One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest

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In the novel One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey writes about the events taking place at a psychiatric ward after a peculiar man named Randle McMurphy is admitted and deviates the normal routine of the patients’ everyday lives. In his story, Kesey characterizes the patients of the psychiatric ward to represent how mankind can become prisoners of our own minds. Kesey uses the narrator, Chief Bromden, to highlight many elements of the purpose behind the story. When the patients of the ward misbehave, they are given electroshock therapy (EST). Some of the patients refer to it as “brain burning” (178). Bromden is in the ward for his hallucinations and when he is put through EST, he describes seeing and feeling fog all around him. As Bromden …show more content…
He releases his attitude of sexual freedom onto Nurse Ratched, ripping open her clothes, revealing her breasts. This final act of McMurphy’s rebellion ultimately leads to his lobotomy and eventually his death, but it is also what saves the rest of the men at the ward. Kesey shows that when these characters succumb to their gender stereotypes, it leads to their own destruction: with Ratched finally being attacked, assaulted, and cracked and with McMurphy being turned into a vegetable. Chief Bromden’s journey to freedom and the characters’ imprisonment to their gender identities represent Kesey’s underlying message that we are limited to what our own minds will allow. That is why Kesey chose the setting of a psychiatric ward. The characters are literally trapped and prisoners to the ward, while also being locked inside the walls of their own minds. One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest shows the patients of the ward experiencing injustice without even realizing it. The plot of the book starts unfolding once this injustice is pointed out by McMurphy. Kesey wants the readers to know that we cannot fix injustices without breaking free from the restraining mentalities and stereotypes that are a part of human
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