(Critical Introduction)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is a very charged novel. Written in 1962, it is told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a half Native American man institutionalized within a mental hospital, who describes to the readers the rise and fall of one Randal P. McMurphy. Randal P. McMurphy is a robust, sexual, and dominating male convict placed into the mental institution after getting into too many fights at the work farm. Throughout the novel, McMurphy invigorates the men around him by rebelling against the cold, institutional Nurse Ratched.

Kesey argues through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that mental illness and sanity are social constructs; he seeks to challenge our ideas about what lunacy is. He also argues through the novel that the goal of the mental health system is not to heal its patients; rather, it punishes, breaks, and emasculates men to fit into socially accepted standards of male behavior for the benefit of the institutions above them. Though society wants men to not be oversexual or overly aggressive as emphasized by McMurphy being placed within the institution, there are standards which men must adhere to for the betterment of society, as emphasized by Harding, a character who is institutionalized for his homosexuality. If men do not conform to the socially acceptable standards set forth by society which are enforced by the mental health institutions, they will endure punishments, such as McMurphy’s lobotomy. The outlook for men who do not conform to societal standards yet are able to go back out into the world as a result of their lobotomies is equally grim, as men who are forced to fall in line with the system act as reinforcers and spreaders of the system which broke and dehumanized them, as well as being stripped of their individuality. The fate of men who defy the system are displayed by Kesey in two ways. Men who defy the system are either made martyrs like McMurphy, who after being lobotomized at the behest of Nurse Ratched is suffers a fate worse than death because he is broken, which is why Chief decides it would be better to kill him. Men who defy the system can also physically escape from the system by asserting and embracing their masculinity, as displayed by Chief Bromden’s fateful liberation at the end of the novel.

When we think about mental hospitals, we think that their purpose is treatment. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey argues otherwise. In many respects, Ken Kesey himself is the perfect person to talk about mental health institutions. He was a test subject for government sponsored experiments regarding drugs like LSD. Later, he worked as a night attendant on the ward of the psychiatric hospital which was within the same hospital where the experiments were originally conducted on him. Kesey saw first hand the events which would go on to inspire the novel, including the inspiration for Nurse Ratched herself. “Years after writing her into his novel, Kesey ran into the nurse who inspired his famous villain, at an aquarium. He realized, he later said, that ‘she was much smaller than I remembered, and a whole lot more human’” (Syme). Kesey basing Nurse Ratched on an actual nurse he met within his life further establishes that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was indeed inspired by the society which Kesey found himself around during the time at which he wrote it. Even if over time the symbolism of the character overrode his initial inspiration (ie. the Nurse being a lot smaller and more human than he remembered), Nurse Ratched’s character is not the only aspect of the novel which was influenced by the world Kesey was living in. “Kesey’s fictional rebellion in the mental ward—his heroic characterization and victimization of the inmates and his analogous demonization of the institution and its representative, Nurse Ratched—responds to a cold war age of overwhelming surveillance and fear” (Meloy 4-5). Not only does Nurse Ratched resemble a person which Kesey met, but her character is reflective of Cold War fears that existed in the time which Kesey wrote the novel, which influence Kesey’s critique as much as contemporary racism and sexism.

Although Kesey’s construct of mental illness and his critique of the mental health institution defies the socially accepted idea that mental health institutions heal and treat men, it is important to acknowledge flaws embedded within his critique as well. To analyze these flaws is beyond the scope of this project, but it is important to note them. “The fifties was, for women, a period of increased independence and rising feminism, a trend that Kesey’s work seems to recognize. Furthermore, Kesey’s work represents a larger cultural fear that, as women move into more powerful positions, men will become emasculated” (Meloy 10). Kesey’s fear of feminism vents itself not only in his critique of the mental institution in regards to men, but in the treatment of the character Nurse Ratched. It is easy to reveal the toxic and problematic sexism laid within the lack of nuance within characters such as Nurse Ratched, and the horrifying implications of events such as the sexual assault of her by McMurphy at the end of the novel which the book casts as a liberating event. Though the sexism of the book itself has been analyzed in many circles, an often neglected area of study is Kesey’s racism towards African American men. Not only are the characters Warren, Washington, and Williams often reduced to their skin color, but their skin color is also cited as a motivation for their heinous treatment of white men on the ward within the novel. In addition, McMurphy constantly degrades them with slurs. And while the novel does highlight injustices done towards Native Americans, the character of Chief also plays into a myriad of Native American stereotypes, one of which being his name and his cageiness as being ascribed to his Native American heritage. The novel also prescribes to the White Savior stereotype, as McMurphy is the fundamental impetus for Chief overcoming his negative coping mechanisms and embracing masculinity.