What do geese symbolize in Cuckoo's Nest?

The geese also represent freedom because they are free to do what they want and go about their own business, without noticing the dog, or the patients in the mental institution. The “good fisherman” who “catches hens” represents the nurse and how she “catches” the men in the mental institute.
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What do birds symbolize in one flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, birds symbolize freedom, hope, and fear.
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What is the importance of the dog and the geese to Chief?

Why is that important? The Dog is McMurphy and the Geese are the combine. He sees them outside the ward. This shows some foreshadowing when the Dog is walking into the pathway of an oncoming car.
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What does the dog symbolize in Cuckoo's Nest?

Chief Bromden's connection with the symbol of the wild dog throughout the novel reflects an appreciation for the relationship between the Native American people with the natural world, the world from which they have been unmercifully removed.
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What do rabbits symbolize in one flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Rabbits are used to symbolize the ward patients, because they are weak and submit to Nurse Ratched's ward policies, much like a helpless rabbit would submit to a wolf's power.
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Hidden Meaning in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Earthling Cinema



What is Harding's rabbit and wolf analogy?

We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place. When McMurphy accuses the men of being chickens, pecking at each other, Harding responds with the metaphor of the men as rabbits. Nurse Ratched represents the strong wolf who has the right to dominate them in the natural order of life.
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What does McMurphy's laugh symbolize?

The longer McMurphy is on the ward, the more the men begin to laugh. Laughter becomes a symbol and an active representation of the men's freedom, even though they are basically imprisoned by the ward and by society.
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Who is the bull goose loony?

bull goose loony an oxymoron. A bull indicates masculine qualities while a goose indicates feminine. A loony, of course, is someone not entirely in control of their mental faculties and perhaps unable to discern whether they are a bull or a goose. chronic lasting a long time or recurring often.
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What does bromden see when he looks out the window?

Bromden's realization, upon looking out the window, that the hospital is in the countryside symbolizes the broadening of his perceptual abilities under McMurphy's influence. He watches as animals interact with man-made creations.
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Is Ellis actually nailed to the wall?

Ellis, Ruckly, and Taber—Acutes whose lives were destroyed by electroshock therapy—serve as public examples of what happens to those who rebel against the ruling powers. Ellis makes the reference explicit: he is actually nailed to the wall.
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What happens to Sefelt?

In the lunch room, the patient Sefelt has an epileptic seizure because he has refused to take his medication. The medication, Dilantin, prevents seizures, but he saves it to give to Frederickson, another epileptic patient.
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What does McMurphy learn at the pool?

The ward is taken to the hospital's pool to swim. McMurphy learns from the patient serving as the lifeguard that someone who is committed to the hospital is released only at the discretion of the staff. McMurphy had believed he could leave as soon as he served the time remaining on his work farm sentence.
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Does McMurphy belong in the ward?

McMurphy represents sexuality, freedom, and self-determination—characteristics that clash with the oppressed ward, which is controlled by Nurse Ratched. Through Chief Bromden's narration, the novel establishes that McMurphy is not, in fact, crazy, but rather that he is trying to manipulate the system to his advantage.
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What does Nurse Ratched symbolize?

A former army nurse, Nurse Ratched represents the oppressive mechanization, dehumanization, and emasculation of modern society—in Bromden's words, the Combine. Her nickname is “Big Nurse,” which sounds like Big Brother, the name used in George Orwell's novel 1984 to refer to an oppressive and all-knowing authority.
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What mental illness does Chief Bromden have?

Chief Bromden presented a long-standing history characterized by the complex features of Schizophrenia.
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What does the fog symbolize?

Fog illustrates obscurity, indistinction; in the Bible, it is an image preceding great revelations. It is the "GRAY zone" between reality and unreality, and uncertainty about the future and beyond. According to Browning it can represent approaching death.
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Why does Nurse Ratched remember Mr Taber so fondly?

Nurse Ratched remembers Mr. Taber so fondly because supposedly he was a success of one of her controlling and tyrannical experiments. She describes Mr. Taber as an “intolerable Ward Manipulator” (p.
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What mental illnesses do the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest have?

Mac and Susanna are diagnosed with personality disorders: Anti-Social Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, respectively.
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What is the Green seepage that the chief perceives?

Chief notices the light seeping out of the staff room, a green light. He says that whenever the staff meeting is over, there's a green seepage all over the walls and chairs that he has to clean off. He says poisons seep right out of the staff's skin. Chief's job is to clean away the poison seepage.
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What's a bull goose?

DEFINITION. Wild and unpredictable. Incoherent. The craziest person in a group of insane folks.
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What is a bull goose screw?

"Bull goose" is an old-fashioned slang word for "the one in charge; the leader", and a "screw" is a prison guard.
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What is a vegetable in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

The Chronics: The name used for patients for which there is no hope. A large number of these are Vegetables, men who are so far gone they are almost brain dead. Chief Bromden is considered a Chronic, because he has been on the ward so long and everyone thinks he is deaf and dumb.
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What is unusual about McMurphy?

What is unusual about McMurphy? McMurphy does not act like others. He is loud, laughs, and very bold.
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Why does McMurphy laugh at Chief Bromden?

McMurphy's laughter, while healing to the patients, is disrupting to the Big Nurse and her Black Boys. Bromden mentions that laughing must be the only thing that keeps McMurphy from falling captive to the combine's power, “He's safe as long as he can laugh,” (Kesey, 117).
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Why did they transfer McMurphy from the work farm to the mental institution?

In 1963 Oregon, Randle Patrick McMurphy (Nicholson), a criminal who has been sentenced to a fairly short prison term, decides to have himself declared insane so he'll be transferred to a mental institution, where he expects to serve the rest of his term free of prison labor and in (comparative) comfort and luxury.
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