One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

Imagine living your life in a controlled environment where you are to do as you are told at all times, and are always scared of whos watching you or how people will look at you. This is the feeling of being in the mental hospital in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. At this hospital the patients lives are controlled by the staff that works there, especially Nurse Ratched, the head nurse. In a story that revolves around rebelling against power, the author is able to make a connection to how life was for people at the time this book was written. While discussing the aspects of sex, power, and rebellion, Ken Kesey describes how the world was in the post war era in which he wrote one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
The book illustrates the mindset of …show more content…
“How fitting, then, that it should be Chief Bromden who finally escapes the asylum, feeling, as he hurries away, as if he is literally flying, thus making it true at last that, indeed, at least one flew over the cuckoo's nest.”(Whissen). The idea that Bromden was able to escape the mental hospital is a sign for hope outside of the story. Kesey is trying to send a message that when the time comes, the people will be able to have their own inner freedom where they are not controlled by others. Bromden was becoming free from institution just as the generation in america was trying to become free from conformity. “I felt like I was flying. Free. Nobody bothers coming after an AWOL, I knew, and Scanlon could handle any questions about the dead man—no need to be running like this.”(kesey 324). This act of running away and feeling as if he was flying is the ultimate goal of the people in the mental hospital. They easiest way to get out may to put on a mask and pretend as if you are “normal”. But the real inner freedom comes in the moment where Bromden can escape the ward as a man with his own free thoughts and