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| "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
~Ken Kesey ...Continued... Nurse Ratched � Symbolizes authority, power, institutions, and (ironically) normalcy and mental illness � She is proper, efficient, and has the appearance of reasonableness � She is also cold, rigid, and destructive � Seeks to destroy the men who enter into her world (social castration) � Hides her sexuality (ex: her breasts) because she feels that it might reduce her authority and show weakness [fears a lack of control through sexuality] � She fears a loss of control �We create what we fear.� Randall Patrick McMurphy (McMurphy) � RPM, his initials, also stand for revolutions per minute (machinery) � Symbolizes individuality and uniqueness, human spirit, and, ironically, mental health � Troublemaker � Social misfit � Disobedient � Crude, vulgar � �Jesus Christ� character, sacrificial character � Character foil to Nurse Ratched � Came from Peddleton Worm Farm (work prison) � Red hair symbolizes the red line � Loud and boisterous � Reactionary: when something happens, instead of thinking it through, he jus reacts to it immediately � Challenges the status quo and Nurse Ratched Chief Bromden � The narrator � Paranoid � Strictly observing � To �escape� from being noticed, he pretends to be deaf and dumb (this makes him the perfect observer because since everything thinks he can�t hear, speak, nor understand anything, they feel free to say whatever they like around him.) � Keeps making references to the �fog machine� � Disappears into the �fog� because it feels �safe�; he is already in the fog at the beginning of the story, soon the other patients will be too � Perfect example of an anarchist McMurphy feels that if he gets out of the prison, he�s reached salvation. However, this is not true, for the hospital is only a greater form of control. It was illegal for prisons to give mind-controlling drugs or perform and kind of physical punishment. Harding � �bull goose looney�; this is ironic because he is a latent homosexual FOG => state of confusion, not by accident Contributors: medication, music, etc All therapy in this novel is used for control and punishment. McMurphy becomes the figurehead for the group |