It could be argued that the nature of modern living is
such that people are now more prone to nervous ailments
than in earlier times, whether these ailments manifest
themselves in comparatively minor forms, such as mild
paranoia or depression, or in more major, psychotic or
psychopathic ways. Whether or not this is true, there are
many instances in modern literature of characters who
display some kind of nervous ailment. Minor affections
such as paranoia or a feeling of oppression are perhaps
most common, for example Asa Leventhal in Saul Bellow's The
Victim or many of the characters in Sylvia Plath's
work who display symptoms of a feeling of oppression (particularly
Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar). There are
characters who appear somewhere in the middle in the 'madness
scale', for example, Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse
Five who most of the time is considered sane but is
convinced that he regularly makes trips to another planet.
Furthermore there are examples of work which deal with 'total
madness', an example of which is Ken Kesey's One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The theme which all these works have in common is that
the character's afflictions are not perceived as being
entirely their own fault but to a certain extent caused
by events in their lives or the society around them. In
this essay I shall look at the way in which the authors
portray the ailments of their characters and the
different ways which the characters have of dealing with
them.
Saul Bellow. The Victim
In The Victim, Saul Bellow's character Asa
Leventhal is a good example of someone suffering from
paranoia. As a Jew in post-war America he is in a
minority and he constantly feels that people dislike him
or are even persecuting him because of his Jewishness.
The situation is exacerbated by the arrival of Kirby
Allbee, a figure from Leventhal's past who blames him for
the loss of his job three years earlier.
The plot of the novel seems to be based on a novel by
Dostoyevsky, The Eternal Husband, [1] although Bellow says that the parallel, now
obvious to him, did not occur to him at the time of
writing. The theme of Dostoyevsky's novel is the dignity
of man. The protagonist, Alexey Velchaniov is unwell
physically (whilst Leventhal is unwell mentally, it could
be argued) and both are burdened with guilt. Into the
lives of each of these men comes a 'double'; someone they
have hurt in the past and onto whom they can project
their guilt. The 'doubles' prey on the guilt-ridden
protagonists with a combination of love and hate. In each
case there is an attempted murder, and the protagonist is
healed. There are many further parallels, but what is
actually important is the device of the 'double'. Allbee
as Leventhal's 'double' is the anti-Semite Leventhal
needs to justify his guilty feelings and sense of
persecution, while Allbee needs to believe Leventhal to
be to blame for his downfall so that he can blame the
world for his troubles rather than himself. It is through
their reciprocal blaming that they manage to escape from
their afflictions.
Leventhal says of Allbee that he was:
Haunted
in his mind by wrongs or faults of his own which he
turned into wrongs against himself.
But this is
equally true of Leventhal himself; he is afraid that his
boss, his brother's wife, his mother-in-law and even his
friend Williston are all against him because he is a Jew,
even though he is never attacked on these grounds and
never persecuted at all. It should also be noted that
Leventhal does not seem to be a particularly pious Jew,
he does not attend synagogue nor does he observed the
public holiday, which seems to make his paranoia even
less well-founded.
Leventhal's propensity to feel that he is the victim of
persecution for no discernible reason is evident in his
first meeting with Allbee. He is prepared to punch him
before a word has passed between them merely because he
approached looking 'suspicious'. Jonathan Wilson, however,
argues that Bellow seems to be of the opinion that
Leventhal has reason for being paranoid as city violence
was fairly common. [2] This does not seem to be a
particularly a viable argument as Allbee is initially
only verbally abusive, but progresses because Leventhal
allowed himself to be so greatly riled by Allbee's
presence. This can be seen in the description of his
unease at being in a restaurant with his nephew when
Allbee is also there.
Leventhal,
in speaking to Philip, or smoking, or smiling, was so
conscious of Allbee, so certain he was being
scrutinised, that he was able to see himself as if
through a strange pair of eyes . . . The acuteness
and intimacy of it astounded him, oppressed and
intoxicated him.
Another
example of the his general feeling of persecution and
paranoia can be seen when Leventhal is musing upon the 'strange
savage things' which go on around him.
They hung
near him all the time in trembling drops, invisible
usually, or seen from a distance. But that did not
mean that there was always to be a distance, or that
sooner or later one or two of the drops might not
fall on him.
Further
examples of his paranoia are evident in the fact that he
believes that Allbee can have him blacklisted, even
though he has been told that this is not the case, he
feels that subway doors deliberately close on him and
trucks 'encircle' him, he believes that his ten year old
nephew bears a grudge against him and the idea that his
wife might be being unfaithful to him is even put into
his mind by Allbee.
Returning to the theme of Allbee as Leventhal's 'double'
it can be seen that Leventhal often projects some of his
feelings onto Allbee, often those of which he himself is
unconscious. The most important instance of this is seen
in his projection of his sexual impulses. Bellow writes
that when Leventhal descends in an elevator 'amid a crowd
of girls, from the commercial school upstairs' he is 'largely
unconscious of the pleasure that he took in their smooth
arms and smooth faces'. However when Allbee is in the
same elevator with Leventhal and the same girls, Allbee
comments upon them as Leventhal's double, it is his job
to make manifest Leventhal's hidden feelings,
particularly those which he does not even admit to
himself.
