Reconstruction 7.3 (2007)


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Breaking Bonds in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Fight Club / Mike Taormina

 

Abstract: Kesey reveals to us the connection between freedom, sanity, and one's slavery to the consumer way of life that has become the modern day norm. The process of "nesting," or gathering a wealth of material possessions creates the "prison" in which modern society holds us all captive. According to Kesey, when one finds himself a prisoner, one should not be concerned with cursing one's captor, escape should be the ever-present goal. Kesey's novel portrays a group of men who find themselves in this exact position, conditioned by "the Combine" that is the social structure of present day life. Only they find themselves unable to break their bonds, and it takes their own personal savior, in the form of Randal P. McMurphy to show them the way out. Written some thirty-seven years later, Fight Club, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (also hailing from Oregon) which gained public acclaim through its cinematic version directed by David Fincher, once again steps back and analyzes our way of life, how we have been conditioned by corporate America, and how we have lost our manhood in the process. Once again, we need McMurphy to deliver us from our asylum and once again, he comes to our salvation, this time reincarnated in the form of Tyler Durden. So how does Fincher present Palahniuk's story, in the tradition of Kesey's in order to allow us too see our prison, how we have come to be prisoners, and show us the path to regaining our masculinity while revolting against the "Combine" and striving for the absolute boundaries of the truths and achievements that shape our manhood.

 

True freedom and sanity spring from the same spiritual well, already mixed, just add incentive. Insanity, on the other hand, is dependent on the material fad and fashion, and the weave of one's prison is of that material. "But I didn't weave it," I hear you protest. "My parents, their parents, generations before me wove it!"

Could be, but when you're a prisoner, the task is not to shout epithets at the warden, but to get out. . .

(Kesey, "Impolite Interview. . ." 352)

<1> This is Ken Kesey's response to a question asked of him in an interview entitled "An Impolite Interview With Ken Kesey," the question was : " . . . How would you distinguish between freedom and insanity?" (352). Kesey's insight reveals to us the connection between freedom, sanity, and one's slavery to the consumer way of life that has become the modern day norm. The process of "nesting," or gathering a wealth of material possessions creates the "prison" in which modern society holds us all captive. But Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is about a group of men. Since when do men concern themselves with nesting? Are not men traditionally the roaming, hunter/gatherer creatures of the Earth? According to Kesey, when one finds himself a prisoner, one should not be concerned with cursing one's captor, escape should be the ever-present goal. Kesey's novel portrays a group of men who find themselves in this exact position, conditioned by "the Combine" that is the social structure of present day life. Only they find themselves unable to break their bonds, and it takes their own personal savior, in the form of Randal P. McMurphy to show them the way out.

<2> Written some thirty-seven years later, Fight Club, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (also hailing from Oregon) which gained public acclaim through its cinematic version directed by David Fincher, once again steps back and analyzes our way of life, how we have been conditioned by corporate America, and how we have lost our manhood in the process. Once again, we need McMurphy to deliver us from our asylum and once again, he comes to our salvation, this time reincarnated in the form of Tyler Durden. So how does Fincher present Palahniuk's story, in the tradition of Kesey's in order to allow us too see our prison, how we have come to be prisoners, and show us the path to regaining our masculinity while revolting against the "Combine" and striving for the absolute boundaries of the truths and achievements that shape our manhood?

<3> In Fight Club, as well as Cuckoo's Nest, the primary characters of interest find themselves in their present state of inadequacy due to either the failure of the father as a role-model and provider, or an overbearing feminine presence encountered at some point in their lives.

<4> Billy Bibbit is portrayed in Cuckoo's Nest as the younger of the Acutes with Billy, his mother is obviously the main influence of consideration, she works at the hospital where the story takes place, and is old friends with "Big" Nurse Ratched. In the book, we see how the smothering of Billy by his mother, prevents him from ever growing into a functional adult capable of social interaction as well as relationships. His mother's efforts to hold onto her youth through Billy effectively stop his psychological development from continuing into adulthood and leaves him a thirty-one year old boy.

<5> Harding is another character on the ward whose downfall is of notable importance. In Harding's case, it is his wife who ultimately causes the rape of his masculinity. She has stripped Harding of his self-worth by flaunting her sexuality while continually questioning his manhood, as well as his heterosexuality. By constantly bringing her husband down with attacks at his manhood in the form of unfaithfulness, criticisms, and questioning his sexuality, Harding's wife is able to incapacitate his ability to function in society and he thus seeks the refuge of the hospital.

