Who Is The Antagonist In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Analysis Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, tells the story of patients in a mental hospital. It was the 1960s and the characters are ruled by the Big Nurse. All the patients obey her command despite the agony she brings, until one new patient shows up, named McMurphy. He brings new life to the ward and stands up against the nurse. Eventually, he brings all of the patients on his side to rally against authority. The three most relevant elements in this novel are character development, the use of imagery, and the bountiful symbolism. The story is narrated by a Native American whom everyone thinks is deaf. “If my being half Indian ever helped me in any way in this dirty life, it helped me being …show more content…
“I hear the high, cold, whistling wet breath of the fog machine, see the first wisps of it come seeping out from under McMurphy’s bed” (Kesey 81). At this time, the narrator is having a hallucination and is describing what he is experiencing. The reader can feel the cold, wet breath of fog and can hear the high whistling of it very clearly. Now, Chief Bromden is talking about Big Nurse. “Her face is still calm, as though she had a cast made and painted to just the look she wants. Confident, patient, and unruffled. No more little jerk, just that terrible cold face, a calm smile stamped out of red plastic; a clean, smooth, forehead, not a line in it to show weakness or worry…” (Kesey 101). The picture of the face can be easily created in a reader’s mind. They can see the patience in her as she strikes a simple fear into her patients. The narrator has flashbacks to his childhood often. “Everything else looks like it usually does - the chickens fussing around in the grass on top of the ‘dobe houses, the grasshoppers batting from bush to bush, [and] the flies being stirred into black clouds around the fish racks” (Kesey 181). Ken Kesey uses language that clearly suggests what he means. He uses the words ‘fussing, batting, and stirred’ to describe the scene. Imagery brings the book to life for a reader, but symbolism provides a deeper …show more content…
During a therapy meeting, McMurphy describes what he thinks of it. “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (Kesey 55). He compares the flock to the patients. During the meeting, when one man shares his weakness, the others “chickens” will attack him instead of helping him. The patients are the chickens in McMurphy’s eyes. “When they first used the fog machine on the ward, one they bought from Army Surplus and hid in the vents in the new place before we moved in. I kept looking at anything that appeared out of the fog as long and hard as I could, to keep track of it…” (Kesey 117). The fog in this case, is one of the narrator’s hallucinations. The fog represents a blanket that keeps the patients from rebelling or acting up because they can’t find their way through the thickness of it. Finally, Bromden talks about the Combine and the Big Nurse. “Working alongside others like her who I call the “Combine,” which is a huge organization that aims to adjust the Outside as well as she has the Inside…” (Kesey 30). The narrator views the Combine as society. The society put the patients in the hospital because they cannot function in the regular world. But then, they get put in the hospital and the Combine tells them how to live life and doesn’t give them a chance to learn how to live normally. Symbolism is the one of the biggest
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