If You Agree with the Premise...

When a book is set in the confines of a mental institute, and nothing else, the author must carefully choose every personification, alliteration, metaphor and symbolism that is included.  Because there is not much to analyze in the setting, and the characters are limited by the location, the reader will take any and all interactions and magnify them in order to attempt to better understand the underlying messages in the book.  In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this is exactly the case. 

When Bromden wakes up in the middle of the night and carefully describes his surroundings whilst walking towards a window and then narrates every single movement of a dog sniffing around until he sees that a car that I going to run over it, the reader must interpret.  What does the car represent? Is it part of a larger idea within the text that should be broken down and scrutinized with the purpose of understanding Kesey’s overall message? Perhaps. Well, probably.  In the context of this passage, surely this extraordinary occurrence must mean something.  During the beginning of Part II the ward is carefully looking upon the Big Nurse and whether or not she is powerful and menacing.  McMurphy has been known for attempting to disrupt the status quo in the ward and for trying to get the better of the abusive and controlling authoritarian regime that the nurses and doctors have set up.  The interaction between the dog and the car is a parallelism to what is going on inside the ward.  The remaining portion of Part II will reveal that Nurse Ratched is in a position of power, and that McMurphy and the others depend on her inherent kindness to remain unharmed; this passage is a foreshadowing of what is to come.  The dog is a curious and tamed animal that has dared to sniff around “in the same spot of pavement” (Kesey, 143) as the ruthless cold machine that is the car.  In the same way, McMurphy and the others are trying to challenge the traditional imperatives that the Nurse has established, if they both try to retain power, or control “the same spot of pavement,” the assumed outcome is that the car will run over the dog, and the Nurse will electroshock the patients.

Of course this is a rather raw interpretation of the text.  I am taking little and trying to make it mean a lot.  While my interpretation may be right, and the premise that the limited setting overemphasizes the travails of the characters may be correct, you as a reader, and I as a blogger, must keep in mind that the title of the book includes the word Cuckoo, as in crazy, and the setting is confined to a mental institute.  Nothing is certain.