There is a further example of this when Leventhal returns
to his flat to find Allbee in bed with a woman, whom he
immediately thinks Mrs Nunez, a woman from whom,
throughout the novel Leventhal has felt a certain sexual
suggestiveness emanating. Here Allbee is living what
Leventhal desires, (even though it turns out that the
woman is not Mrs Nunez) and so alleviates some of his
guilt.
By the end of the novel Leventhal is much more at ease
with himself. Allbee has provided him with the means of
justifying his paranoia and guilty feelings and so he now
no longer feels that he is being blamed for everything, (after
having begun to believe at one point that he really was
to blame for Allbee's job loss), and is not so ready to
blame others for his misfortunes. Bellow writes:
The
consciousness of an unremitting daily fight, though
still present, was fainter, less troubling . . . As
time went on he lost the feeling that he had, as he
used to say, 'got away with it', his guilty relief,
and the accompanying sense of infringement.
In the final
chapter of the novel both men seem much more confident
and at ease with themselves. Having had the opportunity
to justify their feelings of guilt and persecution by
projecting them onto each other, Leventhal and Allbee
seen to have been able to overcome their respective
feelings of paranoia and accept themselves.
Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest
The nervous ailments dealt with in Ken Kesey's One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are of a very different
order to the paranoia felt by the protagonists in The
Victim. The characters in One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest are actually considered mad, and so
the novelist deals with their problems in a different way
and also has a considerably different view as to how
their ailments were caused. While Bellow seems to suggest
that the reasons for Leventhal's and Allbee's paranoid
feelings came from within themselves rather than being
caused by society, Kesey strongly suggests that the
residents of the ward in his novel are there because they
could not cope with the pressures put on them by society
to conform, and that their madness is caused by others,
rather than originating within the men themselves.
Kesey also deals with the ineffective way in which these
men are 'treated' for their various aliments. He
constantly alludes to the way that the institution, in
particular 'Big Nurse' attempts to dehumanise these men,
illustrating the fact that it is deemed better that these
men have no signs of individuality so that they will fit
into society more easily. The author does not portray
them then in a derogatory light or laugh at them, but
rather seems to look on them as victims of society's
oppression, and sees society as the root of their
problems.
The author also seems to be attacking society's view of
madness, in that these men are merely dehumanised, ill-treated
by the staff, and appear to be on the ward just so that
they are kept out of the way, rather than to be treated.
The novel is based on Kesey's experience of working in
such an institution. He noticed that the system worked by
disallowing freedom of any kind; freedom of movement,
freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought.
The men on the ward are resigned to their regime until
McMurphy arrives to disrupt it. Randall McMurphy makes
the men realise that it is possible to think for
themselves, which results in a complete destruction of
the system as it was.
Fred Madden wrote: 'For Kesey, any sort of conformity
means a loss of individual sanity.' [3] and
this view is clearly illustrated throughout the book.
The action is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a
huge red Indian who everyone believes to be deaf and dumb.
He comments that it was not he who originally decided to
adopt this act but others who treated him as if he were
deaf and dumb, which illustrates that the way a person is
depends upon the society around him. Indeed, Chief
Bromden's father told him:
If you
don't watch it people will force you one way or the
other into doing what they think you should do, or
into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite
just out of spite.
In a way the
Chief has done both: he acts deaf and dumb because that
is the role imposed upon him, but also gains the upper
hand by pretending to be what he is not. However, his
lack of communication also works against him, he often
feels alienated, lost in the 'fog' which he believes is
created by a machine from time to time. As well as being
indicative of his mute state, this is also an indication
of his state in society, he feels he is an outsider.
There are other men on the ward whose problems have
clearly been caused by other people, for example, Billy
Bibbitt whose problems, which are clearly rooted in his
mother's oppressive treatment of him, cause him to
stutter, and Harding who suffers from excessive sexual
jealousy caused merely by the attractiveness of his wife.
For these two men the atmosphere of the ward is
particularly unhelpful. Nurse Ratched is often referred
to as the 'mother' of the ward and continues the female
oppressiveness from which the two men are already
suffering. This is particularly true for Billy, as the
nurse frequently threatens to report his behaviour to his
mother when he steps out of line, which is in fact what
causes his eventual suicide.
The men are all dehumanised and even emasculated, a fact
which is emphasised by the first of three suicides in the
novel, Old Rawlet's death by castration. It is the
arrival of McMurphy which makes the men begin to question
the system. McMurphy begins challenging the system in
small ways, such as asking that 'ward policy' be changed
so that they can watch the world series, and is shocked
to find the men so unwilling to vote. Another more
symbolic example is his attempt to lift the control panel,
a feat which he will clearly be unable to achieve; but he
makes the point that he tried, which is more than any of
the other men would think to do. The control panel is a
representation of the 'Combine', the Chief believes that
it mechanically controls the men via the devices which he
momentarily sees inside the tranquilliser pills which
they are given. Whilst it is true that his hallucinations
are mere hallucinations, they are in fact representative
of what is happening on the ward; even though the men are
not being controlled by electronic devices, they may as
well be because they have been deprived of the ability to
think for themselves to such an extent.
