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Irony, Humor, And Paradox In Ken Keseys Irony, Humor, And Paradox In Ken Keseys One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Outline Thesis: Irony, humor, and paradox illuminate the central themes in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. I. About the novel A. Values and components B.
Purpose II. About the principal characters A. Protagonist B. Narrator C. Antagonist III. About the themes A.
Irony 1. Narrator selection 2. Atrophy of protagonist B. Humor 1. Ruth Sullivan 2.
Character over-exaggeration C. Paradox 1. Oppression of residents 2. Power of Nurse Ratched Bibliography Davidson, Dorothy, ed. Book Review Digest: 1962.
New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1963. Hicks, Granville. Beatnick in Lumberjack Country, in Contemporary Literary Criticism. 1 vols. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc. 1974.
Magill, Frank N. , ed. Magill's Survey of American Literature. 3 vols. North Bellmore: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1991. Magill, Frank N. , ed. Masterplots II American Fiction. 3 vols. England Cliffs.
Salem Press, 1986. Magill, Frank N. Survey of Contemporary Literature. 8 vols. New Jersey: Salem Press, 1977. Irony, Humor, and Paradox in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest My name is Mc Murphy, buddies, R. P.
Mc Murphy, and Im a gambling fool. So said Randle Patrick Mc Murphy upon his admission to the psychiatric ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Mc Murphy, along with Chief Bromden and Big Nurse, make major contributions to the central themes in the novel. Irony, humor, and paradox illuminate the central themes in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a tall tale about a conflict of wills and social tract attacking the medieval and inhumane treatment of mental patients and calling for reform. This novel, upon which Keseys critical reputation rests, among others values physical and moral strength, courage, independence, and nature as opposed to fear, passivity, timidity, dependence, group effort committees, and mechanization (Magill, Survey of Literature 1061).
Compounded of passion, vitality, and bawdy good humor, this novel has one obvious purpose. That purpose is to protest the repressiveness of society, as personified in Big Nurse, and to show how it can needlessly deaden those energies and enthusiasms which seek individual expression (Magill, Contemporary Literature 5588). According to R. A. Jelliffe, Written on two levels of meaning, composed in two keys together, it tells the direful tale of a struggle for survival in an institution for the mentally disordered, and it presents a parable of life in a world presided over by a tyrannical junta of compulsion and conformity. (Davidson 648) The principal characters in this novel are the heart of the central themes, such as humor. Randle Patrick Mc Murphy, the protagonist, is a modern-day rebel cast in the mode of cowboy hero of the American western.
He represents the savior, the Christ, who gives battle, and provides a model for salvation (Magill, Masterplots II 1203). Mc Murphy lives by a personal code that clearly states that whatever he wishes to do is just, and anyone who tries to stop him from doing so is unjust (Hicks 278). He has allowed himself to be moved from the drudgery of the work farm to the comparative luxury of the hospital ward. To at least one observer, the work farm doctor, it is doubtful that R. P.
Mc Murphy suffers from any condition more severe than a deep-rooted dislike of hard labor and rigid rules of behavior (Magill, Contemporary Literature 5588). The story is told through the consciousness of the schizophrenic Chief Bromden, the strong Native American. He Feigns deafness and muteness in order to protect himself from the pain of the shock shop. According to Chief Bromden, Big Nurse and her black attendants represent the evil force that attempts to mold men into stamped-out replicas of each-other (Magill, Masterplots II 1204). Nurse Ratched, also known as Big Nurse, is the antagonist of the novel. She is the ward superintendent and the ultimate authority.
When Mc Murphy arrives, there is not enough room in the ward for him and Big Nurse (Magill, Masterplots II 1203). The title, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, which echoes the childrens song (One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoos nest), puns cleverly on a variety of themes covered in the book. There are three themes in the novel that are very prominent. Those themes are irony, humor, and paradox. There are ironic points in the novel that lead to the most ironic event at the climax. For instance, the author unexpectedly selects one of the chronic's, or permanent residents, to serve as his narrator.
It is a choice both ironic and effective because the character is supposed to be mute and deaf is the one who tells the whole story. He understands things that the other characters cannot. He knows everything that goes on in the ward and can interpret it well enough to narrate the whole novel. Though the plot involves inmates and the staff of an unnamed asylum, the novel bears little resemblance to the familiar snake pit pattern (Magill, Contemporary Literature 5587). Mc Murphy, who was primarily the strongest both mentally and physically grows weaker and weaker, as the other patients grow stronger, spreading word of his heroism.
Refusing to let Mc Murphy live as a vegetable and warning for all who try to stand up to the system, Bromden performs the ultimate act of love: He smothers Mc Murphy with a pillow and escapes toward the highway, free as a bird. Humor plays another important role in the novels central themes. As said by Ruth Sullivan: The child-like fun of the novel, the use of ridicule as weapon against oppression, and the demonstration on the part of Mc Murphy that he is a bigger, better person than the Big Bad Nurse all contribute to the novels tacit invitation: allow yourself to depend upon the good, omnipotent father; he will help you conquer the wretched stepmother. (Hicks 279) Mc Murphy acts on behalf of the patients so well that a reader laughs Here the weak overpower the strong the way children overpower giants in fairy tales. The novel also shows how the strong oppress the weak (Hicks 278).
The characters are larger than life and they have exaggerated black / white , evil / good relationships. The force of social conformity is symbolized by Nurse Ratched, a high priestess of regulations which constrict life and squeeze it into a com- mon mold. Mc Murphy has his own weapon the power of Irish laughter and he uses it again and again against the self pity and shame that have settled over the ward like dark clouds. Paradox, as illustrated in the novel, is shown by the authors use of the Big Nurse as the figure controlling the men, and the men being the weak, oppressed figures in need of Mc Murphys assistance. Although Big Nurse pretends to be motherly and warm, her consuming passion is for order and discipline, and her ultimate weapon is fear, not love (Magill, Contemporary Literature 5, 588). She is a melodramatic device standing for an overbearing, indefensible anti-feminine argument (Hicks 277).
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