One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
by Ken Kesey

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Sometimes, there’s more to Lit than meets the eye.

Fog

The fog that constantly surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward is, Chief claims, "made" by Nurse Ratched. Because we know that Chief is schizophrenic and sees things that are not literally th...

A Pecking Party

McMurphy describes a "pecking party" as a situation in which chickens see blood on another chicken and start pecking at it like crazy until they’re all bloody, pecking at each other in a fren...

Rabbits and the Wolf

Harding explains to McMurphy that the world is divided into the weak and the strong. He, the doctor, and most of the patients are the weak – rabbits – and Nurse Ratched is the strong, a...

Outside

The world is divided into the inside of the insane asylum and Outside, the world as it exists outside of the walls of the insane asylum. Outside has a grip on everybody’s imagination –...

Green Seepage

Chief notices that whenever the staff congregate together for a meeting, there’s a green light that pours out of the room they’re in. Afterwards, there’s a green seepage that cove...

The Combine

This is Chief’s word to describe the machine-like nature of the asylum system. But it’s not just the asylum that’s governed by this machine – it’s the entire world. He...
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