Comedy and modern religion : the process of paradigm interaction in One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Although there seem to be as many critical interpretations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as there are literary scholars, few have examined the book without reference to some concept of religion. It seems, then, that an enlightening venture would be to examine Ken Kesey's 1952 novel with the aid of recent scholarship in the field of anthropology, Anthony Wallace's widely accepted definition of religion provides the groundwork upon which a foundation discussion of the unique relationship between religion and literature is built.

From this anthropological perspective, Cuckoo's Nest appears as a distinctly American "religious comedy" with myth and ritual providing ingredients basic to the novel's form and content, for Kesey's narrative owes much to religion's comic rituals of rebirth and transcendence. Additionally, the book's first person perspective gives the narrative mythic proportions. As is typical of myth. Cuckoo's Nest relies heavily on symbolic language, and the archetypal conflict between McMurphy and the Big Nurse comes to stand for the much larger conflict of antithetical paradigms—a rigid, structural paradigm on the one hand and a fluid, anti structural paradigm on the other.

Through the interaction of these "bound" and "unbound" elements of human existence, old structures evolve and erode while elements of new paradigms are absorbed into and merged with the existing social structures to form new social and religious paradigms. It seems, then, that Kesey's book provides a model for social growth and spiritual transcendence which mirrors the comic Christian paradigm and in so doing, reflects its traditional moral and spiritual values. This rejuvenated religion finds embodiment in the figure of the narrator, who manages to achieve the proper balance between McMurphy's unbridled freedom and Nurse Ratched's strict order. That he has found such a balance is indicated by the narrative he relates, which combines artistic freedom with formal discipline as all true art should. So in telling his tale. Chief Bromden comes to represent a complete human being reborn into a higher level of social and spiritual consciousness.