One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

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The author Ken Kesey had spent some time working in a mental ward. I think it is because of his time spent that he was able to see some typical everyday conflicts, being swept under the rug. The biggest conflict in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in my opinion is public relations and the perception that everything is fine behind the doors of the mental institution. The man who is in charge of the hospitals public relations just waltzes right into the ward every now and again leading a group of people around as if they are on a trip at an amusement park. Always talking the place up; about how far they have come since the days before television, or how they now get to eat chicken. At one point he says “A man that would want to run away from a place like this, why there’d be something…show more content…
He is a smart man, maybe too smart, but he is also quite obviously gay and has a hard time coming to terms with that. So instead he hides in the mental ward. He hides from his wife, from society but most importantly, from himself. Billy is also his own worst enemy. Poor fella has been under the destructive wings of his mother and Nurse Ratched so long, that by the time he finally let’s himself enjoy life he feels nothing but shame and fear for doing so. He ends up killing himself over that shame, showing that in the end his worst opponent was himself. Cheswick is a man who did want more, he wanted change, he wanted their rights back, and yet he lacked any real courage to make any difference. All of these patients claim to be struggling for acceptance of the world and a way to live in it. They claim they are struggling for freedom, and perhaps they are in small part, but at the end of the day their main struggle is the one in which they fight themselves. Until they can see themselves as people worthy of society, people worthy of changing, they will continue on as their own opponent. In the end some of the patients found themselves worthy once
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