P1 Sample 4
Style Analysis Essay – Passage #1:
Five Thousand Ticky Tacky Houses
In his novel,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, author Ken Kesey brings the theme of societal control up for judgment from his readers. This theme is best represented by the idea of the Combine, the way that the narrator, Chief Bromden describes the authorities that control the patients in the mental ward through both subtle and more coercive methods. The name comes from the mechanistic way they manipulate and intimidate these individuals. Kesey expresses the effects of the Combine and it’s conventions through many literary devices, such as repetition, alliteration, and imagery.
Passage one takes place when the inhabitants of the mental ward take off for their fishing trip. It is told from the first person participant point of view, with the narrator being Chief
Bromden. His character makes for a good narrator because although he has the ability to hear and speak, he doesn’t because, “They don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets because they think I’m deaf and dumb. Everybody think so. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much (Kesey 4). Though he eventually came out of his shell and began to speak again,
Bromden’s initial silence allowed him to be more observant. The chief had also been in the mental ward the longest and was arguably one of the more damaged patients before McMurphy showed up. For these reasons, Chief Bromden is a good narrator who mostly reports what happens, like a camera, with a few pieces of internal reflection.
Kesey uses the descriptions of the Combine’s accomplishments in section one, or pages
205 and 206, as commentary of the conformist ideals that were prevalent in the early 1960s, when
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
was written. The themes presented by Kesey in the novel became some of the most progressive topics in much of the western world, chief among them freedom, liberated sexuality, and questioning authority. The same year that Ken Kesey’s

P1 Sample 4 novel was published, Malvina Reynolds wrote a song entitled “Little Boxes”, which still serves as a political satire about suburbia and middles-class conformity.
Like the song, “Little Boxes”, passage one describes the “…signs of what the Combine has accomplished since I was through this country…” (205). In this line, Kesey personifies the
Combine by giving it tangible accomplishments that Chief Bromden can observe from the car window and as a result, gives the Combine power. The “m” alliteration in the first paragraph with “men in mirrored suits and machined hats” gives a softer, more euphonious sound, demonstrating the subtle way that the Combine works. The suppression that Nurse Ratched represents is always in check, always in control. In observing the way that she embodies the
Combine, Bromden sees the pressure that society places upon its inhabitants and how most people are more than happy to become part of the machine.
In the second paragraph, Kesey uses the repetition of the number five thousand to accentuate the strained uniformity of the landscape in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “…five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the factory they’re still linked together like sausages…” (206). With these lines,
Kesey is very straightforward about the machine and its hold on the community in that the houses look like fresh sausages, linked together and lined up along the hillside. It’s a very visual and detailed description that leaves little room for confusion. Next, Kesey again uses repetition to get his commentary on the middle class value of conformity out, “there were five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullover sweaters” (206). Using the same number provides the reader with a solid connection to previous lines as they continue to read, helping to emphasize the pattern. In addition, the number five thousand is the largest isogrammic number in the English language, meaning none of the letters that spell it out repeat.

P1 Sample 4
Kesey’s reference to the green and white uniforms is yet another example of the monotony and forced uniformity in this society of little boxes made of ticky tacky.
In
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , Kesey uses Chief Bromden’s narrative point of view, a slightly detached and judgmental tone, patterns, similes, and many details to illuminate the resigned, hollow feeling that many of the mental ward inhabitants felt toward “the machine”, and how in gaining McMurphy as a friend and leader, they gained a provocative, vibrant, and urgent need for life.