Perspectives on Insanity
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In "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", author Ken Kesey has presented readers with a perspective on the world that many would never have previously envisioned. He shows readers many things about themselves through a miniature society that exists in a fictitious mental institution.
This timeless classic presents a never before seen glimpse of the inside of a facility for the mentally ill that is set in 1960’s. It takes place in the era of lobotomies and shock treatments hen patient care was often overlooked. The faculty of these institutions is doing nothing more then putting in their time in and making themselves feel superior by physically and mentally hurting the patients. Hospitals are meant to help people, most of the characters desperately need treatment, but they certainly do not receive it here.
These characters that need help are generally very interesting for example a man named McMurphy who is a con man, becomes a modern-day rebel and hero cast in the mode of the cowboy hero of the American Western. McMurphy is charming and manipulative, he is a forceful character living in the wrong generation.
He challenges authority. He challenges the whole institution. “I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average a_____ on the street.” McMurphy is of course challenging the whole principle of the institution: how can you have a mental institution if most of its patients are sane? This of course leads us to the boss or the antagonist of the book, Nurse Ratched. This big nurse is described as enormous; she seems to swell bigger and bigger throughout the book. She is the ward superintendent, the ultimate authority demanding obedience and perfection from everyone. “Now calm down. The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine.” This quotes shows how strict she is to staying to routine. This setting and these characters are the platform from which this great book takes off.
In our society we as humans feel the need to fill certain positions. Kesey exemplifies this fact by developing his characters within this tightly cloistered society. Just like any other society, Kesey’s characters feel the need to fill stereotypical positions in a community. Kesey gets this background from when he worked the graveyard shift at a mental hospital in California. The real perpetrators names have been newly envisioned in the form of Nurse Ratched fills the role of the evil authority figure and and her nemesis McMurphy the rebel.
There are of course the patients that want to fit in to fill the expected positions in society. This unfortunately makes society think they are insane. A tall Native American patient named Chief Bromden exemplifies this inability to fit in: “What can you pay for the way a man lives? What can you pay for what a man is?” Chief Bromden asks. The Chief believes that his way of living has been stolen away. And it shows how he feels there is no price that he can afford to pay to retain the essence of himself.
Ken Kesey has a gift to subtly teach lessons. By showing the reader how the faculty of the institution treats the mentally ill, he demonstrates that if we examine how the mentally ill are treated we can get a feel for how our society functions: perhaps what he is trying to show is that there is something seriously wrong with a society that can produce people who are able to make a living by literally torturing people.
Another important lesson Kesey shows is most deranged characters (whether they are faculty or the actual patients) are people who could not find their positions in society. He shows many people feel as if they don’t fill these stereotypical positions of a “normal” social order yet there is an expectation they must fulfill these proscribed roles. For example the black faculty in this institution bring tragic backgrounds to their employment profile. They were hired to be completely obedient to Nurse Ratched and to keep the patients in line, by whatever means necessary.
There is one weakness to this timeless classic in the character of Chief Broom who is a paranoid schizophrenic. The condition does make him a compelling narrator. He gives us a perspective of his micro society that we would have never seen if it wasn’t for the narration told from his perspective. However, in many places Broom hallucinates, and this makes it hard to differentiate reality from fiction. Perhaps this ambiguousness was Kesey’s goal. It is possible that he wants the reader to feel confused because understanding societies as a whole is ambiguous and not easily relegated to concrete interpretation.
Ken Kesey in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” shows many ideas and lessons based on the foundation of societies as a whole. The main theme here with all of these lessons is that we don’t need to fill the typical cookie cutter positions of society. Kesey subtly urges his readers to throw off the fetters to make their own choices in life.
These fictitious inmates were incarcerated without a trail. The fact that there are no ramifications on the people who perpetrate the horrible treatment on the patients is outrageous. He holds a mirror up to our many imperfections and the societies that shape who we are in our flawed form. He exemplifies this through his characters and their flaws. As readers 40 years later Kesey still captivates readers because these lessons and ideas are so relevant to our progression as humans in societies. Perhaps Kesey’s work laid the foundation for the changes that society currently treats marginalized citizens. Some of these changes include a much more nurturing environment as opposed to Nurse Ratched’s violent answer to life’s incongruities. Although much progress has been made, we must take these lessons and learn from them so that above all we realize that we have the power to become what we want, not what society believes we should become in life. Kesey leaves us with this really powerful question at the end of the book, “Who is really the insane one?”
