Juliette, Week 9 - Hallucinations and Authority

 Over break I finished up a book my dad gave to me a couple months back. At first I was a bit hesitant to read it because it seemed like an ordinary book that had little to offer. After I began reading it, however, I was captivated by the unusual expression the author chooses throughout the book.

The 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, offers a unique perspective that, at the time, was revolutionary in the perception of the mentally ill. It follows the life of a chronically ill patient, Chief Bromden, in a psychiatric hospital. The story takes place when the normal, routine, and strict rules that the hospital maintains is threatened by a new patient who shows up and goes against the harsh authority of the “Big Nurse.” 

Throughout the story, Chief Bromden, the narrator, details the power struggle between Randle McMurphy, the new patient, and Miss Ratched—the demeaning and powerful “Big Nurse.” What makes the story progressive for its time is the fact that it humanizes people with mental illnesses and explains the harsh treatment many people undergo. (Although the story is fictional, it is based on the author’s experiences as an aide at a mental ward).

What stood out the most to me about Kesey’s writing style in this novel is his choice to describe power and strength in terms of direct descriptions of size. His hyperbolic expressions are also amplified by the fact that the story is told from the point-of-view of an unreliable narrator—a paranoid schizophrenic. In one scene, Chief Bromden explains that McMurphy is becoming huge to the point his head touches the ceiling as he attempts to face Miss Ratched.

This same pattern continues throughout the book as they become smaller when threatened by other people but bigger when they are cheering and supporting each other with confidence while standing up to their oppressors. As the story progresses, the focus also shifts from not only McMurphy’s power struggle but the other patients as well as they all gain power and confidence that pushes them to stand up to people that look down on them. 

Kesey’s emphasis on the size and power of the patients serves to demonstrate that they hold the authority to their own bodies and the right to not be mistreated. In this way, Kesey is directly empowering the mentally ill in the book and in the real-world as being human and nothing less.

The shifts in the strength and authority of mentally ill patients served to empower the sick but it also helped address the inhumane treatments used in psychiatry during the 20th century. The common concept of neurodivergence disabling people from being normal human beings was especially challenged as the boys in the novel could function like normal people when they gained more power and had control of their own lives.

The cover of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next

The ideas that the word “power” brings can be viewed with various connotations from political beliefs, the power or influence of the government, to electricity, the power that gives us light. Despite that, the empowerment of different groups is important to be included under the broad umbrella of “power.” In this case, the empowerment came from the rising power in the strength, confidence, and will of the patients.

With strong expressions of power and questionable authority, Kesey did an amazing job of minimizing stigma and emphasizing the humanization of neurodivergent individuals and the mentally ill who often suffered with electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomies at the time, and, through his creative constructions of power, he asserted claims that helped inspire change.