Motif In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Public versus private self is something everyone experiences whether they are kept completely separate or they’re one in the same. Jodi Picoult uses this motif throughout Nineteen Minutes because it's such an essential part of everyone, it determines how people perceive one another and interact with them. An individual could be completely different from how the rest of the world views them which is shown through her characters and their situations. One of the characters josie is a great example of this very early on in the book when she explains her social life. “She understood how she was supposed to look and supposed to act… some mornings, it was hard to get out of bed and put on someone else’s smile; that she was standing on air, a fake who laughed at all the right jokes and whispered all the right gossip and attracted the right guy, a fake who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be real.”(8 Picoult) Josie’s private self is drastically different from her public one because she feels it's important to …show more content…
In the novel, Alex’s personal self is very uncommon to come across but through the flashbacks and retellings, you can see how she adapts to the situation. “Alex, she realized, could fit anywhere. Here, or with Lacy’s family at dinner, or in a courtroom, or probably at tea with the queen. She was a chameleon. It struck Lacy that she didn't really know what color a chameleon was before it started changing”(37 Picoult) Lacy states that Alex can fit in anywhere and adapt to the people around even if it was the queen. Lacy also says that she did not really know the color of a chameleon before it changed color, so at this point Lacy and the reader both do not truly know what Alex is like. This helps show the reader the contrast between how Alex can adapt to everyone except her daughter. When Alex tries to talk with her she does not know what to do or say to create a connection to