Mental Illness In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

It is known fact that up until recently those placed into mental institutions suffering from various illnesses have been treated poorly. Those who were subject to the torment of shock therapy and sedative drugs in the sixties and seventies know the pain of living in a cognitive institution. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), directed by Milos Forman, came out in the era of scandals revealing the awful conditions found in mental hospitals. However, this film does not focus on the living situation in the hospital, but funnels its efforts to look deeper into the characters that inhabit the establishment. This movie fights the ideas of conformity and protests for the right of free thinking all while presenting it in an accessible way for the populous.

This reveals that after constant manipulation the victims brain is traumatized and is left with an ability to find change. Lastly, most men in the ward find Nurse Ratched to be scary and something to be reckoned with. The fear of Nurse Ratched causes the men to see most women as scary monsters and something to be hated. For example Harding is revealed to have many problems with his wife. “Touch upon the—subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding’s problem with his wife” (Kesey, 436).

 From there on Steve tries to form a relationship with Nathaniel, a person who is much more to him than just a homeless musician. Nathaniel suffers from schizophrenia. Throughout the film, Steve learns how difficult it is to communicate with Nathaniel. The movie also exquisitely demonstrates the legal and ethical dilemma the mental health field can develop (Foster, Krasnoff & Wright, 2009). Communication is needed when having a conversation with people.

a mad world Madness, lobotomies, electro-shocks, misfits, normality; these words are the ones the people use when they talked about mental illness in the 19th Century. The 50’s and the 60’s were difficult times to live with a mental disorder, due to the fact that they were a stigma to the society and we all know how a stigma works: it consumes the people with fear. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey puts in the spotlight the mental institutions and the “great solutions” that the government and psychiatrists developed. And it makes you wonder: Were they mentally ill or they made them believe that? Throughout Ken Kesey 's novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest,” the use of manipulation is a recurring, the character that uses it the most if the Nurse Ratchet.

Numerous amounts of symptoms come with this condition. Holden Caulfield displays all symptoms such as sleep deprivation, forgetfulness, angriness, startled easily, unable to concentrate, and avoidance of places, events, or objects that may remind him of his brother’s death throughout the entire novel. (“PTSD” 1-2). Evaluating The Catcher in the Rye and “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”, I can conclude that Holden Caulfield is struggling with the anxiety disorder of PTSD by possessing the many corresponding symptoms portrayed. Holden's disorder most likely began the day of his brother’s death.

So next time you see someone talking to themselves, or even pretending like they have an imaginary friend… just

This could be taken on one level as Chief just hallucinating so bad he can’t get to bed, or, it could have a deeper, more meaningful allusion. Chief, being manipulated and debilitated by the fog, could be taken as him being weakened and beatdown by the harsh conformity enforced by the ward’s head nurse. But Chief states that none of the other patients complain about the fog, and that McMurphey can’t understand why the others don’t want to act out, or even laugh: “That’s why McMurphey can’t understand, [the patients] wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at”(Kesey 114). This states how McMurphey is trying to help the others out of the dehumanizing pit of rules and regulations put in place by the Big Nurse, and how the other patients have given into her rule.

Berkowitz was clearly delusional in terms of his neighbour’s dog being the devil. At the poor mental state he was at his efforts to protect himself from the devil were to obey auditory delusions to kill women. Other negative events in his life were incorporated in his mental state such as the loss of his mother resulting in the lacking of an identity and a feeling of detachment from the world and from

One of the che character that troubles Lutie the most is the superintendent of the building where she lives, called Jones. Jones is portrayed to be a very bitter, troubled, and unattractive man who desires to be with Lutie. Described as “a tall gaunt man [that] towered in the doorway, looking at her… [H]is eyes had filled with a hunger so urgent that she was instantly afraid of him and afraid to show her fear” (10). The readers of the novel become aware that Jones is not a man that Lutie feels unsafe around.

On the other hand, she has the Black swan persona who has violent confrontations with others, including herself. She has deep scratch marks and other marring on her skin with no clear recollection of how they got there, but the film infers that they are self-inflicted. Schizophrenia is characterized as a heterogeneous condition that usually starts during adulthood. This kind of mental disorder is quite hard to differentiate between a fantasy or reality since it is associated with a variety of symptoms. The symptoms include disturbances in communication, language, perception, thought and volition.

By the narrator saying that the people in prison are “discovering” the hell out of themselves means that the people in prison are starting to go insane from the lack of freedom and constantly having their actions placed under scrutiny. Hence, this quote reflects back to the thesis because the thesis states how Peter Malae focused on explaining about the lack of freedom and surveillance in prison, the narrator describes his perusal of the people around him getting tortured and having to be conscious about their own actions in order to avoid

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.

Ken Kesey’s figurative language in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, illustrates that a broken individual can be made whole again. Throughout his life, Bromden has always been assumed to be deaf and dumb. When he speaks to people, their “machinery disposes of the words like they were not even spoken” (181). Here, Kesey’s metaphor represents the effect that Bromden’s words have on a mind plagued with societal expectations. Bromden is a large, Native American man that does not conform to the mold set by the Combine.

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.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a book written by Ken Kesey. He portrays the leading character Randall P. McMurphy to be the typical anti-hero alike much of the other main characters in other storylines. Numerous issues arise as an antihero, including seeking redemption for the good of others. In the other storylines Harry Potter and Breaking Bad, characteristics can be taken from other anti-heroes in which assist in proving that McMurphy is in fact an anti-hero. Things such as courage and doing things for moral purposes are not apparent in anti-heroes, and they usually carry an unidealistic flaw which raises an issue throughout the storyline.