How To Write A Narrative Essay On One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Great Essays
William stepped onto the floor. He paused at a bulletin board to read Christian-themed literature, and dates for upcoming Christian Coalition meetings and events. He turned and walked down a hallway lined with whitewashed doors to a single room at the end of the hall. He knocked softly. While he waited, he read from a whiteboard on the door. The whiteboard was headed Resident Assistant, Mary Malfronte - Floor Rules. At the bottom of the list of rules, Mary had written in neat block lettering - It is up to St. Peter to determine if failure to obey God’s commandments will deny you entrance to heaven when you stand at the pearly gates. It’s up to me to determine if your failure to follow residency rules will get you expelled from this floor.
Mary managed the floor with crisp efficiently that earned her the nickname Mildred, after the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. None of the residents dared to refer to Mary directly as Mildred, only throwing the nickname about among the guffaw of snickers and sneers that followed in the wake of the dorm mistress when she patrolled the floor, liberally doling out reprimands for behavior she perceived as slovenly, slothful, or otherwise full
…show more content…
She guarded and cherished her virginity. William was chaste for another reason – personality and physical appearance. In high school, a particularly verbose and colorful schoolyard bully regularly reminded William that he ‘couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse with a fistful of twenties.’ Pent-up sexual frustration mounted as William transitioned from his teen years into his early twenties, a time when most over-sexed undergrads on the Quinnipiac campus could not get enough. He channeled the frustration into a conservative fervor that manifested in deep-seeded despise and hatred for all things that framed the sexually uninhibited, politically correct, liberal culture on

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The weak, powerless, and vulnerable are all types of people society creates through the act of self destruction. The idea of society causing a person’s own self destruction is contradictory, however it is a main theme in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In the novel, patients are admitted to a psychiatric ward when they stray away from following social norms, not because they are sick. The ward is run by Nurse Ratched, a controlling woman who is ironically all about manipulation instead of rehabilitation.…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    This critical essay is comprised of a collection of several critiques, all of which discuss the themes, structure, and explore different critical approaches to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. More specific analysis of particular characters is also included, as well as discussion of the influences Kesey experienced while composing the novel, and the effectiveness of the moral conflicts presented. A collection of varying analyses and approaches aids in substantiating whether the novel is a classic, as they present diverse perspectives. Discussion of Kesey himself, and how his experiences influence the message and style utilized also effect whether this novel can accurately be considered a classic by Sainte-Beuve’s definition.…

    • 178 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is a story about the members of a ward for the mentally ill. The book tells the tale of a new member on the ward named McMurphy who enters the ward with the motive of getting out of work for his own selfish reasons. He later changes his purpose for being on the ward to making sure that most of the patients can become new men and leave the ward. McMurphy's actions start off as him as a troublemaker but over time he is looked at as a Christ figure. The very first day McMurphy ends up on the ward everyone senses that this man is very different from all of the other patients.…

    • 1323 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    False Insanity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey depicts what is like inside an insane asylum and how the patients minds may become more distorted than when they first arrived. It is quite noticeable to the reader how patients are mistreated and falsely diagnosed. Randle McMurphy’s arrival portrays sanity entering into the asylum, contrasting to what the institution is meant for. McMurphy’s sane state of mind allows him to control the authoritative figures in the asylum and bring the other residents to justice.…

    • 2079 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Docta Caro Analysis

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Digging the heels of her hands into the small of her back and arching first back and then forward to ease the kinks Dr. Caroline Taylor groaned as the stiffening muscles protested her efforts to loosen them, then ran her hands through her cap of short black hair. She stood at the end of the men's ward surveying the patients lying in the narrow metal beds. Dysentery, an appendix, two leg wounds from farming implements and an assortment of other ills had brought these villagers to the little hospital Dr. Taylor, “Docta Caro”, ran in this nearly forgotten corner of Bukaso. She had just finished rounds in the men's ward and signed off on the various orders for her nurses and still had the women's and children's wards to walk.…

