Blog 2

In Ken Kesey's, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the hospital does more harm than good. Chief Bromden is a Native American that pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to avoid becoming part of 'the machine'. Bromden has described, in flashbacks, his life before coming to the hospital, and it sounds like he was fairly normal prior to being admitted. The hospital has caused the majority of his problems rather than fix them.

Bromden hides behind a facade in order to survive his everyday life in the ward; this makes him seem more mentally ill than in reality. In chapter one, he is describing his life in a whole and the role that he plays in the hospital. "...and try to foul her equipment up as much as possible by not letting her see my eyes."(4) Bromden continuously compares the ward and the nurse to a machine; everything about the hospital, its tight schedule, the staff, and the monotony are all apart of a bigger machine that relies on precision in the ward. Chief tries to hide from this metaphorical machine by acting deaf and dumb. He prides himself on his 'caginess', or sneakiness, and his ability to sneak around the ward unnoticed. "Hum of black machinery, humming hate and death and other hospital secrets. They don't bother not talking out loud bout their hate secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I'm cagey enough to fool them that much."(3) He believes that if he keeps this act up he will be safe from the machine, and he will be in on all the secrets, because no one ever hides their secrets from a deaf man; no one thinks they are listening.

 

Chief Bromden is a six foot seven war vet, and retired football star. He acts dumb and deaf because he truly believes he is weak and small. In the novel, Bromden describes one of his encounters with a young girl in a cotton mill, "...the girls all over the mill went to giggling in their fists. I laughed a little myself, seeing how clever I'd been."(39) This was on a high school football trip to California, he innocently flirted with the girls in the mill, and seemed to be the typical teenage boy; girls and football. This shows that something went wrong later in his life; he does not seem to have been born crazy. His time in the war left him with a strong case of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). He suffers from this especially painfully when he is being shaved. "I hold back the yelling. I hold back till they get to my temples. I'm not sure it's one of those substitute machines and not a shaver till it gets to my temples; then I can't hold back. It's not a willpower thing when they get to my temples." (7) He has a really tough time when they are shaving him because it triggers something that deals with his PTSD. The hospital does not recognize that this is the case; they brush it off as him being difficult. "...why don't we get a good head start on the week by shaving poor Mr. Bromden first this morning, before the after-breakfast rush on the shaving room, and see if we can't avoid some of the-ah-disturbance he tends to cause..."(6) Recognizing that shaving him is something that sets him off could potentially help cure his disorder, but the Big Nurse is too concerned with her schedule and making sure everything runs smoothly.  

The way this mental institution is run is on a constant dosage of pills and plenty of observing time for the nurse. Mrs. Ratched runs the ward on such a tight schedule of drugs, group therapies, and waiting time, that she is way more concerned with keeping the schedule than she is with fully treating the patients. Her motives are based on keeping the ward on track by stopping disruptions and less about doing what is right for each individual patient's needs. "On rare occasions some fool might ask what he's being required to swallow."(34) The patients are not allowed to ask what they are taking, they are just expected to take it. Later in the book, Bromden doesn't take his pills before going to sleep and he says, "When you take one of these red pills you don't just go to sleep; you're paralyzed with sleep..."(85) Bromden has to take the red pills because he used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming. The nurse does not mind that he is paralyzed with sleep, as long as he sleeps through the night and does not disturb the rest of the ward.

The hospital in a whole is to blame for Bromden's mental state. He was a normal, functioning human being in his past life, and failure to treat and access his mental issues from the war has put him farther in his metaphorical fog. 

Blog 1: Least Favorite Character

My least favorite characters in Ken Kesey's, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, are the black boys. The amount of hate they carry around is obnoxious, and the way they treat the patients is just as irritating. 

Even though they are getting payed to work in the ward they shovel some of their janitorial jobs on to Bromden. "Stick a mop in my hand and motion to the spot they aim for me to clean today, and I go. One swats the backs of my legs with a broom handle to hurry me past." (3) They order Bromden, a seemingly blind and deaf Indian, to do their work for them. To make it worse, they refer to him as Cheif Broom, which is completely disrespectful to his culture, in my opinion. 

