One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (3)

Christine Witmer
English IV
Spring, 2009
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

On this blog I wanted to discuss the theme in the book regarding freedom. Sometimes I think that the book shows a bias. It seems that you can only be “free” or controlled by the combine. It also shows that if people choose to be “free”, than they are shunned by society and considered mentally unhealthy and thrown in an institution. I’m not sure how it was back in the sixties, but I feel that now, in this century, people have become more accepting of the “avant-garde” and conformity is not necessarily the most important thing.
When Chief Bromden is discussing the Combine, he makes it seem that it is the worst thing in the world, and that is a valid point. He says that if you begin to be controlled by the combine than your life is over, you become a person of the system, and I agree with that. However, I think that there aren’t just the two extremes, being free in the mind and being physically imprisoned, or being physically free but imprisoned in the mind. That’s one of the flaws of the book in my opinion. I think that people can find a happy medium and aren’t always put away for being different.
Maybe this book comes across like this because of the time period it was written in. Things back then were very different, especially with the treatment of the patients in the institution. Maybe back then it was those two extremes, and you had to choose which path you wanted to take. But I like to think that in these times, people are more accepting of people who are different.