One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest offers an ironic portrayal of mental health and mental illness. The story of Randle McMurphy, told through the eyes and ears of Chief Bromden, shows how restrictive social norms and behavioral constraints are what cause mental illness. Mental illness and deviance are socially constructed. The men in the institution have been labeled as deviants, many of them as criminals too. Yet Kesey shows how the institution is the real problem, not mental illness. Nurse Ratched symbolizes oppression and social control, with Randle McMurphy as her foil. McMurphy is no angel, but he helps the institutional inmates to gain a broader understanding of both their own psyche and of the ways society has essentially made them insane. Furthermore, Kesey shows that of the main ways society and its institutions enforce social conformity is through the process of shaming. Shaming is a method of social control that either promotes conformity or pressures people to push back and rebel.

Shaming is a form of peer pressure, and can be meted out by parents, peers, or powerful social figures. Persons in positions of relative power have the ability and desire to enforce conformity in order to preserve existing social hierarchies. Bromden calls the system of conformity the Combine, as it is like a machine that churns out robots. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the character Billy exemplifies the problem inherent in persistent social shaming and peer pressure. Billy has succumbed to the pressure placed on him by his overbearing mother; sort of a parallel to Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho. Billy remains a virgin, as preserving his sexual purity is how he shows obedience to his mother. When McMurphy encourages Billy to have sex with a woman for the first time, Billy liberates himself from the constraints that drove him to insanity in the first place. However, Nurse Ratched knows exactly what buttons to push and understands that Billy's need to please his mother is his weakness. When she discovers his transgression, Nurse Ratched states, "What worries me, Billy . . . is how your mother is going to take this," (Kesey 264). Bromden notes also that he detected a "change in her voice," as if Ratched was actually invoking Billy's mother through her tone of voice to secure conformity. On the other hand, McMurphy resists shaming and peer pressure, which is why Bromden comes to admire him. "The Combine hasn't got to him in all these years; what makes the nurse think she's gonna be able to do it in a few weeks? He's not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him (Kesey139-140).

Kesey flips the concept of mental illness to show how society is the real instigator of psychological torment. As the Chief recognizes that McMurphy is not mentally ill at all but simply a genius outsmarting the system, he admires his new friend: "I can understand it with some of those old guys on the ward. They're nuts. But you, you're not exactly the everyday man on the street, but you're not nuts," (Kesey 167). Also, the Chief notes that the asylum fails to foster wellness. "You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing," (Kesey 63). The reason why the asylum does not foster wellness is because it is a tool of the Combine itself. As Chief Bromden points out, "The ward is a factory for the Combine," (Kesey 40). Another feature of the Combine is rigid social hierarchies, which create systems of oppression based on race, class, gender, and power. Although Kesey does not address the intersections between race, class, gender, and power, the author does recognize the problems with hierarchy and social control through the figure of Nurse Ratched. The Chief realizes the "ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak," (Kesey 57). She might be female but the Nurse represents powerful social institutions like patriarchy, whereas the residents of the asylum represent the oppressed classes.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey shows that the key to mental health and wellbeing is personal empowerment and self-liberation. McMurphy represents freedom and liberation. He has been able to cultivate freedom because he has "no one to care about, which is what makes him free enough to be a good con man," (Kesey 6). Whereas the "Chronics" are the ones who are "machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years," McMurphy seems immune (Kesey 15). McMurphy has transcended the entire Combine and is trying to show anyone who will listen how to do the same. The Chief recognizes McMurphy's high level of social intelligence immediately, his ability to see through the Combine and recognize it for what it is: "he'll just wait a while to see what the story is in this new place before he makes any kind of play. That's a good rule for a smart gambler," (Kesey 43). Liberation requires intelligence and self-empowerment. The reason why the Chief is able to free himself in the end is because of McMurphy's inspiration. McMurphy was "strong enough being his own self that he would never back down," (Kesey 139). McMurphy never does back down and dies a martyr, inspiring the Chief to free himself not just from the asylum but from the Combine too.

The Combine represents the ultimate ills of society, the pressures to conform to rigid hierarchies that perpetuate oppression. Nurse Ratched symbolizes social control and the social construction of deviance. She resents McMurphy for challenging her authority, just as major patriarchal social and political institutions like government resist change. When Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the civil rights movement was just starting to grow in earnest, leading to tremendous challenges to existing racial and gender hierarchies. McMurphy plays the role of instigator, the man who refuses to conform and who sees through the mechanisms of the Combine to liberate himself and inspire others to do the same. The Chief follows his lead, ironically becoming sane and mentally powerful in the act of escaping a mental asylum. His escape symbolizes personal empowerment and liberation from social pressures to conform.

Works Cited

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Penguin, 2002.