<6> While Billy Bibbit and Harding show the result of both the "mothering" and "nesting" aspect of society on the manhood of its members, perhaps the most important character on the ward is the narrator himself, Chief Bromden. This is not only because it is through his perspective that the story is revealed, but also because of what and who he is. As an Indian, he represents a way of life that the characters must strive to regain a part of, not only in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but in Fight Club as well. Both of these stories convey a desire to retreat to a simple and tribal way of life, to escape the "military industrial complex," as Eisenhower called the influence of massive industrial growth on society (Eisenhower 616). Both the Chief and Tyler Durden have visions for this return to tribal life, the Chief seeing his fellow tribesmen rebuilding their fishing platforms on the dam that has been built on their river, Tyler Durden envisions climbing the vines that wrap the Sears Tower and laying strips of venison in the empty carpool lanes of some abandoned super-highway.

<7> Contrary to the case with Bibbit and Harding, Chief Bromden's loss of masculinity is not the direct result of an overbearing female, but rather because of the failure and defeat of his father by the government and his wife.

<8> Bromden's perspective on the ruin of his father and role-model leads to his own feelings of inferiority. His physical perception of himself is not of the six-foot-eight-inch lumbering giant that he is, but rather as a shrunken man who is a mere shadow of his former self. McMurphy describes him as ". . . big as a damn mountain," while Bromden sees himself as ". . . way too little" (Kesey 207). It is only with the help of McMurphy that Chief Bromden once again gains the self-confidence needed to see himself as a big man.

<9> Like Chief Bromden, our narrator in Fight Club is also in dire need of salvation from the image and lifestyle that society has thrust upon him. Since he and Tyler Durden are one in the same, two personalities simultaneously occupying the same body, it is necessary to give him a separate name to distinguish between the two. Since the movie often has him using the phrase "I am Jack's. . ." (in the book, he uses Joe) to express himself, I will adopt this as his nickname. Like Chief Bromden, Jack finds himself in his present state of affairs largely due to the failure of his father as a role model and provider. His father abandoned the family when he was still very young.

<10> Finally, we have our heroes, McMurphy and Tyler Durden. Both characters come from rather obscure backgrounds, McMurphy being in and out of prison, with the scars and stories to prove it and Tyler, well, we do not really know (since he is the same person as Jack, he does not really have a background). The most important attribute that Tyler shares with McMurphy is his raw and undisturbed masculinity. These two are the epitome of manhood, everything the others strive to be, but are unable to achieve. As Durden states: "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck, I'm smart, I'm capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not" (Fincher). Durden, like McMurphy, is presented as a Christ figure, though this is not necessarily important to the theme of either story. And lastly, Durden offers the same hope and vision of a better future as McMurphy for the men that he leads.

<11> Our characters in both stories share a common thread in the action that they take to absolve their crisis of being. Both texts find the characters using the idea of a support group. In Cuckoo's Nest, the support group is turned against the men by Nurse Ratched and they are forced to retreat into a group of their own for the support they need. Similarly, in Fight Club, Jack must eventually form his own. He first visits support groups for various cancers and illnesses because he finds them to be ". . . as close as I've been to sleeping in almost a week" (Palahniuk 17). His insomnia stems from the deep-down knowledge that there is a problem to be dealt with in his life. Since he does not yet realize what this problem is, he surrounds himself with others who have problems of their own.

<12> The most important support group that Jack frequents is a testicular cancer group. This is of particular importance because these men are the literal realization of those who have had their manhood taken from them. These men have had their testicles surgically removed, but the results have been so much worse than this. All of their lives are in shambles, ruined families, bankruptcy, and "bitch tits." This is very reminiscent of the men of the ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:

. . . most of us in here even lack the sexual ability to make the grade as adequate rabbits. Failures, we are-feeble, stunted, weak little creatures in a weak little race. Rabbits sans whambam; a pathetic notion. . . We comical little creatures can't even achieve masculinity in the rabbit world. . . We are - the rabbits, one might say, of the rabbit world! (Kesey 64)

Like the men with testicular cancer, the men on the ward feel that they do not fit into society because of their inadequacies that are used to rob them of their masculinity. They seek the comfort of their group because, like the name of Jack's support group, they are "Remaining Men Together."

