In class on Friday, we discussed whether or not the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey was a story of human triumph. Personally, I am torn between the two. Specifically, I believe that the death of McMurphy can be spun both ways. After the nurse forces McMurphy to have a lobotomy, Bromden kills him and observes, “I saw the expression hadn’t changed from the blank, dead-end look the least bit, even under suffocation” (323). This observation would indirectly characterize Bromden as spiteful and hateful of McMurphy, when, in reality, Bromden truly admired McMurphy at times. I find it hard to accept that the book was one about human triumph because the main character, who only tried to help the patients throughout the book, receives a lobotomy and is killed by one of the men that admired him most. On the other hand, McMurphy could have known that the only way to free and inspire the patients was to sacrifice himself. With his nonstop defiance and aggression, he knew he would receive awful punishment at some point, so his lobotomy could have been a sacrifice. In that case, the lobotomy acted as a catalyst for the timid men to defy the establishment and leave. In this instance, the book can be seen as a story of human triumph. But is it really a human triumph if people have to die for the cause to live? Does the triumph of the individual matter at the expense of others? I still need time to reflect on these questions, for I am still not entirely sure.
I believe that this does qualify as a triumph as even in his death McMurphy denied the Big Nurse what she wanted. She hoped let him live as a vegetable on the ward for twenty or thirty years as an example to those who would follow not to cross her. By having McMurphy die despite that the action itself does not qualify as a triumph, one of the effects does qualify as a triumph over Nurse Ratched.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is difficult to view the book as one about human triumph, especially near the end of the book. The death of McMurphy and various other characters is extremely saddening, but I also think the success of the other characters is supposed to less the depression the readers feel from the deaths.
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