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Aim: How is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest an allegorical novel?

Aim: How is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest an allegorical novel?. Do Now: How does the following quote relate to the ending of the novel? “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” - Thoreau. “ McMurphy tipped back like a cowboy reeling out of saloon and winked.” p. 309.

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Aim: How is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest an allegorical novel?

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  1. Aim: How is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest an allegorical novel? Do Now: How does the following quote relate to the ending of the novel? “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” - Thoreau

  2. “McMurphy tipped back like a cowboy reeling out of saloon and winked.” p. 309 • “The character of McMurphy comes from Sunday matinees, from American Westerns. He’s Shane that rides into town, shoots the bad guys, and gets killed in the course of the movie. McMurphy is a particular American cowboy hero, almost two-dimensional. He gains dimension from being viewed through the lens of Chief Bromden’s Indian consciousness.” – Ken Kesey “Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136” Paris Review

  3. “Drunk and running and laughing and carrying on with women square in the center of the Combine’s most powerful stronghold.” p. 305 • How was their late night party the ultimate act of defiance against the ward, the Combine? • Consider the following quote from Kesey: • “If a man doesn’t have a little madness, he never breaks the control lock that gets placed on reality. It’s facing the vast ocean alone, without the safety of land or boat.”

  4. “First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives – gambling with human lives – as if you thought yourself to be a God!” p. 318 • What is the irony is this line? • Why does Billy Bibbit slash his own throat? • What does Billy Bibbit’s death provoke McMurphy to do? Does he realize his sacrifice? • What do you think of Chief Bromden’s suggestion that all that happened was inevitable, even if McMurphy would have escaped as planned? Would it include Billy Bibbit’s death?

  5. “Some of the guys grinned at the front of it; in spite of its being smaller and tighter and more starched than her old uniforms, it could no longer conceal the fact that she was a woman.” p. 320 • What has McMurphy effectively done to Nurse Ratchedand her power in the ward? What did he expose? • Is Kesey’s portrayal of women in the novel misogynistic? Misogyny is the characterized as the hatred of woman both through the depiction of cruelty to woman and the objectification of them. Is this Kesey’s ultimate goal or is there another portrayal being given?

  6. In Cuckoo’s Nest, Big Nurse is often regarded as the embodiment of evil. Do you think that is an accurate representation of her? “Recently, I was over in Newport at the opening of the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which has been seven years in the making. I was performing The Sea Lion in the Newport Performing Arts Center. Afterwards a white-haired old woman approached me and said, Hey, you remember me? I looked her over, and I knew I remembered her, but had no idea who she was. She said, Lois. It still didn’t click. She said, Lois Learned, Big Nurse, and I thought, Oh my God. She was a volunteer at Newport, long since retired from the nursing business. This was the nurse on the ward I worked on at the Menlo Park hospital. I didn’t know what to think and she didn’t either, but I was glad she came up to me. I felt there was a lesson in it, the same one I had tried to teach Hollywood. She’s not the villain. She might be the minion of the villain, but she’s really just a big old tough ex-army nurse who is trying to do the best she can according to the rules that she has been given. She worked for the villain and believed in the villain, but she ain’t the villain.” – Ken Kesey

  7. “I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn’t have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.” p. 322 • How can we characterized Chief Bromden’s final act of smothering McMurphy to death? • What is McMurphy’s legacy

  8. “one flew east and one flew west…” • What is the significance of the title? • Who flew over the cuckoo’s nest? • How is the novel really an allegory? • Allegory: a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation.

  9. NPR – Ken Kesey • http://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146210681/keseys-cuckoos-nest-still-flying-at-50

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