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The Human Mind In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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The human mind is one of the strongest parts of the human body, it has the capability to adapt to almost anything that life may throw at it. Brains take in thousands of signals from the outside world and one’s own body every day, it has to manage one of the most complex organisms on this earth. Physically, it is about as fragile as a newborn; mentally, it can sustain the weight of a freight train. Psychiatric hospitals are often full of patients who show just how resilient the brain can be and just how much fight is inside that three-pound chunk of water, fat, and neurons. Patients in these places are fighting every day to regain some sense of sanity or reality that they lost along the way. From the outside, they can seem insane and often without hope, but that typically comes from misunderstanding them because of poor communication. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey depicts the lengths the human mind will go to in order to survive and how inhumane reigns will fail in the …show more content…

When met with no other way to escape, the human mind is capable of completely altering one’s behavior. Forcing himself into living in complete silence due to his fear of backlash from the black boys, Chief Bromden is the perfect example of this type of behavior. All others on the ward treat him like an idiot and as learned behavior from his past, he is “cagey enough to fool them”(Ken Kesey 3). Bromden is half Indian, life has not been the easiest for him and his family. His method of survival is to hide in the background as best as possible, despite being nearly six feet tall. This could be construed as Selective Mutism, “a situational anxiety disorder” (Carl, “Overview of Selective Mutism”). Bromden is unable to speak to those he sees as an authority or a threat because the fear of them possibly acting out against them creates an

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