden storms on coast” (Kesey 178). In order to dismantle the immense progress McMurphy has made towards changing the attitudes of the patients, Nurse Ratched discourages them from attending his trip. Her motive in doing this is to have the patients lose faith in McMurphy, ultimately destroying the influence he has over them. By weakening McMurphy’s power in the ward, she creates an environment where can continue to thrive in her power through the systems she has set in place. However, Nurse Ratched’s plan does not succeed and McMurphy is allowed to proceed with his fishing trip. He continues to undermine the nurse’s authority to the point where he physically assults her after she blames Billy’s death on him. His actions give Nurse Ratched an opportunity to give him the ultimate punishment, a

In order to demonstrate the detrimental impact of societal institutions such as the mental hospital and the federal government on their subordinates, Ken Kesey captures the patients’ endeavor to become whole again as they temporarily escape the Combine’s clutches within his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At the beginning of Part 3, it appears Nurse Ratchet’s regime is nearly toppled and that the machinery has lost its control. In fact, McMurphy even draws “[laughs] out of some Acute who’d been scared to grin since he was twelve” and forms a basketball team for the inmates (175). Moreover, Chief Bromden speaks for the first time in years and achieves an erection after his pivotal conversation. Clearly, Kesey indicates the decline of the matriarchy and as a result, portrays the patients as regaining their masculinity. Formerly,

In novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, a leader organizes a group of mental patients and rebels against the figurehead of the broken institutional system of the mental hospital. McMurphy pushes The institutions rules of order, bringing out the evil in the situation. Bromden, due to his bias narration, misconstrues Nurse Ratched as the antagonist where, in truth, she falsifies this by trying to maintain order and by ultimately seeking the best for her patients.

McMurphy arrives to the ward thinking he is different from the other patients on the ward, but throughout the novel his hidden subconscious thoughts of his true mental state are revealed. While introducing himself to the patients, McMurphy tells the background story of how he ended up where he was. He says that the “court ruled that [he’s] a psychopath” (13), and he didn’t argue with that ruling. Although he doesn’t deny that he belongs on a mental ward, he claims that he only acted the way he did to leave “those damned pea fields” (13) and quit working. Because he is a true gambler at heart, he bets the patients that he can get under Nurse Ratched’s skin and shake up things on the ward. The way he doesn’t take things seriously shows that he most likely believes that he is better than everyone else on the ward, although he is one of the only ones committed. When the patients get to visit the pool, McMurphy meets a patient from the Disturbed ward who he can relate to because he is also committed. The patient was picked up for something trivial, but has been there for “eight years and eight months” (171). After realizing that being committed meant that how long he stays is up to the head nurse and doctor, McMurphy’s entire demeanor changes from rebellious to submissive. He finished two months on the work farm and only had four more months until he would be released. Four months was the “most he wanted to spend locked up any place” (171), and he had already spent a month on the ward. Although the ward had better living conditions than the work farm, it was guaranteed that he would be released from the farm as long as he completed his sentence. But now, there is no set day for him to leave the ward. McMurphy starts to realize that he might’ve made a mistake by trying to get out of a few months of work, and trading that for commitment to a mental hospital. In the back of his mind McMurphy knew that he might be on the ward longer than what

Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest whilst taking part in a US Army study where he took mind-altering drugs and worked as an aide in a hospital’s psychiatric ward. His experiences bought the story to life, focusing on the theme of conformity and creating the idea of Randle P McMurphy. The world needed anti-heroes in fiction, because normal heroes were no longer relatable in the flawed and war stuck society. Kesey delivered the perfect anti-hero in R.P. McMurphy, writing a timeless story that will be cherished by many for several generations to

The movie was mostly focused on the feud between the warden/nurse Ms. Ratched and McMurphy. McMurphy tried to go against the hard-set plan set by the institution. More he tried to establish dominance and leadership within the group. This threatened the nurse’s ways of subduing patients, and they felt of less importance in their own institution. This led to a bitter rivalry and because of it the nurse tried to subdue, with same techniques as with other patients, McMurphy even after realizing that he was not a mentally unstable person. At the end, the protagonist is surgically operated to make him mentally deranged. The nurse and the department were certain that McMurphy was faking insanity, but they agreed that he was dangerous. The nurse, in spite of discharging him, kept him on the premises to undo the wave of excitement he brought to the asylum

Everyone has made choices that they knew they shouldn't have made at one point or another. There are many examples of people disregarding their consciences in the book To Kill a Mockingbird. A few examples of these people overriding their consciences advice would be Mr. Cunningham, Scout, Jem, Dill and Bob Ewell.

Another moment of morality is when TimHead was feeling bad about shooting a kid in the face. He thought about his brother instantly when he shot the kid, because his brother was around the same age as him. TimHead knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. “He was trying to kill you. Us. He was trying to kill everybody” (Klay 41). That was said in order for TimHead to feel as though what he had done wasn’t as wrong as what it seem. It was a way for TimHead to not feel the guilt. They were trying to make TimHead dehumanize the boy since he hadn’t already. Self-defense is pretty much what that quote means. Technically you’re not responsible for your actions because your life and your squad member’s life’s were in danger. This scene shows a sign

In order to judge a person’s conscience, it is vital to understand what one is. As defined by Webster’s Dictionary, a conscience is “the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character, together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good”. Having a pure or guilty conscience is something people struggle with daily. One’s conscience can be influenced or swayed in both positive and negative ways. Personal experiences, new relationships, and the growth of decision making are qualities that alter someone’s conscience. Fortunately for mankind, people's consciences have a pattern of improving over time as people mature and develop. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain takes readers through