One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Society Essay

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.
“This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools …show more content…
This quote ties into the theme of societies normalization, by establishing the rigid and operational parts as well as the need to repair or reform those who do not function within these societal operations. Yet despite all of these strong examples of normalization, the epitome comes when Bromden describes the “The worker takes the scalpel and slices up the front of old Blasticq with a clean swing and the old man stops thrashing around. I expect to be sick, but there’s no blood or innards falling out like I was looking to see—just a shower of rust and ashes, and now and again a piece of wire or glass. Worker’s standing there to his knees in what looks like clinkers.”(). This reveals the true extent of the normalization in society, because of the destruction of the individual characteristics of man. The lack of “blood and innards” in old Blastic dehumanizes, him as not only does he lack the innate composition of