Introduction
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the result of Ken Kesey’s interest in the relations among sanity, insanity, and consciousness-altering drugs. He began writing the novel while employed as psychiatric ward attendant. Later he volunteered to take such drugs as LSD and peyote as a research subject. Kesey wrote the novel under the influence of peyote and LSD. (Carnes, 112) It is an indictment of American culture more than it is of mental institutions. It attacks conformity and established authority in a dense style replete with myths, parables, and ironic commentaries. Few contemporary novels achieved the status of classics or received such notoriety so quickly.
The 1962 novel established Kesey’s literary reputation overnight by calling public attention to the conditions and potential for abuse in the nation’s mental hospitals, where electroshock therapy and even lobotomy were still standard practices. (Porter, 127)
Literary Analysis
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a tragic yet inspirational account of one man’s self-sacrifice in a struggle against hypocrisy and oppression. Set on a ward of a mental hospital in Oregon, the novel depicts characters that could be found in many settings and a conflict between authoritarianism and individualism that is truly universal.
Ken Kesey tells the story through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a longtime patient who is uniquely knowledgeable about hospital routines and procedures and privy to staff secrets. As important as what Chief knows is what he does not know; he can only infer Randle McMurphy’s motives, a process of discovery that gives the novel its focus. A paranoid schizophrenic, Bromden reports his hallucinations faithfully; while they cannot be taken literally, they do make sense. As Chief says, his story is “the truth, even if it didn’t happen.” (Thomas, 19)
The action begins when McMurphy is admitted to Nurse Ratched’s ward for observation. Authorities at the prison farm where he had been a convict are not sure whether he is a psychopath or merely a malingerer. On the ward, McMurphy proves himself to be a master manipulator, hustling his fellow patients in card games and persistently challenging the authority of Nurse Ratched. (John, 89) The patients quickly accept him as a leader and begin to see him as their champion. Nurse Ratched is infuriated by this challenge to her authority, but she bides her time. McMurphy finds out that because he has been officially committed, Nurse Ratched and the hospital staff control his release, and he becomes more prudent and conformist. Nurse Ratched appears to have won, and McMurphy’s fellow patients understand and regretfully accept the change in his behavior.
McMurphy then learns that Dale Harding, Billy Bibbit, and many of the other patients on the ward have not been committed and are there voluntarily, and his behavior changes again. Once more, he is loud and irreverent, challenging Nurse Ratched at every opportunity. He charters a fishing boat, persuading ten of his fellow patients to sign up for a salmon-fishing trip despite Nurse Ratched’s opposition; he even persuades the staff doctor to go along. The trip is a great success: McMurphy spends time with a teenaged girl, one of the patients manages the boat masterfully, the men catch fish, and they are all able by the end of the day to hold their heads up in society. Nevertheless, this outing sows the seeds of disaster. (Thomas, 21)
Nurse Ratched demands that those who went on the trip undergo a particularly disagreeable hygienic procedure. One of the patients resists, and a fight breaks out between the staff orderlies on the one hand and McMurphy and Bromden on the other. In response, Nurse Ratched orders electroshock therapy for McMurphy and Bromden. When McMurphy refuses to apologize for his role in the fight, he is subjected to repeated treatments. (Porter, 130)
After McMurphy returns to the ward, Harding and the other inmates convince him to escape from the hospital to save himself from further retaliation by Nurse Ratched. McMurphy is determined not to leave, however, until Billy Bibbit has had a “date” with Candy, the teenager who went on the fishing trip with McMurphy and the other patients. McMurphy persuades the night orderly to let Candy and another young woman onto the ward with bottles of wine and vodka for a midnight party. Billy and Candy eventually disappear into the ward’s seclusion room, and everyone falls asleep. In the morning, Nurse Ratched discovers Billy sleeping with Candy and threatens to tell his mother. Billy pleads with her not to do so. He blames Candy, McMurphy, and the others for what has happened and then, when left alone, commits suicide. McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched and is dragged away by hospital staff members.
In the denouement, many patients leave the hospital or transfer to other wards. McMurphy is lobotomized; his mindless body is smothered by Chief Bromden, who then makes good his escape.
Thematic Analysis
The central theme of the story is how Chief Bromden becomes strong, self-confident, and sane again. This rescue and transformation succeeds because McMurphy treats him as a worthwhile, intelligent, and sane individual. In addition, McMurphy gives him the example of standing up to and occasionally beating the apparently all-powerful Combine.
