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영어

This article analyzes on Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focused on the resistance of the individuals against the absolute power of the social system. In Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey shows the distorted way for conferring the meaning of individual identity through the bizarre state of the asylum, which reveals the power system of the mechanized civilization. This asylum, which is organized by the Combine and its perpetrator Big Nurse Ratched, symbolically reflects the system of modern society and its operation system, and it has an effect on man’s physical and mental lives in the asylum. Therefore the individual imprisoned in the asylum is deprived of his inherent identity, confidence, and self-respect by conforming to the oppressive social norms. Kesey reveals the absurd structure of the society from the aspects of individuals who resist the oppression of power systems in Cuckoo’s Nest. And he suggests the meaning of the identity search from the sacrificial death of McMurphy who tries to regain his and his fellow patients, which has been the recurrent theme of American literature.