Social Control and Mental Illness in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Introduction: Mental Illness as Social Construction

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 gain a broader understanding of both their own psyche and the ways society has essentially made them insane. Furthermore, Kesey shows that one 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 as a Mechanism of Social Control

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 both the ability and the 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 — a parallel of sorts to Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho. Billy remains a virgin, as preserving his sexual purity is how he demonstrates 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 which 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 also notes that he detected a "change in her voice," as if Ratched were actually invoking Billy's mother through her tone of voice in order 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" (Kesey 139–140).

Conclusion: The Combine and the Path to Freedom

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 resist change. When Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the civil rights movement was just beginning 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 very 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.