According to Chief Bromden's description, the ward doesn't seem at all like the place for the insane. Chief Bromden's mental state clearly proves against the ward peoples' accusations of insanity. Like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, a narrator could sometimes be unreliable, since he or she could reflect personal, sometimes biased, thoughts on his or her narration. But does subjectivity mean insanity? Chief Bromden's voice is certainly that of a normal person, though he might inaccurately depict the ward as a prison rather than a hospital. In fact, he is more than normal, if decades of being in a confined environment with mentally disordered didn't make him crazy.
Then why is Bromden pretending to be deaf and dumb throughout the story? I believe it is because silence is sometimes the best way to reveal the darkest aspects of human beings, and eventually to survive from them. Would the black boys have harassed him so much, if Bromden was able to accuse them? Would he have kept away from any problems for so long, if he wasn't staying quiet? I remember watching an American movie "Quiet," which definitely shows the power of silence. It is Dot, the main character who pretends to be deaf and dumb, that faces the hidden evil of human beings(because people think she can't hear or speak), contemplate deeply on it, and eventually breaks the cycle either by speaking out loud, or by murdering a pervert father. I haven't finished the book, but Bromden's huge body as a symbol implies that Bromden's silence will not merely remain as a sign of subordination. He has power because he is silent.
So I believe that this book is not an accurate description of a real ward for the mentally diseased, but an effective tool to criticize how people so easily create prejudices and isolate the minority. To me, the black boys who seem to really enjoy the violence itself, and the Big Nurse who is obsessed about artificial order, look more insane. At this point, accusations for insanity is not the matter of prescribing illness, but effective tools for power struggles. The story reminds me of South Korea's situation in the 1970s and 1980s. For people who supported Japan's colonization of Korea, Korea's liberation was a drastic fall from their wealthy and powerful status. Now they had to face accusations of "being traitors." In order to survive from hostilities, they needed to set new enemies - not pro-Japanese collaborators, but Communists. Sudden outbreak of the Korean War saved them, since they were no longer traitors, but the most vigorous leaders of anti-Communist movement. Anyone who had leftist thoughts or were somehow related to leftist organizations were simply termed as "the Red." They weren't even treated as mad people. They simply couldn't exist in South Korea.
I think silence, again, was the only possible way to survive the fever. But that doesn't mean that these silence would last forever. Just like McMurphy boldly declared how he cannot be insane, Koreans with leftist philosophy are beginning to express their thoughts in an increasingly democratized society. North Korean Communism is definitely a wrong, inhumane ideology. But I wish that South Korean public can be more tolerable to the "McMurphys" who boldly express their "insane" philosophies. This world is not a ward, and we are not Big Nurses.
Nice examination of some prevalent themes in the book, and I can see you've read a lot of it by your strong grasp of Bromden's character. The movie really muddles that up, in my opinion. But as far as Bromden's sanity is concerned, I think he is a bit deluded at the very least. Some of that seems to be due to the medication he is forced to take, however. In any case, we have to wonder if the Big Nurse is as evil as he describes, and his references to Combines and Fog indicate paranoia. As a native, he obviously doesn't fit in anywhere, and has fear of rejoining modern society.
답글삭제Nice expansion of the theme to comment on Korean society etc.