Becoming a Chief

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest contains various characters that grow and change throughout the story but perhaps the most evolving one is that of Chief Bromden that matures from a deaf dumb Indian into a strong knowledgeable chief.

Chief is introduced in the novel as the narrator and he describes himself as a tall Native American that has refused to speak for over ten years. He claims that this lets him have a little more control, he can always be one step ahead, listening into secret conversations while pretending not hear a thing. The chief has a point but as an audience we are able to identify that he does this because he feels weak. When chief feels he loses the little control he has, he enters a state of mind described as “the fog” which appears to make him loose control and completely black out. These fog moments are caused when he is forced into doing something he doesn’t like by the staff  a good example is when he is force to shave at the beginning of the novel. The author uses the fog to show the readers the weakness his character feels and therefore establish the chief as tall weak chief.

The weakness the chief feels can be associated to that of Dave Lizewski in the film adaptation of the classic comic book series Kick-Ass.  Dave is a young teenage comic book fan whose dream is to become a super hero. But as the chief, Dave lacks both courage and will power to fight the powers of evil. Dave and the Chief both find the strength to grow through outside characters, Dave uses his online fans and his friends Big Daddy and Hit Girl while the chief has McMurphy to push him.. With the help of McMurphy the Chief starts believing that he’s really strong and powerful, he even starts talking again, something he though of never doing again. While Dave starts feeling powerful again enough to stand up against thieves with knifes. This character growth in both works hints the same: people need someone to push them into becoming strong. Without this pushing force most of us remain as what writer Chuck Palahniuk describes as “trapped at the present moment”. But what these authors are saying is not just wait for someone to gain strength, the strength is there we just have to find it. 

Machines, Machines

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest uses symbolism to explain and impose the theme of insanity. The strongest symbol throughout the novel is that of “the machinery”. We should then ask what is “the machinery”? Ken Kesey uses the basic understanding of machines as purposeful and effective inventions to succumb the reader into understanding the working of entities, specifically a mental institution. The author suggests that the mental institution works with the efficiency and lack of emotion as any machine does, patients are carried in to be processed and hopefully some day emerge fixed. This novel critiques institutions because of the way they work, blindly treating patients as other machines instead of what they are: scared human beings.

“ ‘I don’t think you fully understand the public, my friend; on this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.’ ” (163)

Now that we’ve identified what the machine is we should ask ourselves what for? This symbolism takes on the understanding of machines as both effective and inhumane and the oppressive methods used at the hospital can be regarded as such. Patients are punished and heavily drugged so they won’t cause any trouble. We can therefore infer that Kesey’s use of a machine to represent this hospital is clearly a critique on the understanding of insanity by the human society. Crazy people are regarded as broken because they don’t work normally. “If somebody’s of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty year old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order recriminations, they’d of though the whole bunch was crazy loons.” (126) The novel poses a valid point: crazy is the label given on people who we don’t care enough to “fix”. It’s much easier to label some one as crazy and send him off to the loony bin instead of actually understanding how that person thinks.

Kesey considers human society to be very lazy, humans choose to avoid complications by becoming machines, with no emotion, no compassion. If the hospital wanted to treat patients in the ways they require they could. But it’s much easier to give them an awful lot of medication and have them be brain dead for the rest of the day than having personalized therapies, they become a huge medication machine. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest portrays human society quite accurately. We believe can just pass most of our problems to the next person without regard to how much worse this problem will get.

“‘ I don’t agree that he should be sent up from disturbed, which would simply be an easy way of passing our problem on to anther ward and I don’t agree that he is some kind of extraordinary being—some kind of ‘super’ psychopath.’” (136)

Who’s Crazy?

Ah, refreshing. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest feels like a cold glass of water on a hot summer day. What a great change of pace! Ken Kesey tells the story of Chief Bromden, a half Native American interned in a mental institute. The chief pretends to be deaf and therefore is able to tell a story from what feels like a third person omniscient narrator. The novel has only begun and I sense there is a great story filled with questions to come.