When Kesey was describing the black boys individually, we learn that the shortest one watched as his mother was raped and his father was tortured. "He wanted to carry a sock full of birdshot when he first came on the job, to work the patients into shape." (30) When he first arrived at the ward, he expected to 'work the patients into shape' with a sock full of exploding pellets used to kill birds. Kesey hints, fairly frequently, that the black boys do more than take the patients temperatures. 

The Big Nurse has kept the black boys in the ward because she knows that they have enough hate in them to blindly do horrible things to the patients. The ward is run like a machine of hate; each member is full of hate and they no longer need instructions on how to implement it. Kesey describes this, "They are in contact on a high-voltage wave length of hate, and the black boys are out there preforming her bidding before she even thinks it." (31) The black boys know exactly what she needs or wants just by the look she gives them. 

The black boys treat all the patients poorly, some just mentally but some physically as well. When Taber began questioning the medicine he was asked to take the nurse sent the black boys in to get him ready for his lobotomy. "The two black boys catch Taber in the Latrobe and drag him to the mattress room. He gets one a good kick in the shins. He's yelling bloody murder. I'm surprised how helpless he looks when they hold him, like he was wrapped with bands of black iron." (36)

The way the black boys treat the patients is very disrespectful. Their presence in a chapter makes the reader uneasy and a little irritated. They each have their reasons to hate and act the way they do (with their back stories it makes some sense) but in no way does that make what they are doing okay. I don't like reading their parts in the book because you just want Bromden or the other patients to beat them up the way they have beaten the patients down, mentally and physically,  for years. 

Final Exam - Free Thought quote

Listener - I Don't Want to Live Forever

Transcendentalists believed that you should practice free thought; you should set aside any personal beliefs you carry in order to see every aspect of a subject. In Whitman's "O Me! O Life!" he describes the main question of life "What good amid these, O me, O life?" (Whitman, handout. 10) This is a rather dismal topic; he is basically saying what is the point? At the end of the poem he wraps it all up by saying "That you are here -- that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse." (Whitman, handout. 11-12) He is saying that you, your life, and your deeds will be remembered. In "I Don't Want to Live Forever" Listener says "I don' t want to live forever, I just want to live for me." (Listener, youtube.) In his eyes, living forever isn't necessary, and as long as he lives with the intent to leave the world with his 'verse' he will have lived it to the fullest. He also says later in the song "If I go looking for it, I'll probably find it, but not in the pages of a book." (Listener, youtube.) He shows another key characteristic of transcendentalists by saying this because they believe going out to find the answer in nature is more effective than finding it through a book. 

“Listener – I don’t want to live forever” Youtube. Tangled Talk Records/Sincere Records/Broken Circles, 2010,            October 22, 2010.

Final Exam - Self Reliance

Little Mermaid - Part of Your World

Transcendentalists believed one should work to be reliant on themselves instead of those around them or the government. Arial demonstrated free thought and self reliance through the entire film, because not only did she collect items that came from the human world, but she also desired to come in contact with humans, both of which were frowned upon. When Triton tells her no, she continues to think and live the way she wanted, she decided no to follow her fathers wishes and be self reliant. In Emerson's "Self Reliance", he says "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." (Emerson, Self Reliance. 8) Arial believes this to be true, because normally a person would trust that their father knows what is good for them, but she continues to think the way she feels. Self reliance, free thought, and confidence go hand in hand, because you need to trust that just because other people do not agree with what you think, doesn't mean you're wrong. As Emerson said, "To be great is to be misunderstood." (Emerson, Self Reliance. 61) Transcendentalist believed you should live with the intent to live, not with the intent to please the people around you.

"The Little Mermaid-Part Of Your World" Youtube. Disney. 1989. June 29, 2007.

