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Weapons of Mass Destruction: Using Awareness to Crush Conformity
Insanity is typically considered that which does not fit within society’s accepted norm, but in
Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest the dangers of conformity are explored and
unrecognized sanity is found in awareness of this lunacy. Kesey’s message, ubiquitously present in
the novel, is particularly investigated in a passage describing the adventures of the patients, Candy,
and the doctor out at sea. Among larger themes of humor and pain, conformity, and freedom,
Kesey is able to depict a moment of liberation and sanity by use of chaotic diction and syntax, and
extended imagery of both nature and the phallus in order to impart the devastating effects of
conformity and the sane hope of rebellion against it. Through these devices, Kesey proposes the
antidote to emotional death and insanity is the ability to recognize and ascend above imposed
circumstances, using both humor and pain to live not by situation but instead sentiment.
Kesey uses repetition and themes of humor and pain to demonstrate the power gained
through awareness and acuity. Showing humor and mockery as tools of rebellion, Kesey indicates
the collapse of conformity as “[McMurphy spreads] his laugh out across the water.” The image of a
ripple reflects the weight of awareness and its far reaching effects; the acceptance of pain, as
opposed to denial, is the force that can impact the control of conformed society. Kesey further
discusses these implications, describing laughter spreading “out on the water in ever-widening
circles, father and farther, until it crashed up on beaches all over the coast, on beaches all over all
coasts, in wave after wave after wave.” Kesey’s naturalistic diction and repetition signify the
strength of awareness and the undeniable potential of man and nature to conquer the oppression of
conformed society. The repetition serves to indicate the indefatigable force of awareness and
hyperbolic metaphor of laughter as a wave imparts the gravity of this simple act. Kesey uses land,
with its connation of rigidity and implication of civilization, to represent conformity and the
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insanity that follows. In contrast, the organic, flowing, untamable waves symbolize the powerful
and ultimately human nature of awareness. These tenacious waves of aware rebellion, according to
Kesey, will slowly but unequivocally wear away at the unyielding coasts of conformed, mechanical
society, chipping away at its composure with mockery and censure. Kesey consistently associates
pain with humor in this way, to elucidate the impact of awareness on situation. Instead of hiding
from their circumstances, Kesey conveys the liberation in recognition of pain: laughter “rang out on
the water,” conjuring images of the notorious Liberty Bell, signifying strength, independence, and
autonomy, particularly considering its revolutionary origins. In this way, Kesey portrays awareness
and the ability to mock one’s circumstances as a force to both give and take power, allowing one to
seek sanity in the rebellion of conformed society.
In this same vein, Kesey employs phallic imagery to demonstrate the empowering impact of
awareness. The laughter with which Kesey demonstrates a recognition and ascension of
circumstance is described as “[starting] slow and [pumping] itself full, swelling the men bigger and
bigger.” Not only does this give the men power in terms of size, an ongoing Kesey motif, but also
restoring some of the manhood, and ultimately the humanity, of which society has robbed them.
During the wild ruckus, McMurphy is seen “laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me
sucking my bleeding thumb… and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it.” Kesey
portrays McMurphy laughing at both the physical pain—Candy’s battered breast, the men tying to
reel in or pin down the fish, the Chief’s bleeding thumb—and the emotional—the repressive nature
conformity of society and the control of the ward, referenced in the “five thousand houses and the
Big Nurse.” The childish image of the Chief “sucking [his] bleeding thumb” implies a degree of
infantilization which Kesey uses to show the consequence of avoiding pain. While those & seek to
numb themselves to life are represented as emasculated and childish, Kesey shows burly, cowboy
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McMurphy accepting and synthesizing pain into something comical, worthy of mockery, thus
regaining control from the oppression of conformity. It is through this dichotomy of masculinity
and emasculation that Kesey depicts the power of awareness—its restorative capabilities to turn
weak children into men worthy of combating oppression and conformity.
Kesey extensively reflects this struggle by of way chaotic diction and syntax. Unlike the
neat and orderly suburban ideal, the group is in utter chaos: the men are “yammering and struggling
and cussing,” there is a “bleeding, crashing battle,” and “the lines [are] all tangled and shooting
every which way.” Kesey’s use of active gerunds exhibits action and unwieldiness while the vocal
diction portrays autonomy and strength. The use of “yammering” implies a lack of inhibition and
wealth of confidence in contrast with the mute or stammered communications of most of the
patients and represents Kesey’s theme of having a voice, both literally and figuratively. Once they
have accepted pain, the men can “yammer” away, no longer encumbered by their own numbness.
The “bleeding, crashing battle” Kesey describes again reflects not only regained masculinity and
control, but also the conflict between numbness and conformity, and awareness and sanity. This
chaos is further enhanced by Kesey’s denotation of a brief passage of time followed by great detail.