That machine is the central symbol of evil in the story. The Chief accurately sees that the powerful in society subtly and unsubtly coerce people into becoming cogs in the machine. The Chief imagines the ruling part of the mechanistic society as a combine, which is a huge harvesting machine. It chews up the growing plants in the field and spits them out as identical products for sale. Thus, the Combine is the machinelike conspiracy that sucks people in, turns them into robots, and spits them out to carry out the Combine’s will in society. (Thomas, 26) In the cuckoo’s nest, the repair shop for the Combine, the same kind of oppression continues. The shop symbolizes the hidden oppression operating in the outside world. The patients are broken-down machines that the asylum seeks to adjust. The Big Nurse’s basic method is to destroy the patients’ self-confidence by making them admit their guilt, shame, and uselessness. (Porter, 134)
Into that repair shop McMurphy comes, a man free from the controls of the Combine because he has never stayed in one place long enough for the controls to be installed. He is an outsider, like the three geese flying overhead in the song: One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest. The last goose came and rescued the singer, just as McMurphy rescues the Chief, who is the singer of this novel-length song. (John, 88) The Chief, the narrator of the story, provides a central source of its power. Readers initially see the ward through the Chief’s psychotic haze. His fantastic visions show both his paranoia and how oppressive the asylum really is. (Thomas, 30) Then as McMurphy brings him back to sanity, the picture gradually clears, the fantastic visions becoming realistic. The Chief comes to see that his slavery is due not only to the Combine but also to his own capitulation. McMurphy’s refusal to give in provides the example the Chief needs to give him confidence in his own ability to live freely.
The Chief sees McMurphy as not only the goose who rescued the slaves from a cuckoo’s nest but also as other popular culture heroes. He speaks of him as a superman, calling him a giant come out of the sky to rescue them. Often the Chief describes him as a cowboy hero coming into town to gun down the bad guys. In particular, one of the patients identifies McMurphy as the Lone Ranger. The allusion that the Chief uses most to place McMurphy in the pantheon of heroes is that of Jesus, the self-sacrificing savior. On the fishing trip, for example, the group is called “McMurphy and his twelve,” and one patient tells them to be fishers of men. On the way back, the Chief sees McMurphy as a Man of Sorrows, doling out his life for his friends. (Thomas, 32) The shock treatment takes place on a table shaped like a cross, with McMurphy referring to their anointing his head and asking if he will get a crown of thorns. A patient speaks like Pilate, saying he washes his hands of the whole affair. The ward party is a Last Supper parody. In the end the powers destroy McMurphy by lobotomy, just as Jesus was killed by the Combine of his day. After that, the Chief (a big fisherman) escapes to tell his story, just as Jesus’ disciples escaped. (Carnes, 115)
Though the Chief’s portrait of McMurphy in some central ways alludes to Jesus, in a variety of other ways it provides a contrast. McMurphy is not simply a selfless savior but is also the fabled western American fighter, sexual braggart, and con man, which contrasts with Jesus’ nonviolence, chastity, and honesty. In particular McMurphy promotes sexual indulgence as a saving activity. In the story, however, the Chief realizes that sexual indulgence is what led to Billy’s death, thereby portraying his savior as far from perfect. (John, 84) That imperfection has led some critics to object to the novel as promoting immorality. Whether one considers that the novel promotes immorality or not depends on whether one takes McMurphy as a model for all that is good. The Chief does not. He sees the good and the bad in his rescuer. An even stronger criticism made of the novel is that it is misogynistic. The women in the novel are either tyrannical emasculators or sweet-natured whores. Certainly it offers no example of an ideal woman. It offers no model men either; McMurphy’s considerable weaknesses lead to his destruction.
Conclusion
The great value of the novel is that it provides a picture of a universal fact of human life. Oppression of the weak by the strong is a constant reality. Rebellion by the weak is occasionally successful and can appropriately be celebrated and encouraged by stories such as this. In the end, the two chief opponents, Big Nurse and McMurphy, do not provide the only two choices available to readers. Instead, the model is the Chief, for he gains his free life again and lives to tell the tale.
Kesey’s own experience as a night attendant on the psychiatric ward of a Menlo Park, California, veterans hospital added credibility to his charges, as did later rumors of the illegal shock treatment he took under the guise of research. His remark that the character of Chief Bromden had appeared to him in a peyote-induced vision fueled interest and controversy, especially when he revealed that he had volunteered for government-sponsored experiments that introduced him to a variety of psychomimetic drugs, including LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and psilocybin. Chief Bromden’s hallucinations echoed Kesey’s continued fascination with mind-altering substances and created a psychedelic style new to fiction. The ominous figure of the head nurse captured public imagination as did that of the irrepressible McMurphy, who personified the 1960’s concept of rebellion against conformity.
Works Cited
Porter, M. Gilbert. The Art of Grit: Ken Kesey’s Fiction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982: 127-134.
John Clark Pratt. Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Text and Criticism. New York: Viking Press, 1973: 84-90.
Thomas H. Fick, “The Hipster, the Hero, and the Psychic Frontier in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 43, Nos. 1-2, 1989, pp. 19-32.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. First published 1962: Signet edition 1986, New York. 37-45.
Carnes, Bruce. Ken Kesey. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1974: 112-117.