One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest Independence essay
Sacrifices for Independence In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kessey, Randall Patrick McMurphy is a free spirited man who enters a mental ward in southern Oregon during the 1960’s. He changes the life of everyone there and rebels against the authority of the Big Nurse. As McMurphy meets new patients, he tries to have a bigger influence on their lives. McMurphy arrives on the ward thinking he is independent and he wants to bring that independence to the other patients. For McMurphy to help the patients in the ward reach their independence they must learn to think for themselves and act without the fear of being ridiculed and judged. In truth though, it takes McMurphy’s leaving them behind for them to truly become independent. The Patients in the ward have not known independence since being taken to the ward. They are under the control of the Big Nurse; she is the person that runs the ward with an iron grip. The Patients, sorted into groups of Acutes and Chronics (Chronics are the vegetables that can do little to nothing for themselves while Acutes are still mobile and not completely insane), cannot think for themselves because of the drugs the Nurse has them take putting them in a kind of “fog” as it is described by Chief, a Chronic in the ward that is pretending to be deaf. The Big Nurse keeps the patients under control with her strict schedule they follow and punishes them with guilt. The Patients in the ward are engulfed in a world where they are herded like sheep and prodded like cattle. They have bedtimes and are required to take pills at a certain time whether they like it or not. At night when they go to bed the Orderlies, referred to as “Black Boys” by the Patients, tie them down to their beds with straps so they can’t get up during the night. They also do not get to take showers by themselves and have a scheduled cleaning. They also do not get to clean themselves but, get scrubbed down by the Black Boys. While they are taking