Throughout history, human societies have had conflicting views on insanity and how it is defined in life. Primitive cultures found peace within shamans and witch doctors because they believed the insane were possessed by evil spirits. From then on, in Roman and Greek cultures, there was a somewhat progressive ideology that mental illness came from biological and emotional ailments. They believed in treating those with mental disorders humanely and respectfully which is an attitude that has been forgotten through history and sadly, still is today. However, the Middle Ages became the end of these progressive ideas and introduced insane asylums who “helped” the mentally ill. Up until the 20th century, insane asylums were used to restrict …show more content…
Ken Kesey’s ideas sprung from his personal experience working in the psychiatric ward of a veteran’s hospital. Kesey came to believe that there was little true mental illness and that patients were declared insane because they acted in ways that society was unwilling to accept. Kasey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest works to understand the idea of insanity and sanity as well as who has the authority and the right to decide what characterizes them. When looking into the depths of this book, it becomes apparent that there is a concept of irony throughout the book. In a mental hospital, one may assume that the people deemed fit to run the institution or be a part of the working community there would at least, (if not able to personally help the patients) be able to provide care that is not damaging them further. Although this would seem to be the most appropriate and morally good atmosphere of any institution, one of the most prominent insinuations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest happens to be the insanity of most aspects of the Psych Ward, especially Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched has no future or current plans of actually helping anyone there, but is somewhat lacking a conscious and can be seen as a depiction of narcissism. She has an agenda set out to control everyone in the institution, including the employees as she picks them based on who is the weakest and most
In the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy struggles to conform to the authority of the mental hospital, or more importantly, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched manipulates the patients and staff throughout the movie in order to make them all fit her expectations. Nurse Ratched had the institution on a specific routine until McMurphy showed. Since McMurphy’s arrival, he and Nurse Ratched have had many altercations, and as a result of his actions and disobedience, the audience is led to ponder if he is wrong by not being compliant to her request. McMurphy’s stubborn disobedience made him to blame for all the tragedies that occured in the movie’s conclusion.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey during a time in our society when pressures of our modern world seemed at their greatest. Many people were, at this time, deemed by society’s standards to be insane and institutionalized. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a ward of a mental institution. The major conflict in the novel is that of power. Power is a recurring and overwhelming theme throughout the novel. Kesey shows the power of women who are associated with the patients, the power Nurse Ratched has, and also the power McMurphy fights to win. By default, he also shows how little power the patients have.
Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.
The dangerous and suicidal patients were tied together with ropes to help isolate them from the rest (ch. 14). The nurses were very obnoxious and abusive. For example, they would tell the patients to shut up and that they would beat them if they talked (Bly, ch. 12). Throughout Bly’s experience she talked with other patients, which convinced her that some were as sane as she was. Ultimately, society could not determine who was actually insane or sane due to their lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey shows the reader the idea of sanity versus insanity. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about the struggle between chaos and order. There is no freedom without a little chaos, yet to maintain the order there must be oppression. McMurphy upsets the routine of the ward by asking for schedule changes and aspiring resistance during therapy sessions. He teaches his fellow inmates to have fun, and encourages them to embrace their human desires. He does this by convincing them that not only are they sane, but they are man (real people), in contrast nurse Ratched as an authoritarian. He soon discovers due to this that he is not only trapped behind physical walls but mental ones as well. Many patients
Power Struggles In One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest In the novel “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” by Ken Kesey one major theme is the role of power. Power plays a huge role in this storyline and the one person who signifies authority is Nurse Ratched. The protagonist in the novel is Randle McMurphy and he tries to compete with Nurse Ratched for power by protesting.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a controversial novel that has left parents and school authorities debating about its influence on students since its publication in 1962. The novel describes the inner workings of a mental institution, how the patients are emasculated and mistreated by the terrifying Nurse Ratched, who will go to any length to control them. But in comes McMurphy, a criminal who chose to go to an asylum rather than serve physical labor; he disrupts the order of the hospital with his big personality and loud opinions, undermining the authority of Nurse Ratched and encouraging the patients to live their own lives, until he too, is silenced forever by authority. With his novel, Ken Kesey paints society as an oppressive
