How do the writers Sylvia Plath and Ken Kesey portray the struggle of the individual in The Bell Jar and One flew over the Cuckoos Nest?

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How do the writers Sylvia Plath and Ken Kesey portray the struggle of the individual in “The Bell Jar” and “One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”?

In The Bell Jar and Cuckoo’s Nest, both the protagonists struggle not only with a deteriorating mental stability and oppression from those surrounding them but also with a lack of a sense of individuality. Kesey and Plath explore these personal struggles through the experiences of alienation and identity paranoia through evocative literary techniques; being overwhelmed and powerless to break free of their inner world of isolation.

 

 Esther, in The Bell Jar, is a young, sensitive and intelligent woman who feels oppressed by the apparent social restrictions placed upon women in a pre-feminist, repressive 1950s America, and the pressure she feels regarding her future. She struggles with individuality and is faced with many choices complying with her future, and consequently, the path for the rest of her life. Esther's insecurity and struggle to discover her identity causes her to look to the personalities of the woman that surround her in life, but her inability to adapt to these personalities or the traditional concept of the “feminine ideal” ultimately leads her to a psychological breakdown in life.

It is not just the nature of that struggle we are presented with, but Plath’s literary techniques which help to portray this “struggle” to the reader, with the use of sibilance and repetition; “The silence depressed me.  It wasn't the silence of silence.  It was my own silence.” Plath’s repetition of the word “silence” reinforces the idea that Esther’s feelings and emotions are trapped inside her, and suggests that she is unable to break free of her own silence; these emotional burdens result not only in Esther's social and intellectual isolation, but also aid the reader in believing that her mental breakdown is imminent from the beginning. The short, simple, fragmented sentences also show us that Esther has an ability to reflect properly, and it also serves to highlight her own isolation.

While Esther feels her segregation is with society, Bromden, the narrator of Cuckoo’s Nest, and the other patients of the asylum, continuously struggle against the restrictions placed upon the ward by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched. Bromden states that the other patients in the ward think he is mute and deaf, but in reality, he chooses not to speak, primarily due to being ignored and later combined with fear for Nurse Ratched.  Although Bromden is the narrator, his descriptions cannot be fully trusted. Chapter 7 serves to portray him as an “unreliable narrator”, Bromden has a nightmare and imagines the workers slicing open Blastic, one of the vegetables and states that he fears the workers will do the same to him through some ghastly experiment. There is no uncertainty as to whether there is truth in his vision; Kesey assures the reader that it is simply his imagination by having Bromden woken up by the night watchman. The exact diagnosis of his disorder is never revealed, but is possibly schizophrenia or paranoia or as he is said to have served in the army, he may be suffering from shell shock. I feel that the reason Kesey withholds the true disorder Bromden suffers from, is to successfully sustain our interest throughout the novel. Most modern day readers of Cuckoo’s Nest will have prior knowledge of the effects of war upon the individual, as will they understand the social standing of women in Esther’s situation in Bell Jar, and it is this previous awareness that enables us to further understand his, and Esther’s, behaviour and struggles, and the derivation of it.

Kesey has the protagonist Bromden, tell us initially in the novel; “… and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth!” At this point the reader is directly addressed and it is as of he is sharing his private thoughts and informing us that he has an important and shocking story to reveal and thus structures the subsequent direction of the novel. Plath uses this technique of informing the reader early with “I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel”, this suggests to us that there is, as in Cuckoo’s Nest, a sense of psychological conflict rising about in Esther’s mind, similar to a tornado and compels us to determine what this suggestion will lead to. Bromden’s silence is similar to Esther’s in Bell Jar; both of these characters are unable to communicate their ideas through speech due to the fears of those around them. Kesey, with the use of words such as “horrible” and “awful”, and a demonstrative “this”, suggests that in addition to the violent and menacing images we have seen so far, that there are still darker things to come; this encourages us to read on and discover the terrible impacting past and future events Bromden will share with us. Kesey suggests to the reader that Bromden feels dehumanised with the use of anthropomorphism; “I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me”. The animalistic action “roar”,  and this powerful verb further implies to us that Bromden has a story that is bursting to get out of him, thus creating narrative tension which impels us to discover this story. Kesey uses colloquial language to suggest that due to Bromden’s inability to express his feelings, his thoughts are often unstructured and questionable, which can be seen when he states; ”But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen”. However, here he asks that the reader to keep an open mind towards his hallucinations, because even though they may not have actually happened, they provide a metaphorical view of the hidden events in the hospital, as he witnesses them, despite being in a hallucinatory state.

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Kesey also uses recurring motifs and strong pathetic fallacy, such as the “fog” he calls “The Combine”, to emphasise the “struggle” of the individual, for example, he describes the fog as; “snowing cold and white all over me like skim milk”. The use of the words “cold”, “white” and “like skim milk” could be Kesey suggesting that Bromden feels trapped in not only the asylum, but also ruled by a mechanical society, of which he does not conform to. By suggesting he might hide in the “snow” could indicate that Bromden might feel less oppressed if he were white, ...

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