One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

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Emily Megit ENG301-01 Mr. Campoli December 16, 2014 A Reflection on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey In the novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, there is a prominent theme of female dominance. The characters Nurse Ratched, Harding's wife, Billy Bibbit's mother, and Chief Bromden's mother all represent dominating females. Each of these women are planning on dominating men by emasculating them, whereas the “whores” Candy and Sandy are dedicated to pleasuring men and doing what they're told. Kesey aims higher than asserting male dominance over female acquiescence. His goal is to assert those qualities identified as feminine to undermine those qualities considered masculine. Two main symbols that stood out to me were The Fog Machine and McMurphy’s Boxer Shorts. Fog is a phenomenon that clouds our vision of the world. In this…show more content…
When Bromden starts to slip away from reality, because of his medication or out of fear, he hallucinates fog drifting into the ward. Although it can be frightening at times, Bromden considers the fog to be a safe place; he can hide in it and ignore reality. When McMurphy arrives, he drags all the patients out of the fog. “It’s fogging a little, but I won’t slip off and hide in it. No… Never again…” (Kesey 241) After Chief Bromden states this, it is evident that he is breaking free from the fog and has truly found himself. You can connect these hallucinations with Ken Kesey’s past drug abuse use of hallucinates such as LSD. Kesey volunteered to take part in a CIA-financed study under the aegis of Project MKULTRA, a highly secret
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