Cuckoo's Nest Sane Vs Insane

1832 Words8 Pages
We, as a society, tend to characterize people as “insane” if they act differently than what we deem to be “normal.” It is easier to decide that some people are just not sane than it is to try and appreciate and learn from other people’s differences. By doing this we have blurred the lines between sane and insane. This trend is discussed in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In this book it is hard to distinguish between the sane and insane characters, even though the novel is set in a mental ward, which means that it should be obvious what the mental condition of each character is. Through the use of characterization, setting, imagery, and narrative voice, Kesey shows how each and every character could be considered either sane or…show more content…
Bromden has experienced racism from the time of his youth, beginning when a group of white men came to his home and acted as if he did not exist, even when Bromden tried to speak with them. This is what he believes led to his acting as if he was deaf and dumb, people did not act like he could talk or understand what they were saying so he himself started to believe he really couldn’t talk. Throughout his adolescence, his white mother degrades himself and his father to a point where they no longer feel as if they have any power. His mother’s actions lead Bromden to start to doubt even his physical size, even though he is in fact a large man, he believes he is unusually small and weak. Bromden himself is racist against white people. He thinks of them as machines and almost inherently evil. Throughout the novel, Bromden describes both Big Nurse and McMurphy as moving like a machine, claiming to even hear the gears inside them grinding against each other. This belief about white people stemmed from his interactions with them as a child, in which he believed them to be completely emotionless, because how else would they be okay with taking away a child’s home. The racist tendencies of many of the characters develop an even bigger gap between the patients and the workers. Not only do the workers believe the patients are below them because of their mental status, they also believe that they are simply inherently
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