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Looking through a Psychoanalytical Lens The psychoanalytical lens helps us, as the readers, understand the characters and their actions throughout the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Before getting into that thought, it’s important to understand what exactly the psychoanalytical lens is. The psychoanalytical lens is divided into three categories, the ID, Ego, and Super Ego. The ID has to do with people’s natural instincts and the fact that people don’t even realize they’re using their them therefore there’s nothing they can do to alter them.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cuckoo's Nest Allegory

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Government can be represented by a lot of things and when used in a story, poem or picture, this is called an allegory. An example of this is a mental asylum, specifically the one found in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is an allegory of a corrupt, controlling, power-hungry, machine-like Government. Nurse Ratched represents a corrupt, power hungry government leader. McMurphy wants to have a vote on whether or not the acutes are allowed to watch baseball.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Genghis Khan once said “If you’re afraid...don’t do it, if you’re doing it...don’t be afraid!” In the book One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and the film Cool Hand Luke, Luke Jackson and Randle Patrick Mcmurphy are both iron-willed men looking for a place in society. Luke and Mcmurphy both deal with man vs man and man vs society. Although Luke and Mcmurphy are very similar characters, they also have traits that pull them apart. Luke has a laid back and cool personality, while Mcmurphy has a high strung and comedic type of personality.…

    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Society is a machine, supposed to function without a hitch, everybody acting and fulfilling their certain parts, and upholding the ceaseless standards that it entails. The question that remains is what is to become of those who find themselves, deemed unable to fit into societies’ functions and workings. Are they to be controlled, suppressed, or reformed to serve a better purpose in the “machine” of society, or are they supposed to be eliminated or silenced. These are some of the main topics broached in Ken Kesey’s counterculture novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which comments on the normalizing tendencies and reformist nature of society through the symbol of machinery.…

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest novel opposed to its movie In the 1960’s, our president Mr. Roosevelt stands over the proud nation after the mass immigration into the proud country of America. He stated so valiantly that the nation filled with people must change for a better tomorrow, must change for the safety of our people. With reform rocking the nation, authors began trying to help the reform and show where it needed the most work, authors like Upton Sinclair who wrote Rise of the Jungle to help reform the meat packing industry, and others like Ken Kesey wrote about the needed reform in the asylum industry in his book One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest. People were on the rave for reform and Mr. Kesey gave a most compelling argument…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Despite that she was more advanced than some of the boys there, they still would go on to the Union College at Schenectady. It was here she realized the gap between girls and boys the burnt bridge that kept her from “following in their footsteps.” (Stanton, 1969, p.35) At this point in her life she stated that she felt, “keenly the humiliation of the distinction made on the ground of sex.” (Stanton, 1969, p.…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo ’s Nest: A Literary Analysis In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, readers are thrust into the unknown and sometimes terrifying world of mental patients at a psych ward. In the novel, narrator Chief Bromden describes the events that happen in his day to day life after a new ward patient, Randle McMurphy, is admitted.…

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Two Worlds Corrupt: Lord of the Flies Versus One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest In 1 Corinthians 15:33, Paul states that “bad company corrupts good morals” (New American Standard Bible). His declaration stresses one of the primary points communicated in the novels Lord of the Flies by William Golding and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Published in 1954 and 1976 sequentially, both novels have remarkable similarities amongst characters Simon, who is stranded on an island and Randle McMurphy who has found himself placed into a new psychiatric ward. Simon and Randle are both selfless and courageous individuals who constantly struggle to be their true self while surrounded by people who have great influence on them.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    10 Significant Quotations #3 1. “I’m still kind of mad at you. You went away, and never came back.” (pg. 319) This quote is very significant to the story because it is when Ginny finally releases all the anger built up inside of her against her aunt.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Psychological Analysis of Lord of the Flies In Lord of the Flies, young boys ranging from six to twelve are stranded on a desert island after their plane has crashed. They have no connection or communication with society and the outside world, therefore they have no adults regulating their actions and behaviors. Without adults controlling them, they are able to make their own rules to abide by. But as the novel progresses, some of the boys begin to disregard the rules and societal rules that they were once familiar with.…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays