Scuse Me

When speaking of colonialism, irony comes naturally. The song “Great Nations of Europe” by Randy Newman mixes elements of irony with explicit facts to ridicule colonialism in the 16^th century. Newman refers to the colonialists as “the great nations of Europe”, which becomes an ironic designation when he says what they did. For example,

 “Hide your wives and daughter; hide the groceries too.

The great nations of Europe comin through.”

or

“Columbus sailed for India found Salvador instead.
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead.
They got tb and typhoid and athletes foot, diphtheria and the flu
'scuse me great nations comin through.”

Here we see a discrepancy between the expectation and the actual situation. We would expect a positive consequence from “the great nations comin through” and instead we get fear and death.

Another example of the use of irony in this song is,

“Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day,
he met some friendly Indians whom the Church told him were gay,
soooooooooooooo
he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
the great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way.”

The tension here lies on what is said and what is meant. Clearly the great nations of Europe weren’t “quite holy in their way” if they had the Indians torn apart by dogs for being gay. The sarcastic phrase adds spice to the wholeness of the song.
On the other hand, there are some lines completely lacking of irony, which doesn’t make them less ridiculous.  For example,

“The Grand Canary Islands first land to which they came
they conquered all the canaries there which gave the land its name
there were natives there called guanches, guanches by the score
bullet's, disease the Portuguese, they weren't there any more.”

These lines are explicit to the border of redundancy. The progression of events is completely true, which comes to show that often history needs not the aid of imagination to make it ridiculous.

Overall, the song is a simplification of the horrible results of colonialism; one might say the facts speak for themselves. Therefore, although it is not an accurate representation of the colonies, it serves to express criticism and make them relevant to modern times. 

Damn Women

Perhaps one of the more concise and accurate depictions of Nurse Ratchet in the novel comes in the words of Mr. Harding.

“She’s impregnable herself, and with the element of time working for her she eventually gets inside everyone. That’s why the hospital regards her as its top nurse and grants her so much authority; she’s a master at forcing the trembling libido out into the open—”

The use of the word ‘impregnable’ overall illustrates Nurse Ratchet’s ethos and is vital in the portrayal of women in the novel.

According to the online Oxford Dictionary ‘impregnable’ means strong enough to resist or withstand attack; not to be takenby force, unconquerable: an impregnable fort.

or

not to be overcome or overthrown: an impregnable argument.

The word is the direct antonym of ‘pregnable’ which -to state the obvious- means.

capable of being taken or won by force: a pregnable fortress.

open to attack; assailable: a pregnable argument.

Both words come from the old French word “prenable” equivalent to “pren” or “prendre”  which in turn means to seize or take over.

Nurse Ratchet’s impregnability is an effect of her passive-aggressive attitude which in turn “forc[es] the trembling libido out into the open”. She will always win because people lose their control faculties around her (while she, astutely, keeps them) and therefore end up being the irrational ones.

As Nurse Ratchet is the dominant feminine figure of the novel, the portrayal of women in the book almost falls entirely on her descriptions. In a medical (more likely vernacular medicine) context ‘impregnable’ means not being able to get pregnant. This connotation of the word adds an interesting characteristic to the depiction of women in the book, precisely because it removes them from their foremost quality as women, which is being able to give birth. Therefore, women in the novel are depicted as sterile, hollow hearted, cold, passive-aggressive, creatures, ironically bearing enormous breasts, upholding their rule by the means of careful psychological scrutiny and manipulation on its inferiors. A woman sans everything that makes up a woman, but not androgynous because gender is important in order to have a generalization, a figure to hate. Same case applies with the black boys.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been overly criticized for being sexist and racist, which is not far from the truth. But the novel’s  bigoted attitude is just a reflection of our own society which loves to have a specific target. It is not women or black people specifically the novel accuses, they could be perfectly replaced by Chinese and Martians. The point here is to criticize how entire categories are targeted, be them gender, nationality, race… The negative portrayal of women is not to be taken literally but rather as critique of the demonization and hasty generalizations society makes on people. 

Mommy, why is there fog on the TV?

Among the wide range of interpretations allowed by One Flew over Cuckoo’s Nest is to view the ward and its happenings as an extended metaphor for a political scenario, more specifically, United States politics. In the metaphorical context, the fog would represent media and mass manipulation phenomenon, meaning the attempt from authority to silence and distract the people from important matters by manipulating and censoring media. This is a phenomenon better explained by the work of the American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s study of mass and media manipulation directly relates with several passages of the book dealing with the topic of fog. In fact, it brings light upon them by further explaining the causes and effects of “fog” in our society.

The roles of the characters in the book’s political metaphor are clear: Nurse Ratchet exemplifies the various figures of oppressive authority, while the patients are its subjects, the people, or as Chomsky ironically refers to them, “the bewildered herd”. In page 112, Chief Bromden talks about the presence of fog in a situation different than the ward.

“Whenever intelligence figured there might be a bombing attack, or if the generals had something secret they wanted to pull-out if sight, hid so good that even the spies on the base couldn’t see what went on- they fogged the field.”

 It’s clear that fog’s first and foremost purpose is to hide whatever facts the authority feels shouldn’t be known by the common. In the next quote, Chomsky explains how media (or fog) is used by the controlling powers to fulfill the previously mentioned purposes:

"Remember that the media have two basic functions. One is to indoctrinate the elites, to make sure they have the right ideas and know how to serve power. In fact, typically the elites are the most indoctrinated segment of a society, because they are the ones who are exposed to the most propaganda and actually take part in the decision-making process. For them you have the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and so on. But there’s also a mass media, whose main function is just to get rid of the rest of the population—to marginalize and eliminate them, so they don’t interfere with decision-making. And the press that’s designed for that purpose isn’t the New York Times and the Washington Post, it’s sitcoms on television, and the National Enquirer, and sex and violence, and babies with three heads, and football, all that kind of stuff."

When surrounded by fog, the Chief feels lost, yet “safe from the enemy, but … awfully alone.”(pg.113)  which is exactly the effect fog aims for. As Chomsky puts it “The purpose of those media is just to dull people's brains.”

In his study “10 Strategies of Manipulation Bythe Media” Chomsky further explains the methods of media manipulation that in his own words

“turn them [the public] into passive obedient consumers who don’t try to get out of their way, [and] pay attention basically to what [are] called the superficial things of life like fashionable consumption; trap [the public] into consumerism, isolate them from one another, atomized, control their beliefs.”

One of the methods for numbing patients in the ward is Electro Shock Therapy. For Chief Bromden it gets increasingly difficult to remove himself from “the bewildered herd” as the fog permanently surrounds him and he receives more EST treatment.

“…they kept making the fog thicker and thicker, and it seemed to me that, no matter how hard I tried, two or three times a month I found myself with that door opening in front of me to the acid smell of sparks and ozone. In spite of all I could do, it was getting tough to keep from getting lost.” (pg.114)  

The fog, ultimately, and sadly, works -“Being lost isn’t so bad.”- (pg.114) Chomsky says,

“I think there's a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore, it's important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.”

After all, and like we saw in the ward, authority can and will convince people of their own stupidity, of their incapability of understanding important subjects. Just as many of the patients are “volunteers” and therefore convinced of their own insanity, we see a great majority of the public, unaware of their position in society, ignoring and delegating to others what directly concerns them.

History has showed us that there will always come a McMurphy, and in account, the fog will get thicker, but choosing to get lost in it is a matter of personal determinacy. In the words of Noam Chomsky:   

            

“The issue is ... whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. We end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world. Those are the choices That's the choice that you have to face. The answer to those questions is very much in the hands of people like you and me.”