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Madness in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Hamlet"
Summary: How mental illness is portrayed in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey and "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare. "Cuckoo's Nest" looks directly at mental illness and how it can be a natural reaction to life in the modern world. "Hamlet" looks at mental illness more indirectly in Hamlet's tortured inner dialogue and how it affects others.
The issue of madness has been touched by many writers. In this paper I will focus on two important writings which deal directly with the mental illnesses. The first one is "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey first published in 1962. The second is "Hamlet" written by Shakespeare approximately in 1602. Ken Kesey worked nights in a mental institution in California and his novel has a lot of truth in it. He faced patient's insanity every day and was confident that it was natural response to the overall madness of the corporate America. Shakespeare on the contrary, focused on the completely opposite side of the mental madness: through "Hamlet" he wanted to show that in degree of publicity mental disorders can harm observers.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was written and set at the period when people outside the mainstream were often looked at with some...
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This section contains 2,832 words (approx. 10 pages at 300 words per page) |
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