Themes from - One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

During this book we come to a bit of a dilemma. The reader has to figure out what they think happened to him. The part of the story that I am talking about is when Cheswick went to the pool one day and didn’t return alive. After leaving the disturbed Cheswick went straight to the pool. He said that he wanted change and dove into the pool. Then Cheswick got his fingers stuck on the grate at the bottom of the pool in such a way that the black boys and the life guard couldn’t get him un stuck but when they pulled him up finally they saw that he was actually holding himself there. The book says so, “ brought Cheswick up, with the grate still clutched by his chubby pink and blue fingers, he was drowned”(Kesey 151). This proves that he was actually clenching the grate to hold him under the water. I know that studies show that you cant actually drowned yourself on purpose, but we have to remember that he was insane. He probably didn’t know what he was doing or maybe he did but we wont know. It’s very sad that he did kill himself because of how he did it; the other patience might be traumatized by this because he did it in front of them. I think that he did kill himself just to get away from the disturbed.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1962. Print.

Symbolism in One flew over the cuckoos nest.

Throughout the first chapters we learned that chief broom was treated very unfairly. The big nurse forced him to sweep the floor and I thought it was very cruel. The symbolism I found in this book was when Broom talked about the "combine". When you first hear this word you think of a machine that harvests objects. In this story the combine is a figment of Broom's imagination. The combine is the hospital and it is harvesting the individuality of the mental patience. This is a very important part in this book because of how this is affecting the patience. During the book McMurphy comes to the hospital to get out of labor at the work farm. This symbolizes the change in this machine because McMurphy doesn’t act like everyone else, he acts like an individual. The patience start acting different too when he arrives they break from their own habbits and start into new ones. This book can bring on many diffent predictions. Fell free to post any that you have.

-Mason T Hartley