Theme Exploration 1: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

     One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel of a very specific set of themes. One theme found within in the novel is that society treats people different, or almost as if insane, based on the individual's personality differences, personal struggles, and unique attitude. The characters in this novel seem only mentally ill when the head nurse categorizes them as such. The general question the audience leaves us to answer is if McMurphy and the other Acutes (not completely disturbed, but problematic, mental patients) are really mentally ill.
     Evidence of this theme is present throughout the novel, especially in reference and presence of the head nurse. One accurate example would be when Nurse Ratched, in one of the daily meetings she has with her patients, addresses the fact that the Acutes need to be punished for listening to McMurphy (possibly one of the sanest characters in the novel) in coming together in protest of watching the World Series in the institution. Nurse Ratched elaborates on her reasoning in punishment when she says:

"Please understand: We do not impose certain rules and restrictions on you without a great deal of thought about their therapeutic value. A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside World, because you circumvent them and avoid them. At some time . . . you may have been allowed to get away with flouting the rules of society. When you broke a rule, you knew it. You wanted to be dealt with, needed it . . . That foolish lenience on the part of your parents may have been the germ that grew into your present illness" (Kesey 188). 

     Up until this point, McMurphy and the patients found their protest normal, necessary, and successful. They didn't believe that they were wrong in doing so because they did so without conscious thought. Meaning, this might have came from deep within the patients' psyches. The patients' following shows that they listened to their intuitive thinking cogently; there was no lack of understanding in their actions. If a person struggles to act rationally in making their own decisions, then one could consider a person mentally ill. 

     If this passage isn't convincing enough, McMurphy hints at the preceding passage (courtesy of Ken Kesey's writing style) a few pages earlier on in the novel, stating "all I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down" (Kesey 174). I find this to be a type of foreshadowing or ultimate revealing to Nurse Ratched's true nature and how she leads the patients to believe they are truly ill. By tearing down the self esteems of these sensitive people, she leads them, as if a dictator, to believe that they are truly insane. 

     This isn't the only theme prevalent in Kesey's novel, but it is one of the most intriguing of the ones I've noticed. Later on, I will discuss another similar theme more based on Nurse Ratched's rule over the patients.