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Marxism In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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The sociological critical approach is the most effective approach one can use to analyze Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The goal of this approach is to see a particular social environment within a work. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel about men admitted to an Oregon psychiatric hospital who are living in harmony until Patrick Randle McMurphy arrives and stirs everything up. The sociological critical approach definitely provides the reader with the most intensive insight into One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This is because the ward that this novel is set in is actually a microcosm of society and it illustrates many of aspects, issues, and conflicts in society but on a smaller scale. Since the setting of this novel is …show more content…

The Combine forces all of the patients to conform to its expectations. This is parallel to modern society since society puts pressure on people to look, act, and be a certain way. The head nurse on the ward, Nurse Ratched (or Big Nurse), is comparable to a dictator in society. She is the one who is running the Combine and she is the one who makes and enforces the rules. Chief Bromden, the narrator, claims that: “The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes … When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart…” (p.40) The Combine and society both attempt to remove all individuality and make everyone fit a certain mold. When analyzing the theme of rebellion against authority and conformity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader is able to notice that the sub-society on the ward is quite similar to modern society. Using the sociological critical approach to analyze this novel and therefore assuming that the ward is a society of its own helps the reader to relate the happenings on the ward to happenings in the world around

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