Combines have been used by farmers for decades to harvest grain from their fields. Combines were designed to mow down the tall grain stalks, remove the grains, and finally to eject the leftover straw back out onto the field. In the mental ward, the patients are stripped of their personalities one by one. Their "grains", or the important parts of who they are, are torn from them. After facing the combine, the ward patients are all the same; useless and unwanted straw, left out in the field to rot.
McMurphy enters the ward, full of energy and spirit; a tall stalk of wheat in the path of the combine. Despite his defiance towards the system run by Big Nurse, he's still just a small blade of grass before the might of the combine. The system and the machinery that continually appears in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest extends much farther than McMurphy realizes. The establishment now has complete control of his fate now that he's been admitted, and they can use whatever force is necessary to bring him under control. In this way, McMurphy is no less vulnerable than anyone else, because even someone as iron-willed as he is doesn't stand a chance.
Other institutions are almost intended to work as two combines, the second running in reverse. An institution such as school runs a combine over the miscreants who seek to disrupt the class, but then the second combine works the other way. Through school and work we are encouraged to learn and develop into new and better people. Another simple example is when people attempting to lengthen their hair apparently have to first cut off the split ends before the hair can grow back longer, establishments attempt to strip us of our differences in order to allow us to remake ourselves anew. The Big Nurse seems to have forgotten the second step.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
School? An asylum? Are you crazy?!!!
I suppose the connection between the mental ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Framingham High School is valid point to make. The problem is however, that most of the rules and regulations are not a unique trait of FHS any more so than they are characteristics of the mental ward. Many of the rules of the ward are there simply to maintain order. The true is same for government, for job schedules, and for any other organization that is expected to run efficiently. Without this predetermined order, there would be chaos. A reduction in rights is the price we pay for freedom from chaos.
With that said, I still have three parallels to discuss. I suppose one should be the lack of tolerance for disruption. The ward and FHS are intended to be well-oiled machines, so any misbehavior on the part of a ward patient or a student significantly disrupts things. That's why the teachers and ward nurses are expected to call off disruption immediately.
Next, the hours. The patients are kept to a very strict time frame. This includes getting up early and going to bed when the lights are shut down in the ward. We are required to get to school by 7am, which for some people means getting up before 6, and for almost everyone it entails a pre-dawn wakeup call. We have a very strict period schedule as the ward has circle meetings and so forth.
Thirdly, the lack of spontaneity. The Nurse grinds her teeth at the idea of a carnival in her preciously neat hospital ward, but it also seems to reflect the general policy at FHS. I find that classes rarely surprise me. We repetitiously do roughly the same things day after day, and I have to say it gets a little dull. Anyway, the current school system seems to share something of the same monotony as the mental ward.
With that said, I still have three parallels to discuss. I suppose one should be the lack of tolerance for disruption. The ward and FHS are intended to be well-oiled machines, so any misbehavior on the part of a ward patient or a student significantly disrupts things. That's why the teachers and ward nurses are expected to call off disruption immediately.
Next, the hours. The patients are kept to a very strict time frame. This includes getting up early and going to bed when the lights are shut down in the ward. We are required to get to school by 7am, which for some people means getting up before 6, and for almost everyone it entails a pre-dawn wakeup call. We have a very strict period schedule as the ward has circle meetings and so forth.
Thirdly, the lack of spontaneity. The Nurse grinds her teeth at the idea of a carnival in her preciously neat hospital ward, but it also seems to reflect the general policy at FHS. I find that classes rarely surprise me. We repetitiously do roughly the same things day after day, and I have to say it gets a little dull. Anyway, the current school system seems to share something of the same monotony as the mental ward.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: HW 1
I feel that the issues underlined by these prompts would be more controversial around the time period of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These days if you were to ask anyone if it was acceptable to experiment on human beings, you would be hard pressed to find a positive response. In the modern context therefore, such a prompt as this is barely thought provoking. Further into the past however, when the patients in a mental hospital were virtually untreatable, It must have been a common and acceptable practice to experiment on patients. How else would a man such as Walter Freeman have developed his lobotomy procedure into mainstream practice? Mental illness was utterly misunderstood, and to a sane individual of the past, a mental patient probably would have been falsely deemed as less than human.
Another topic that is subject similarly to the time period is the distinction between mental illness and physical illness. In the past, mental illness was understood on a very small scale. It was most often incurable. As far as Doctors knew, mental illness was not due to any physical problems in the brain. In more modern medicine, mental illness seems to fall into two categories: trouble caused my a physical defect in the brain, or else psychological trouble. I think that in these terms, a physical defect such as Alzheimer's disease or a brain tumor is the same as any other physical illness. Psychological trouble such as post-traumatic stress, is more complicated. It may have an actual physical effect on the brain, but we are still limited in our ability to understand the brain, so treatment has to been done through psychotherapy. I think in this case, until we understand more, psychological illness (not mental illness in general) is different than physical illness.
Another topic that is subject similarly to the time period is the distinction between mental illness and physical illness. In the past, mental illness was understood on a very small scale. It was most often incurable. As far as Doctors knew, mental illness was not due to any physical problems in the brain. In more modern medicine, mental illness seems to fall into two categories: trouble caused my a physical defect in the brain, or else psychological trouble. I think that in these terms, a physical defect such as Alzheimer's disease or a brain tumor is the same as any other physical illness. Psychological trouble such as post-traumatic stress, is more complicated. It may have an actual physical effect on the brain, but we are still limited in our ability to understand the brain, so treatment has to been done through psychotherapy. I think in this case, until we understand more, psychological illness (not mental illness in general) is different than physical illness.
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