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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Paper

In Ken Kesey's novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, there’s evidence that not everyone is there at their own will. The story is told through Chief Bromden in first person. He accepts that this paranoia and hallucinations provide metaphorical insight into the hospital ward and the actions the authorities are trying to pursue on the patients. Throughout the story, you begin to wonder who should be labeled a “sane” and who should be labeled “insane”. Not every character in this novel is accurately identified as insane. At times, each character shows parts of their personality that were perfectly sane. While at other times, there are characters who shows a part of them that appears to be just as insane, as they are sane. In this paper I …show more content…

He has insight of the system not only from his seniority at the hospital, but because everyone thinks he’s “deaf and dumb” (3). Throughout the story we follow along with Bromden’s narration which results in him telling his journey towards sanity. At first he is surrounded by a fog that represents his medicated state and his desire to hide from reality. “That’s that McMurphy. He’s far away. He’s still trying to pull people out of the fog. Why don’t he leave me be” (138). This represents that he wanted to be clouded from the reality that Nurse Ratched dictates over them. “When you take one of these red pills you don't just go to sleep; you’re paralysed with sleep, and all night long you can’t wake, no matter what goes on around you. That’s why the staff gives me pills; at the old place I took to waking up at night and catching them performed all kinds of horrible crimes on the patient's sleeping around me.” (85) The fog is a disguise he had such as the dead and dumbness that he also used. His act of deaf and dumbness is in result to him growing up in an oppressive

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