Kesey prefaces the description by noting that time “holds for a space, a second there on the sea” and
then creates the rich and busy scene that follows, illustrating the patients’ new found power as they
face the pain, and eventually humor, in their lives. This extension of time is created in a variety of
manners, the first of which is Kesey’s wealth of details. In particular, “the doctor’s glasses-on-astring tangled and dangling” further demonstrates the incongruity of the situation, depicting
something so neat and precise—and to a degree mechanical, or at least inorganic, and thus
representative of the machine of society—so completely lacking conformity and semblance as a
result of embracing pain and circumstance. In addition to these details, Kesey’s syntax employs
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long, run-on sentences, as if there is too much to tell in too a short time, further exaggerating a
sense of chaos. In this way, Kesey depicts the link between awareness and the collapse of
conformity, demonstrating that recognition and acceptance of pain detracts from the power of
orderly, mechanized society.
Perhaps most important, however, is Kesey’s consistent return to nature imagery to properly
elucidate the struggle one faces in being a true individual among these “five thousand houses,”
referring to conformity and its utter lack of identity. In the broadest sense, the first true sanity—to
feel pain and joy, to be men again and not meek children, and to be truly and acutely aware—is out
on the sea. In the literary sense, the ocean has always been a source of freedom, independence, and
Rugged Individualism. It is untamed, nurturing yet punishing, uncontrollable, and indefatigable.
Kesey’s use of oceanic imagery, particularly ripples and waves as discussed earlier, denote the both
the power and tenacity associated with awareness, as opposed to numbness. This power is most
strikingly apparent in the brief struggle Kesey illustrates involving machine and nature in which
“George takes his eye off where he’s going and runs the boat into that log and kills the engine.”
The diction of this phrasing is hugely significant: machine—the boat— faces nature—the log—and
not only loses, but is actually killed in the process. The engine doesn’t “grind to a halt,” nor is its
progress “impeded by the log until it sputters and stalls.” The engine is killed, and it is the log that
kills it. Kesey’s specific image of nature defeating machine propels his ongoing theme of man and
nature conflicting with machine and society and unequivocally asserting that human nature can
annihilate the regulated machine of society if one were to simply open oneself to pain—and
consequently joy—instead of numbing to the point of emotional death and insanity.
This same nature imagery, particularly of the birds, also serves to signify both an attack on
and escape from conformity. Kesey’s narrator, Chief Bromden, describes the experience to be so
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liberating that he is “blown up off the water and skating the wind with those black birds, high above
myself.” Kesey’s images of floating and flying indicate Bromden’s ascension to a higher plane of
awareness and the subsequent freedom gained through the elevated perspective over the world of
insanity which he is forced to inhabit. The image created is effortless and free through the diction
of “blown up off” and “skating the wind,” phrases which also convey a sense of competence and
comfort that Bromden rarely displays hitherto this moment. In contrast with domesticated
counterparts, the birds Kesey describes here are not caged by conformity: they fly over open waters,
away from the control of society and, like Bromden, view the world from an elevated perspective,
be it metaphorical or literal. Kesey also uses these birds to reinforce the theme of attacking
conformity, previously discussed through the crashing waves. Kesey depicts “the boat rocking
there in the middle of those diving birds,” again demonstrating the struggle between mechanized
society and man and nature. The boat, symbolizing society and the machine of conformity, is
rocked by the waves, which have been used to signify the power of awareness, implying a degree of
insecurity and weakness in the face of this recognition. Meanwhile, it is surrounded by “those
diving birds,” the aggressive diction, conjuring the image of an aerial assault, indicates an attack on
conformity. Again, Kesey represents awareness—the birds symbolizing ascension beyond
circumstance due to one’s awareness—as a weapon against conformity. It is in these images that
Kesey is able to relate not only the triumph of man over machine and nature over society, but relay
the importance of rebelling against its conformity and numbing consequences by lucidly
experiencing all that life has to offer instead of surrendering to an anesthetized, emotionally dead,
insane existence of mechanized society.
Through his use of chaotic diction, images of nature and masculinity, and wide-reaching
themes of humor and pain, conformity, and freedom, Kesey illustrates the power in experiencing all
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the pain and joy to not only defeat conformity but the only way to maintain sanity and stay
metaphorically alive. Not only the discussed boating scene, but as a whole, One Flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest portrays the path to sanity and liberation as that of the individual in lieu of the
oppressive conformity plaguing the suburban, post WWII society. Kesey attests to the power of
awareness and vilifies numbness of spirit, asserting that only through the willful infliction of such
pain and joys upon oneself can one not only escape, but defeat the insanity of conformity and
institutionalized, imperfection of society.