So far in the story not much has happened, and frankly no one should be interested in the actual story this book tells. Kesey didn’t write for us to learn why the chief is in the loony bin, no it’s written to argue a strong opinion on craziness. The story is set up in a ward to remind us to question lunacy itself. I feel this will be the main enduring theme, who really is crazy? Asides from the setting, the author uses strong symbolism like the mysterious fog to address this subject at matter. Although very short, the symbolisms are very effective. Let’s take the fog for example, what really is it? If taken literally we might say it was shaving cream or just regular bathing soap. It’s meaning is much harder to define, is it insanity itself? Would it take over a person like that? Perhaps stress? There is no answer, in classics there never are. The fact that you can give any meaning to a book means it’s really something. What makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest unique isn’t the ambiguity most novels, it’s the well-developed hyperbolic metaphors present in almost every page. “She is going tear black bastards limb from limb, she’s so furious. She’s swelling up, swells till her back splitting out the white uniform and she’s let her arms section out long enough to wrap around the three of them five, six times.” (5)

What a great novel, the enduring theme, fun hyperboles, and strange first person narrative has me very intrigued into reading the rest.

“You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.”

Shoes

The opening scene of Waiting for Godot is a close up on Estragon’s boots. Meaning these boots are very important and perhaps have a strong symbolism. For Beckett shoes mean the basis of things. They hold whatever person wears them. He’s right, shoes are our what holds us strong. There isn’t anything more comfortable than a pair of good running shoes. They make me feel like I could jump to the moon. Their meaning in the book is realistic. We are used to having shoes and without we can’t wall, jump or even stand properly.

“There’s a man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.” (4.)

The film illustrates what Beckett meant much better than the written play, it shows emotion. The faces of struggle made by Estragon shows us how much work he’s putting into getting his boots off. Personally I can relate to how Godot feels. Having you feet hot or hurting because a little rock is caught up in your shoe can be annoying. But your willing to put all your effort into fixing whatever is bothering your feet. You may try to ignore it but after a while it will drive anyone crazy. In Waiting for Godot the serve as an introduction to the whole performance. The characters will do whatever they can to fix what’s bothering them, much like a shoe. I’ve also felt the same way when I wan to find something I’ve lost or getting something I really want. The feeling that you’re missing something you really need will haunt anyone. When barefoot no one likes running on rocks, we will do anything to avoid this strange feeling like taking long steps or remaining still. These desperate actions is what Waiting for Godot is. Instead of taking long steps to avoid the rocks Vladimir and Estragon discuss hanging themselves. And by Waiting for Godot they choose to remain still and wait for the answers to come but they never do.

This play is famous for it’s ambiguity and although I’ve come to understand it, the ending continues to elude me. I feel that Beckett leaves too many unanswered questions leaving readers with nothing. There is now reason other than reason itself towards why he would write this. Therefore the question will always be: why?

Godot Isn’t Coming

 Waiting For Godot is play in which nothing seams to happen. The entire show is two characters waiting for a man called Godot. He never shows and the story ends how it began. The lack of plot, the strange dialogues, character memory loss, and the mirroring between acts creates the book’s allegory. The true meaning of life. This eccentric novel reminds me of Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In the film, Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from short-term memory lost, goes on to find who killed his wife and avenge her.

As most characters in the play, Leonard has great trouble remembering anything. And as the play’s characters he only remembers his goal, find who killed his wife and avenge her. The problem with these goals is they are unobtainable and the characters don’t realize this. Refusing to accept this they will never meet it. Most readers, including myself, don’t understand there is an ever-existent goal until halfway through. The beginning of both the film and performance pose real goals. We only realize that the characters are insane because of the repetition in their actions. Albert Einstein defined madness as “the repetition of one task while expecting a different result”. Consequently we only realize the characters are nuts because they constantly repeat the same task. This madness is simply a fake reality that they create to have a purpose. Beckett emphasizes this through Lucky, Pozzo’s slave. He is truly lucky for his purpose in life is already set, follow his master’s orders. He does not need to create one.

These two masterpieces have big differences in plot development but somehow lead to the same idea. Vladimir and Estragon wait for a man they don’t know exists while Leonard chases two murderers he’s already killed. This endless pursuit for a true meaning is what Beckett and Nolan are trying to get across. Everyone has a goal to chase be it a house on the beach, a promotion or simple date with a girl.  Humans live for their goals.