Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent an idea. These symbols can be animals, objects, people, or anything. Color is a common symbol throughout all literature. In Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest there are a lot of colors. This essay could go on forever with all of them, so here are four: white, red, green, and purple. White and red represent emotions that the Combine feels towards the men on the ward, and green and purple show the men’s emotions towards the latter. Kesey uses white, red, green, and purple to symbolize the emotions of different characters throughout his novel. White is a “color without color”. Some people view at as the absence of color. It is seen as a base, nothing extraordinary, or fascinating, or even relatively
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However, this color has two different meanings. The first perspective is the men’s natural state, their happiness. In what seems like one of his rants, Colonel Matterson says, “The green sheep is ... Can-a-da. Canada is ... the fir tree.” Everything, the sheep and the fir tree, is green. What he says is all natural, an animal and a plant. At the end of the book Bromden says he is going to hitchhike to Canada, “I might go to Canada eventually, but I think I’ll stop along the Columbia on the way.” From what the Colonel said, the reader began to associate Canada and green. Now that Chief is running away there, we correlate the color with freedom and his natural mindset. Green and nature is also associated with Bromden and his old life. His father’s last name, Tee Ah Millatoona, means “The-Pine-That-Stands-Tallest-on-the- Mountain”. From many events in the book, the reader knows that Bromden was happiest when he was with his dad on their land. So when he was a Tee Ah Millatoona, he was happiest and felt good and free. Pine trees stay green all year long. The green of the pine in his name back then reassures the symbolism of the color green representing his happiness and freedom. Green comes up again with his past life, “green jacket with leather sleeves and a football-shaped emblem sewn on the back telling what we’d won”. This was before he was hospitalized so again, we see his happy times involving the color
However, this color has two different meanings. The first perspective is the men’s natural state, their happiness. In what seems like one of his rants, Colonel Matterson says, “The green sheep is ... Can-a-da. Canada is ... the fir tree.” Everything, the sheep and the fir tree, is green. What he says is all natural, an animal and a plant. At the end of the book Bromden says he is going to hitchhike to Canada, “I might go to Canada eventually, but I think I’ll stop along the Columbia on the way.” From what the Colonel said, the reader began to associate Canada and green. Now that Chief is running away there, we correlate the color with freedom and his natural mindset. Green and nature is also associated with Bromden and his old life. His father’s last name, Tee Ah Millatoona, means “The-Pine-That-Stands-Tallest-on-the- Mountain”. From many events in the book, the reader knows that Bromden was happiest when he was with his dad on their land. So when he was a Tee Ah Millatoona, he was happiest and felt good and free. Pine trees stay green all year long. The green of the pine in his name back then reassures the symbolism of the color green representing his happiness and freedom. Green comes up again with his past life, “green jacket with leather sleeves and a football-shaped emblem sewn on the back telling what we’d won”. This was before he was hospitalized so again, we see his happy times involving the color