McMurphy symbolically challenges the system by attempting
to lift the control panel and continues to do so in more
rebellious ways, by organising the fishing trip and
eventually the party. Kesey says that McMurphy is a
fictional character but was inspired by 'the tragic
longing' for such a character that he saw in the men he
worked with on the ward.
McMurphy's influence, however, is not wholly positive.
McMurphy is not wholly above conformity: when he realises
that nurse Ratched can decide to whether he should be
relocated or kept institutionalised he falters in his
striving for non-conformity and personal identity. This
causes Cheswick, who was beginning to learn to become
less dehumanised, to lose hope and commit suicide. His
increasing despair can clearly be seen when, given the
chance to escape, he 'accidentally' oversleeps after the
party. Having been in the institution for a length of
time, he too has become dehumanised. This dehumanisation
becomes total when McMurphy is lobotomised, and in the
final section of the book, when the Chief kills him, he
is completely depersonalised, being referred to as 'it'
or a 'body'. 'It' is no longer a person, but it should be
noted that in this instance the dehumanisation is
particularly severe; McMurphy is now practically a
vegetable, although this fact could be seen to be making
the point that the other men on the ward are in almost
the same state, the only difference being that they can
move about.
The Chief's account of killing McMurphy shows that
McMurphy was now a non-person:
The big,
hard body had a tough grip on life. It fought a long
time against having it taken away, flailing and
thrashing around so much I finally had to lie full
length on top of it and scissor the kicking legs with
mine while I mashed the pillow into the face. I lay
there on top of the body for what seemed days. Until
the thrashing stopped. Until it was still a while and
had shuddered once and was still again.
At no point
in this final section is 'the body', McMurphy, a person;
it is just a body, showing the damaging effects of the
depersonalisation caused by such an institution in an
extremely striking way.
Madden argues that the Chief's killing of McMurphy is not
a mercy killing as it is often seen to be. He sees it as
being the Chief's final act as part of the oppressed
group of the men on the ward and through it he sees how
much McMurphy was manipulated by group pressure, in the
same way as the other men in ward, but pressure of a
different kind. While the other men were pressed into
submission by the 'Combine', McMurphy was forced to act
as the rebellious hero bringing reform by the rest of the
group, but was forced to take things too far and
consequently sacrifice himself. The Chief, through this
awareness, becomes able to free himself and shows this
symbolically by throwing the control panel through the
window and escaping. McMurphy's influence also encourages
a lot of the men on the ward to find the courage to
discharge themselves, realising that they too have been
depersonalised and their state is not going to improve
unless they escape.
It should be noted that although Kesey's main idea in the
novel is that the pressure of society has caused the
ailments of these men, their recovery must come from
within themselves, in the same way in which Leventhal and
Allbee had to find it within themselves, through each
other, to overcome their paranoia and guilt. McMurphy was
a mere catalyst in the Chief's recovery; if he had been
the sole cause, surely all the men on the ward would have
been cured. McMurphy merely inspired the Chief to find it
within himself to rediscover his identity and escape from
the dehumanising atmosphere of the institution. So the
message of the novel appears to be that while society
causes nervous ailments, rather than them coming from the
individuals themselves, to achieve recovery a person has
to find it within himself to challenge the rules being
laid down. It also makes the point that mental
institutions are unhelpful and oppressive.
Conclusion
The two novels discussed in this essay are to an extent
different in their analysis of nervous ailments. In One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest it is implied that the
men's ailments are caused and exacerbated mainly by the
oppression of society, whilst in The Victim the
ailments come mainly from within the protagonists. What
they have in common is the message that society is
generally unhelpful in helping people to overcome their
ailments and that the will to recover must come from
within.
Taking modern literature as a whole, Kesey's view that
society is at fault appears to be more common. Examples
are Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, in which
Holden Caulfield's unease is caused by the 'phoniness' of
society, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar where
Esther's breakdown is caused by the imposition of roles
by society, and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
where Billy Pilgrim's hallucinations are caused by trauma
suffered in the war. On the whole, modern literature
treats nervous ailments as something which is not
shameful, not the fault of the individual, but also makes
the point that the individual must generally find it
within himself to gain recovery, and not look to society
for help.
Bibliography
Clayton. Saul Bellow in Defence of Man
Saul Bellow. The Victim
Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Leeds. Ken Kesey
Wilson. On Bellow's Planet
Madden. Sanity and Responsibility: Big Chief as Narrator
and Executioner. In 'Modern Fiction Studies' volume 32
1986
Kesey. Kesey's Garage Sale
References
[1] Clayton p 141
[2] Wilson p 59
[3] Madden p 206
© Catherine Cooper, April 2001
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