The mentally ill were cared for at home by their families until the state recognized that it was a problem that was not going to go away. In response, the state built asylums. These asylums were horrendous; people were chained in basements and treated with cruelty. Though it was the asylums that were to blame for the inhumane treatment of the patients, it was perceived that the mentally ill were untamed crazy beasts that needed to be isolated and dealt with accordingly. In the opinion of the average citizen, the mentally ill only had themselves to blame (Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, 1999). Unfortunately, that view has haunted society and left a lasting impression on the minds of Americans. In the era of "moral treatment", that view was repetitively attempted to be altered. Asylums became "mental hospitals" in hope of driving away the stigma yet nothing really changed. They still were built for the untreatable chronic patients and due to the extensive stay and seemingly failed treatments of many of the patients, the rest of the society believed that once you went away, you were gone for good. Then the era of "mental hygiene" began late in the nineteenth century. This combined new concepts of public health, scientific medicine, and social awareness. Yet despite these advancements, another change had to be made. The era was called "community mental health" and
In Kesey’s 1950s novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ Nurse Ratched’s relationship with male patients is based upon differences they hold about gender and identity. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a masculine misandrist figure that gains power from emasculation. She carries “no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties” . This implies nothing womanly about her as she prioritises her “duties”, suggesting that she aims to control her male patients by ridding her feminine qualities. In addition, she is shown in robotic with a chilling aura. This is evident when she slid “through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her” . This indicates that as a power figure her only concern is controlling her male patients, making sure they are obedient and abiding by her rules. “Gust of cold” implies that by doing so she wholly ruins her relationship with the males due to her “cold” and callous methods. Daniel J. Vitkus states she is “the Big Nurse, an evil mother who wishes to keep and control her little boys (the men on the ward) under her system of mechanical surveillance and mind control.” Yet, can be argued that she is fulfilling her role of working as a Nurse within a mental institution. However Vitkus’s critique is similar to when McMurphy says “Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter?” McMurphy is a hyper masculine force against Ratched’s emasculating norms. Their relationship is essentially a power
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest reveals the underbelly of the abhorrent prison system that was a home to mental patients in the mid nineteen-hundreds. The story is narrated by a patient named Bromden, and takes place in a mental institution run by the iron hand of Nurse Ratched. Patients in the hospital are subject to horrendous tortures for even the smallest deviations in expectation, and are denied any source of happiness in their lives. However, the dreadful routine is shaken up when a new patient arrives: McMurphy. Refusing to submit to the torture, McMurphy challenges Nurse Ratched in a lasting power struggle to prove who is stronger. Ultimately, it is revealed that the upper hand was always on Nurse Ratched’s side when McMurphy suffers a near fatal punishment after he commits the heinous act of strangling Ratched. Bromben pities McMurphy after he has been lobotomized by Ratched, and smothers him to death with a pillow to prevent his endless suffering. Bromden breaks out of the hospital in a blaze of justice, emphasizing that the horror of
What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation of insane asylums in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment for the mentally ill by providing a humane and caring environment for them to reside.
While some people have somewhat treated the mentally ill with sympathy, many people name them “the most despised and feared group in society” (qtd. in Perlin). The mentally ill were generally feared and treated with disgust and shame (“Asylums”). They were outcasted and excluded from all normal activities in daily life, in fact, they were noticeably stigmatized and treated very harshly (“Madness”). It was not uncommon that the awful treatment of the mad included punishment for their condition and were treated with many strange approaches to metal recuperation (“Asylums”). Some of these methods included trephination and shock treatment.
The author of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Keasey, received his inspiration for the book while volunteering at a veteran's hospital. This is where he was first introduced to LSD. The moment he tried it, he became addicted, and began experimenting on himself with the drugs, observing the effects. The novel deals with the tyrannical rule of head Nurse Ratched in a mental hospital somewhere in Oregon. She runs all business and daily life in the asylum to her every whim and rules the ward by fear and manipulation. This has gone on for as long as the narrator, Chief Bromden, can remember. However a new patient, Randle McMurphy, enters the hospital and begins to wreak havoc upon the system
After marrying Norma Faye Haxby, Kesey’s high school girlfriend, he considered a career as an actor once more, but instead he won a scholarship to the graduate program in writing at Stanford University (A&E Networks Television, 23 Mar. 2016) and enrolled there in 1958 (Public Broadcasting Service, n.d.). While attending Stanford in 1960, Kesey began volunteering as a paid experimental subject by the U.S. Army. During these experiments, he was given mind-altering drugs and told to report on the effects. Simultaneously, he worked as an attendant in a psychiatric ward and these
During the mid-1800’s the mentally ill were either homeless or locked in a cell under deplorable conditions. Introduction of asylums was a way to get the mentally ill better care and better- living conditions. Over a period of years, the admissions grew, but staff to take care of their needs did not. Asylums became overcrowded and treatments that were thought to cure, were basically medieval and unethical