Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

Katalin Grezsu: Layers of Implication in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest

44 defeated by the Combine, he is a potential Savior to his fellows. This is a typical situation in which neither side can win completely. McMurphy in a sense is a winner: he has managed to create the spirit of resistance in the others, although the help he has given the inmates destroyes him. And Big Nurse is a winner, too, although hers is not the kind of victory she wanted. Through McMurphy's help Bromden becomes his own self again, he is cured. Before this would happen Bromden represents the social and historical paranoia of the Indian race's persecution complex. His deaf-and-dumbness is a social symbol for being an Indian. Towards the end of the novel, as Bromden's head begins to clear, the fogmachine stops. Momentarily he escapes the Combine, he flees to Canada. He manages to break out of the cuckoo's nest, and while McMurphy is crucified, Bromden, the best disciple is redeemed. But Kesey takes away the optimism of the novel. The Combine is the whole world, and just as the organization in Kafka's The Trial, it can reach after you. The novel was said to be the follower of several traditions in American, literature. It was called the 'new American Gothic novel', Big Nurse being a monster from Frankenstein. It was called a new Western as well as a parody of the Western, McMurphy being an anti-intellectual against an over-intellectualized technocratic world. But I think that this novel is written mostly in the Huck Finn tradition, McMurphy being the son of nature, "the" non-conformist who is escaping corruption.