Cuckoo's Nest Conformity

Society demands the conformity of its members, so that no one person is different than any other… at least in the novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey. This novel presents the main antagonist as the Big Nurse, or Nurse Ratched, who runs the mental asylum as tight as she ran her old position in the army. However, one reader questions how much of a villain Nurse Ratched really is by proposing, “Nurse Ratched is not the true villain of the novel. She is instead a symbol of society’s desire to subjugate individuals to conformity”. The narrator of the book, Chief Bromden, refers to society as the Combine that processes people until all sense of individuality is gone. In the novel, Nurse Ratched is not the main villain of the story but instead a pawn of society’s Combine that requires individuals to conform to its norms.
While Nurse Ratched may have acted as a villain in the ward, she is nothing more than a factor that Society uses to keep people from breaking out from conformity. After seeing the new patient of the ward, Randle McMurphy, Chief is reminded of an old patient, Maxwell Taber, who used to cause trouble throughout the ward. He was sent for a …show more content…
The idea of individuality is something still seen today, not just in the book. Social media often portrayed certain people, such as celebrities, as the way everyone should look, act, and feel. People's attempts achieve these often unattainable looks can be detrimental to their feelings of self-worth. Society has so many expectations for its members, that it can seem almost impossible to conform to any of them. This novel took place many years ago, but the fact that these ideas of individuality vs. conformity still exist today, shows that society has not come far from where it was back