One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey takes place in a psychiatric ward. It speaks of the everyday lives of all male patients who are split into two groups. The Acutes who can be cured, and the Chronics who cannot be cured. A former army nurse, Nurse Ratched, controls the patients. She has most of the power in the ward and she uses it to her ability. The ward is very oppressed and dreadful. The patients feel useless and it is all because of her. One patient who comes in later into the ward changes the patients for the better and make them realize that their fate is all in the Nurse Ratched's Hands. Throughout the novel, Randle's actions define what it means to become a person, attaining self-reliance, the role fantasy plays in life, sanity and insanity, and the meaning of death.

Becoming a person is based of everyday life and past events. Not everyone is the person they are years back. Throughout life, everyone is becoming a person; it is an evolution; which makes everyone Human. In the novel, Randle McMurphy did not have to become a person. When he entered the ward, compared to the other patients, he was the only patient to stand out from the rest. Chief Bromden, a patient and a narrator of the novel, realizes this when he first encounters McMurphy. McMurphy was already a person when he entered the ward. When everyone was tyrannized in the ward, McMurphy was loud, confident and sexual. Instead of becoming a person, McMurphy helped the other patients become their own self with what took place.

Self-reliance is depending on one self with capabilities, judgments, and resources. McMurphy had exhibited self-reliance. He expressed it by taking responsibility into his own hands in the ward. He betted the patients that he could drive Nurse Ratched crazy in the novel in one week, but he did it in less than a week. He took matters into his own hands and he knew what he was doing. Randle also came to the conclusion that the fate of patients were all in the Nurse's hands when he speaks with the Lifeguard. Only then did he realize that maybe he should back off being himself and act self-less. When Billy Bibbit wanted his cigarettes he looked to McMurphy for some help as he had a tantrum to Nurse Ratched (Kesey). When Billy turned to McMurphy, McMurphy turned the other cheek (Kesey). This only showed that he was using his judgment on how he should act to get out of the Ward quicker.

Throughout the Novel, all the patients in the ward were fantasizing of leaving the ward and going to do better things with their lives. They wanted to get out of the ward. Randle McMurphy helped them retrieve the outside world again by bringing in his own rules and getting them out of the ward to do what regular beings do. It is unhealthy for the patients to stay in the ward for so long. They become oppressed and lifeless. This is why maybe sometimes the ward gets out of control, because they are limited to what they can do already. Randle McMurphy saves the patients from the ward and they no longer have to fantasize about what real life is all about.

The novel shows many aspects of what is insane and sane. It makes one assume that people in a ward are insane, but is it people who are out of the ward insane and the ones in the ward are sane? Insanity and sanity is a perspective of a human for what is socially acceptable and not. Throughout the novel the members of the ward