One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

Words: 439
Pages: 2

Postmodernism is defined as a style or trend which emerged in the post—World War II era. It is an expression that explains reality and the idea process. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest presents the story from a postmodern perspective by writing the story’s setting as well as the characters to exists in a “small world” of their own. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel about a character named Chief Bromden. Bromden describes his experience at a psychiatric ward. He is said to be deaf and dumb; yet he plays this role in order to stay in the mental hospital. In the beginning of the story, Kesey describes postmodernism when he talks about the appearance of the fog that is used throughout the novel. As Chief Brodmen describes the fog throughout the story, he …show more content…
Bromden believes that the fog is used to distract the patients in order to hide some deeper secrets, or violence, in the hospital. When Bromden hears the machines moving, the fog appears. This is a reference to the view of technology; which is a characteristic of the postmodernism period. The shift in the time change illustrates a clear postmodernist vision. In the beginning of the story, Kesey begins to mention the fog by writing “When the fog clears to where I can see” (Kesey5). Then he writes “This Morning I plane don’t remember” (Kesey5). Both of the quotes can be seen as the cause and effect of what is actually happening as the patients are placed in the psychiatric ward, or in a post-modern society. At the end of the story, Chief Bromden ends up escaping the hospital