Final Exam - Confidence quote

Lupe Fiasco - The Show Goes On

Transcendentalists believed that one must have a huge amount of confidence in their choices, ideas, and beliefs to go out and truly live the life they believe is right. In a excerpt from Walden, Thoreau says "Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights." (Thoreau, Conclusion. 275-278) Thoreau is saying that even in the darkest times you need to be confident in the fact that you can still make something of yourself and not simply give up, the contrast between your high times and your low times only makes the bright times seem brighter. Lupe Fiasco urged his listeners to become individuals and to always believe you can make it out no matter what your circumstance is. "No matter what you see when you look out your window, brown grass or green grass, picket fence or barbed wire, never ever put them down, you just lift your arms higher." (Fiasco, youtube.) Fiasco is saying that no matter what your financial or political status is, you can go out and be what you want. Thoreau also believes this; "However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names" (Thoreau, Conclusion. 250-251) Both of them emphasized on the fact that the cards you have been dealt mean nothing when it comes to who you want to be, that in itself shows that you need to have an amazing amount of confidence.

"Lupe Fiasco - The Show Goes On" Youtube, n.p, n.d., December 23, 2010

Final Exam - Nonconformity quote

The Matrix - The Pill Scene

Transcendentalists do not follow the crowd for the sake of following the crowd, they believed that they should follow the path that their intuition leads them to. In Whitman's "O Me! O Life!"  he describes society as "...the endless trains of the faithless -- of cities fill'd with the foolish." (Whitman, handout. 2) Whitman is referencing the people who don't know the truth, or in other words are faithless. The Matrix is set in the future, similar to a post-apocalyptic world the 'real world' is overrun by machines and the human population is nothing more than an energy source for the computers. The majority of the human race in this movie live contently in what is known as the Matrix; a computer generated world very similar to a video game. Neo is contacted by Morpheus who offers to show Neo the truth. Neo is offered two pills "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is; you have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance, after this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, and the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I  show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." (Matrix.youtube) Morpheus gives Neo the decision to either go back to life as he knew it, or to find out the truth. Neo takes the red pill and follows Morpheus. The Matrix is very similar to Plato's Allegory of the Cave because when Neo 'steps outside of the cave and sees the real world' all of the agents set out to kill him. The agents are the government that controls the "cities fill'd with the foolish" (Whitman, handout, 2) To leave the Matrix Neo showed nonconformity and free thought, both are characteristics of traditional transcendentalists.

"The Matrix (1999) - The Pill Scene" Youtube. Warner Bros, 1999. May 18, 2011.

Blog six: Transcendentalism

1.)

        Alex’s views on possessions, money, and society do not match my personal views. I agree with his view on society to an extent because I don’t necessarily like how society works or how it views people, but I would never go as far as completely shutting myself out from it. When Alex leaves he donates all of his money and ditches his car, both of which most people would never be able to do because we live in a greed driven society; we always want more than we have. He refused his parents offer to buy him a new car because his ‘old beater’ still ran fine. I would never pass up a new car, who would? Alex donates all of his money, every last dollar. He didn’t save anything, I would never be able to go through with that, and while it’s a wonderful thing to do I don’t think it was smart. Alex believed that that material possessions meant nothing and you don’t need them to live a happy live, but I would never be able to survive a week, let alone, a lifetime without my iphone. I don’t agree with his views on these topics but I can understand where he is coming from.

2.)

       Alex was not living life to the fullest by submerging himself into the wilderness because he never took himself as far as he could have gone into school, a career, or even a family. Every person has some sort of goal or image in their head about what they want to have done or accomplished in their lifetime, and most people aspire to marry, have children, make a living, and other long term things like that, but his vision of a life well spent was gutsier; he wanted to abandon the cliché American dream and go find himself by taking a journey to Alaska. Even though Alex's ideal life is very different from the typical, he did live the way he wanted to, so to say he wasn't living life to its full potential would not be fair. He lived his life and followed transcendental views to live in a very free state. I don’t think he took himself as far as he could have, because he had so many options and connections but he didn’t use them. His father worked for NASA, he could have gone anywhere and done anything he wanted to but he ditched that life and went and got by on absolutely nothing. He died at a young age from the decisions he made and his lifestyle seemed miserable. If I am supposed to judge his life by the standards that I hold myself to, I would not say he lived it to its fullest; he could have gone and gotten an amazing education and made a something of himself. But if the definition of a life well spent is to approve of your own choices and to accept you for who you are, it wouldn’t be a judgment anyone other than Alex could make.