Symbols and Symbolism in Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest :: One Flew Over Cuckoos Nest

Symbolism in One Flew everywhere The Cuckoos nuzzle Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This outline helps paint a vivid picture in the readers mind. Music and resumes of the quantify are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the psychogenic institution. Popular culture supplies the music which is used as a occur theme in the novel. McMurphy dislikes the tape playing in the day live because it represents how the harbor is run routinely and without change. McMurphy also uses music to obtain comfortably relations with the patients. On his first morning in the hospital, McMurphy is heard cantabile several verses of The Wagoners Lad Hard livins my pleasure, my moneys my o-o-own, an them that dont like me, they can leave me alone (Kesey 93 ). In this scene, he sings to express his good spirits (Twayne). Later, in the hall, as one of the aides goes t o talk to the angry Big Nurse, McMurphy whistles, with an joke to the Globetrotters, Sweet Georgia Brown as an amusing accompaniment to the aides ambiguous shuffle (Sherwood 399). After shocking Nurse Ratched with his whale shorts, he accompanies her kip down to the Nurses Station with the song The Roving Gambler to establish his style, define his character, and face his indifference to policy She took me to her parlor, and coooo-ooled me with her fan- I can hear the whack as he slaps his bare belly - whispered low in her mammas ear, I lu-uhvve that gamblin man (Kesey 97). The cartoon symbolism demonstrated in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest helps create dynamic features and traits in each character. Bromden indicates early that the ward is Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that readiness be real funny if it werent for the cartoon figures being real guys...( 31). Technicians in the hospital speak wi th voices that are forced and too quick on the comeback to be real talk - more like cartoon comedy speech (33). Kesey chooses to describe some of his characters as symbolic caricatures, and others as stock figures who outgrow their black outlines (Twayne). The Big Nurse remains a cartoon villain, funny in her excessive frustration and hateful in her manipulations towards the patients.