One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest - Analytical Essay

Analytical Essay – One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest. Ken Keseys One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest is a creation of the socio-cultural context of his time. Social and cultural values, attitudes and beliefs informed his invited reading of his text. Ken Kesey was a part of The Beat generation and many of their ideologies and the socio cultural context of U.S post WWII were evident through characters and various discourses throughout One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest, giving us his invited reading. Ken Kesey is against conformity and societies oppressive rules under Eisenhower and he illustrates this by creating a character that is in constant conflict with Nurse Ratched and the Rules of the ward. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest, Ken Kesey†¦show more content†¦Characters like Billy Bibbit, who is too timid, with a speech impediment and Harding who is a closet homosexual and was less avert in sexuality were seen as having mental problems, and were committed to the asylum. McMurphy demonstrated the treating of these patients like normal people, helped them to become more in line with society then Nurse Ratched’s rules and group therapy meetings, or pecking party as Chief Bromden would call it. Chief Bromden was a Native American and wasn’t insane until he was institutionalized and withdrew himself from everyone else pretending he was deaf and dumb to protect himself. Ken Kesey’s message here with Chief Bromdens silence, was to portray the n atives of the time having no voice in the country and to show the controlling and manipulative manner of Nurse Ratched that emasculated and de-socialised these grown men. Mechanical discourses were evident in Nurse Ratched and throughout the entire book from the very start as we see Chief Bromden explaining Nurse Ratched’s image in mechanical terms he quotes. â€Å"I see her fingers trail across the polished steel – tip of each finger the same colour as her lips†. â€Å"Funny orange†. â€Å"Like the tip of a soldering iron. Colour so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can’t tell which†. (pg 9). The mechanical discourse relates to the governments