How might someone embrace oppression? Likewise to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 set in a totalitarian government, the mental hospital ward setting of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is as autocratic and repressive. Both authors convey the extent of the tyranny through characters—Orwell through Syme, a linguist whose job is to create a more restricted dictionary, and Kesey though Nurse Ratched, a stoic, regimented woman who controls all of the operations on her ward. In 1984, the power of the Party can be seen through Syme’s occupation and fate. During a lunchtime conversation, Syme tells a colleague that his job of eliminating unnecessary words is to “narrow the range of thought” (Orwell 52). In other words, the Party encourages
