Inequality In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The novel One Flew Over The cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey follows the experiences of Randle Patrick McMurphy who has pretended to be insane in order to a psychiatric hospital and escape from serving time in a prison work farm. The novel frequently refers to authorities that control individuals through restrained methods. The authority of the ward is most often personified in the character of “Nurse Ratched” or “Big Nurse”. The patients of the ward are afraid of Nurse Ratched that they fallow her orders without question. They “ long ago gave up the struggle to assert themselves.

The only reason the doctor could come up with was that the supernatural had to have been playing a part in the girls swift and abrupt change in behavior. Later on, the girls that were bewitched became known as the “afflicted girls.” Two men named Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne began interrogating the girls about who or what had came to them. After being pressured by the men, the girls accused three women of afflicting them: the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba; a homeless beggar, Sarah Good: and an elderly impoverished woman, Sarah Osborne. All three of the women accused were social outcasts, so people willingly believed that they could be involved in witchcraft.

“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and The Red Scare share many characteristics. “The Crucible” describes the Salem Witch Trials. These trials were during a period of time where men and women were very rancorous so others feared to speak up because they would be accused of witchcraft and killed. Similar to Arthur Miller’s book, the Red Scare was a period of time in the late 40’s and 50’s in which United States citizens were intensely paranoid of an opposing threat of communism in Eastern Europe and Asia and ultimately communists infiltrating the United States. What the Red Scare and “The Crucible” have in common is that accusations of witchcraft or communism were false, people were blind to the truth, and the accusers weren’t very tactful and

Throughout the beginning of the novel it is evident that some characters over use their powers, one of these characters being Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched uses her position in the ward to take advantage of the patients and make sure that they adhere to everyone of her daunting commands. Nurse Ratched “tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine” (Kesey 28) because she has been on the ward for so long that when something doesn 't go according to her plan, she starts to get mad and will often try to use her power to come down on the patient 's. Nurse Ratched is in control of the whole ward and when someone does something that isn 't in her manuscript she gets irritated. The ward will be run her way and only her way, “ under her rule the ward inside is almost completely adjusted to surroundings” (Kesey 28).

Schizophrenia is an ominous word often associated with psychosis, delusions, as well as paranoia. Society supposedly understands how horrible symptoms like these make schizophrenia one of the worst mental diseases that one could live with, and the story of Elyn Saks is definitely no exception. In the memoir The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn R. Saks brings her readers through the harsh realities of living with schizophrenia, while also dealing with the stresses associated with high school, getting a college degree, while still maintaining relationships with family and friends. Saks had inadequate care as a child when her symptoms first began showing, and being transferred through countries following school, and being passed from doctor to doctor

Bryanna E. McCool Mrs. Dean British Literature 25 January 2018 Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.

Power Struggle means a situation in which two or more people or groups compete for control in particular sphere. In the protest novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey focuses on the power between a dictatorship and a democracy. Both leaders Nurse Ratched and McMurphy both strive for power over the patients but it is McMurphy’s unselfishness that hold the patient's One example is that Nurse Ratched has a lot of power in the hospital. For example on Pg. 49 Pete comes over and yells “ I’m tired”.

Is precisely expressed through Nurse Ratched and McMurphy’s relationship and their effect on the patients in the ward. Nurse Ratched is the antagonist in the book, she is the authoritative figure to the men in the institution and she is determined to continue to abuse her power over the men and remain in control. She emasculates the men in different ways to rid any chance of rebellion, Harding, remarks, “we are victims of a matriarchy here” (Kesey, 16). A few ways she emasculates men are by using public humiliation and embarrassment against the patients to exposes their greatest insecurities, controlling the direction of the conversation and the questions asked throughout a therapy session, but by also manipulating the patients to turn on each other so they remain occupied rather than work together to rebel against her.

Intro: “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane” (PHILIP K. DICK, Valis). In present day America laws have been placed that prevent people who are “insane” to be guilty of the crimes they commit. In short, insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill relating to madness. This is presented in the book Medea written by Euripides through her point of view. In Medea, a surge of insanity purges her after she is betrayed by her husband Jason causing many cruel and harsh actions to follow from her.

The witch trials in Salem in the year 1692 was a scowling time in American history. The New York Post explains about The Crucible play that “... at a time when America was convulsed by a new epidemic of witchhunting, The Crucible brilliantly explores the threshold between individual guilt and mass hysteria, personal spite and collective evil.” In The Crucible, John Proctor and his wife are hit with many situations which burdens their relationship. While this is going on, many people were being accused as witches for little incidents which they thought would add up to witchcraft. During this time period, the grudges and personal rivalries between people makes these witch trials immoral and unethical.

Samantha Henderson Comp. 104 : October Book Report Teresa Long 31 October 2016 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest withholds many lessons throughout the story as well as in the text itself. In the opening lines of the novel it is learned that the perspective is that of an Indian man that pretends to be deaf and dumb to fool those at the mental institution. He believed that everything at the institution is run by the “combine” including the head nurse of the ward, Miss Ratched.

“People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another,” Roy Blunt, a United States senator, had said. Some individuals who are mentally ill are able to achieve their goals because they have the qualities associated with being a leader, such as having confidence typical of narcissism or willing to use others like psychopaths. The characters of Hamlet and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focused on these states of mental health and how it tied into the people and setting.

Journal #1 One main event that occurs in the first third of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the first group meeting Mr. McMurphy joined on the ward. Nurse Ratched begins to talk about another patient named Harding, and his issues with his wife. After listening to what the nurse had to say, McMurphy made an inappropriate joke concerning the matter of Harding’s wife. Everyone was amused with his joke, except for Nurse Ratched.

Moment: “He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales.” Pg 164 Fate. The one aspect that people try to change the most. The dappling with fate throughout Ken Kesey’s novel One