AP English essay response

Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest manages to create a character with such appeal, that the audience is able to overlook his negative features that society at least in the novel would deem condemnable or amoral. A hero even Randle P. McMurphy is portrayed as by the eyes of not only the patients of ward but the reader as well. Kesey is able to suspend our judgments on what would normally be seen as negative character traits by implementing universal values that not only rang true during the time of Cukoos publishing, but also today for any reader. Through the power of fiction, Kesey is able to weave together a story where a lazy, drinking gambler can be put at odds with a tyrannical Nurse to make McMurphy look like the favorable.
McMurphy certainly has his contemptible traits. He drinks heavily, associates with prostitutes, gambles regularly, and the reason he was in the ward to begin with was to get out of work. All these, which from a Western Judeo-Christian societal standpoint ( or most cultures really) could be looked at with disdain. