Sheeples

Sheep always follow the herd. Staying with the pack means protection; whereas, straying from the pack opens up the potential of being attacked and ultimately ending up in the bowels of a hungry wolf or other carnivore. Men too, always follow the herd. Being too different - dissenting from the norm - often lands men in trouble. Being marked as weird is the lowest of possible punishments that can range from being disassociated to being mercilessly and brutally killed. Straying from the herd is like leaving the wagon circle: it leaves you completely open to the barrage attacks that almost always ensues.

Ken Kesey makes his viewpoint on the issue of sheep quite evident throughout the text of his famed novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. According to the Kingwood College Library “Challenging symbols of conformity” is one of the predominate central themes of the novel (Goodwin). The predominance of this theme is visible in both the characters themselves and the situations the characters are put in.

The whole idea of the Asylum is a prime example of the fact that straying from the herd gets the unknowing wanderer tagged and excommunicated. Those weirdoes and freaks who decide to be different and step out of line get rounded up and tossed into a place that teaches them to stay part of the herd and to never stand out. The teaching is done by an evil natured woman who feels that she’s doing the right thing for the patients: teaching them to conform. Her method is, in essence, targeting a single patient, forcing him out of the herd, then having the rest of the herd pick on the targeted ‘crazy’. This teaches the lesson that being the target, the one outside the group, is the bad spot to be. It also teaches that one is safe while part of the big group, because you don’t get picked on when you’re not different from the others.

McMurphy goes through several stages while in the mental institute, and all of them cause a change in how sheepish he is. When he first becomes a patient in the hospital, his attitude is that he just needs to get the best of the head nurse. His efforts cause him to stray from the herd a little, which in turn amplifies the nurse’s interest in him and brings on a barrage of counter-attacks. Once McMurphy is told that he won‘t be able to leave unless the Nurse approves, he changes his chain of thought. He decides that the quickest way out of there is to just fit in, to just follow the herd and to be unnoticed. This works for a while, he manages to trick the nurse into being less interested in him while he’s just part of the group. Towards the end of the novel, McMurphy starts getting a soft spot for the other patients, and he used what he learned during the previous stages to do the best he can do for his new-found-friends. He combines being daring with being part of the group by convincing the group to do things with him, and by doing so he successfully holds the nurse off for quite some time. When he wants to watch TV; for example, he doesn’t sit down in front of the off TV by himself, he gets the patients to do it with him effectively hiding in the herd from the nurse.

Ken Kesey obviously believes that like sheep, most men just follow the herd. He also believes that men get punished for thinking outside of the norm, and he is blatantly opposed to this type of society model. Kesey would definitely agree with the quote “Most men are sheep,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if Kesey had read that quote multiple times while writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Works Cited

"FREE Study Guide-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey." PinkMonkey. 20 Apr. 2007 . 

Goodwin, Susan, and Peggy Whitely. "Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Kingswood College Library. 01 July 2006. Kingswood College Library. 22 Apr. 2007 . 

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Signet, 1963. 

"SparkNotes: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." SparkNotes. 24 Apr. 2007 .