<13> After Tyler and Jack meet, they begin to understand what it is that makes them feel incomplete: it is this consumer lifestyle that has somehow made them lose sight of their manhood. In order to regain some sense of the brutal nature of masculinity, they form "Fight Club," a support group of their own. This is the solution to Tyler's observation: "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? I don't want to die without any scars" (Fincher).

<14> Although secondary to the role of society itself, the role that the female plays in the loss of manhood felt by all of the characters is present none the less. As we see in the characters of Billy Bibbit, Harding, and Chief Bromden, Kesey has used a feminine influence as the key player in the downfall of his characters. Palahniuk also uses female figures to explain the inadequacies of his generation of characters. During one scene of David Fincher's motion picture rendition, Jack seems to be directly evoking the character of Billy Bibbit. He claims "I can't get married, I'm a thirty year old boy." With the age of the two characters only one year apart (Bibbit being thirty-one), the connection is very powerful. We can immediately correlate Bibbit's whole smothered existence to Jack's feelings of underdevelopment. Durden's response of "We're a generation of men raised by women, I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need," reveals that they, in fact, share the dilemma of the men on the ward who have been conditioned for so long by the women in their own lives and now must be subjected to the ruling hand of Big Nurse, only adding to their sense of male inadequacy.

<15> Both of these stories outline the state in which present day society has left us. This does not actually occur within the novels, but it is rather realized as something that has taken place gradually and imposed itself on our generation. While Kesey's novel focuses primarily on the Combine as social pressures that result in the loss of one's manhood, Fight Club, being a more recent work, puts the main emphasis on a combination of corporate life and advertising:

. . . slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so that we can buy shit that we don't need. We're the middle children of history man, no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. . . but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact, and we're very, very pissed off. (Fincher)

With this monologue, Durden sums up the key role of the "American Dream" in the ultimate ruin of freedom and happiness. We are so wrapped up in the idea that our possessions determine our happiness and fulfillment in life that we rush into dull, mundane, work-a-day jobs that we hate, in order to buy the things that we are made to believe we need (as opposed to want). The things we own end up owning us. Also, there is a void left behind by the absence of some way to prove our worth by means of a generation-uniting strife to overcome, and we attempt to fill this void by consuming. We are raised to expect everything to happen for us, and when it does not, we are left "very, very pissed off."

<16> This leads to the issue of a nesting instinct imposed on us by society. The emergence of suburbia was happening at relatively the same time that Kesey composed his story. We see the influence in the text:

Or things like five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the factory they're still linked together like sausages, a sign saying "NEST IN THE WEST HOMES - NO DWN. PAYMENT FOR VETS," a playground down the hill from the houses, behind a checker-wire fence and another sign that read "ST. LUKE'S SCHOOL FOR BOYS" - there were five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullover sweater playing crack the whip across an acre of crushed gravel. . . every crack popped a little kid off the end. . . And it was always the same little kid. . . (Kesey 228)

Bromden sees the vast "normalization" as the result of the Combine. Machinery moves across the land, laying out an ordered, symmetric, and defined world, full of identical houses, people, children, cars, and lives. This pressure from a capitalist society to get a job, start a family, and gather possessions is what leads to the molding of people into consumers. Adults are not the only ones subjected to this pressure, it begins before boys become men - at the grade school level. Chief sees a whole sea of children all trained to be identical, and the one that stands out gets pushed around. "NEST IN THE WEST HOMES. . ." - this is what has become of Chief Bromden's world; the life he used to know - hunting, fishing, and being free is all but vanished.

<17> Jack discusses this in Fight Club:

You buy furniture. . . the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. (Palahniuk 44)

We become trapped. The world tells us that we want and need to accumulate all of the possessions that will make us whole. In order to acquire these things that we want - these things that we need, we take on responsibilities until we become prisoners to our own lifestyle obsession.

<18> It is important to recognize the sharp contrast between the two sides of our character's double-life. His condo is composed of everything that a respectable, young, bachelor businessman is supposed to have: the right furnishings, a respectable wardrobe, all of the material possessions that constitute a "designer lifestyle." Everything is familiar, comfortable, and predictable. The house on Paper St., by comparison, is a genuine unknown territory. It is unfamiliar, offers none of the amenities necessary for comfort, and its broken-down condition makes it a far cry from being a predictable, let alone safe environment:

It looked like it was waiting to be torn down. Most of the windows were boarded-up, there was no lock on the door from when the police or whoever had kicked it in, the stairs were ready to collapse, I didn't know if he owned it or if he was squatting, neither would have surprised me. . . what a shit-hole. (Fincher)

It is this environment that first invokes the idea of Durden's life as a "frontiersman," like the historical frontiers that mankind has faced: the sea, the west, or the sky, the house is presented as a savage and untamed wilderness seemingly untouched by modern civilization.

