Biblical References In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel about patients in an insane asylum. The main character, McMurphy, comes into the ward as a new patient and immediately lets everyone know that he is the “Bull Goose Looney” (which is his phrase for the leader of the patients on the ward). The other men are intrigued and somewhat hold back from him at first. The narrator, Chief Bromden, is half-Indian. He pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to beat the horrible system in which the patients are forced to follow daily. As the story progresses, McMurphy rebels against the Big Nurse, and encourages the other patients to stand up for them

In the Bible, God appoints apostles before anyone else, (1 Corinthians 12:28) and in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy immediately sees straight through Chief Bromden, and begins to befriend him. Once everyone knows that Chief Bromden is not deaf, the Chief begins to stand up openly for McMurphy. By the end of the book, “Chief Bromden has become an apostle in the fullest sense of the word” (Wallis 4) and McMurphy’s best friend.

Another thing that McMurphy stresses to the patients is how life is a gamble. McMurphy starts gambling the minute he comes onto the ward, and will make a bet for almost anything. If someone disagrees with him, instead of fighting or arguing, he makes a bet and does his best to prove them wrong. This not only shows that life is a gamble, but it also shows that no matter what, a person should always put forth their best effort. When he makes a bet that he can lift an extremely heavy control panel, he loses. After losing he says, “I tried though… I sure as hell did that much” (Kesey 121). When he said this, he really meant that the only important thing is to try; he had no sarcastic undertone at all. It was just one more way for him to teach the patients this lesson.

There is irony to Ken Kesey and the book he writes, because although his book has many different Christian references; he did not exactly lead a “Christian” life. Authorities arrested him many times for possession of marijuana and other drugs, and he was constantly getting in trouble for other things. “Much of the original material [for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest] was written under the influence of LSD and peyote” (Bigchalk (2) 3). No matter what drugs Kesey took while writing, he was still and amazing writer who used a great metaphor to include the Bible in such an interesting novel.

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest is a novel that shall never be forgotten in American Literature. The horrors of electro-shock therapy, lobotomies, and insane asylums in general are captured in this novel in a way that matched again. Using people from the Bible was probably the best idea for defining the characters of this book in a comical but serious way.

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