Fear in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and The Scarlet Letter :: comparison compare contrast essays

Fear in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Scarlet Letter To live with fear and not be overcome by it is the final test of maturity. This test has been "taken" by various literary characters. Chief Bromden in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter both appear to have taken and passed this test. It first seemed as though the Chief was going to fail this test of maturity in the mental ward that he was committed to. He had locked himself up by acting deaf and dumb. He had immense fear of the "Combine," or society, that ruined things and people and treated them like machines, giving orders and controlling them. Soon enough to "save" the Chief, McMurphy arrived. He was lively, and not scared; the complete opposite of the Chief. This courage eventually passed on to the Chief. At a meeting, when McMurphy was holding a vote to prove that the patients wanted to see the World Series, the Chief voted for it. At first he said that McMurphy controlled his hand. Later on he admitted that it was he who raised it. He even talked to McMurphy one night, and began laughing at the situation at hand. One day when McMurphy and the Chief tried to help another patient who was being taken advantage of by orderlies, they were caught and sentenced to electro-shock therapy (EST). The Chi usually blacked out in a fog when confronted with problems; however, this time (he had endured over 200 EST sessions previously) he did not. However, McMurphy was deteriorating, and the two seemed to be reversing positions. McMurphy eventually was sentenced to a lobotomy, which left him as a helpless, pathetic person, as the Chief had once been. The Chief now had the courage to put McMurphy out of his misery, despite what the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, the symbol of the combine to the Chief, would do to him. He smothered McMurphy, and afterwards, escaped by lifting the control panel, which McMurphy told him that he could lift but the Chief saw himself as "small," a symbol of his strength against the combine, and breaking a window with it. The mere fact that the Chief could lift the panel was