<19> Just as the condo stands opposite the house, Jack's work life stands in opposition to the work of Tyler. Jack spends his workday in his cubicle at his office building, plugging away at mind-numbingly boring tasks and calculations. He speaks in a language of business jargon and sits in his stiff, uptight clothes kissing his boss's ass. Creating Fight Club, on the other hand, finds him in dark alleys and barroom basements. Where the men congregate in this dank environment, they are all there as equals - there is no uniform, no cubicles, and no bullshit. It is the transition from one setting to the other that Jack must achieve, to leave behind the familiar and explore the unknown.

<20> When Durden destroys the comfortable "nest" setting of Jack's condo that he is dependent on for feelings of security and identity by means of home-made dynamite, he forces Jack out of the suburban stronghold and into the unexplored depths of barroom basements, dark urban underground, and the dilapidated house on Paper St., which are to become the settings for discoveries about, society, theology, and self. As Tyler explains: "The liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception. . . to reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions" (Fincher). Here, Tyler makes clear his purpose for taking Jack under his wing. What he aims to do is not simply to guide his friend to a different lifestyle, but rather to alter his notion of the world. It is also apparent from his notion of rejecting civilization, that in order to achieve this new perception, they must venture away from traditional society and into the unknown.

<21> The idea of this "frontier" that they must push the boundaries of is used repeatedly throughout the movie. The most notable of references is Durden's use of the term "space monkey," referring to our early test pilots of the vehicles that would allow us to escape the hold of gravity and explore the new frontier of outer space. His employment of this term is mainly used in order to illustrate the sacrifice that is necessary to ultimately finding his salvation. While burning Jack's hand, Tyler explains:

The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. . . what you're feeling, is premature enlightenment. (Fincher)

The idea of pain as a sacrifice that is made for the greater good of gaining knowledge about oneself is the underlying principle of the Fight Club, the underground support group formed by these two men. As Tyler puts it: "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? I don't want to die without any scars" (Fincher). Also, the notion of one "hero's" sacrifice invokes in us a sense of team work, banding together for a greater purpose. The monkey depends on mission control to guide his trip and mission control depends on the monkey to complete his flight.

<22> Once Tyler begins Project Mayhem he once again applies the "space monkey" analogy to the first recruit: "Like a monkey ready to be shot into space. A space monkey, ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good" (Fincher). The symbolic title of "space monkey" illustrates for us that the eventual goal of Fight Club/Project Mayhem is to explore new frontiers in order to find a new way of life by challenging society's contemporary control of life—this is why Tyler builds an army.

<23> As a prelude to his master plan of mayhem and destruction, Tyler Durden recognizes the injustice that has been dealt us and offers a way out during a conversation with Jack:

"We're consumers, we are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me, are celebrity magazines, television with five-hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear, rogain, viagra, olestra. . ."

"Martha Stewart. . ."

"Fuck Martha Stewart, Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic, it's all going down man, so fuck off with your sofa units and strinne green stripe patterns. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let's evolve, let the chips fall where they may." (Fincher)

To stop being perfect, to accept yourself as who you are and stop catering to society's rules and expectations - this is the path to redemption as shown to us by Kesey and Palahniuk. Is it something about the pacific northwest that has instilled in these authors their ideals? Perhaps it is the presence of both the powerful industry/corporate culture (corporations like Microsoft, Nike, and Starbucks found their origin in the pacific northwest) and the overwhelming natural environment, tribal history, and culture that encompasses it. Whatever it is that lead the authors to compose them, these two enormously popular works of literature both have the content needed to satirize modern culture, see a downfall in the perception of society, and demand that this action be taken. This is what we must strive for, to venture out of the nests that we have been conditioned to need, dare to explore the boundaries that hold us back, and to look past what we have been taught to want and to realize that we don't need any of it.

 

Works Cited  

Eisenhower, Dwight D. The White House Years: Waging Peace 1956-1961. London: Heinemann, 1966.

Fincher, David dir. Fight Club. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999.

Kesey, Ken. "from An Impolite Interview with Ken Kesey." One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Text and Criticism. ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1996.

Kesey, Ken. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Text and Criticism. ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1996.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.

 

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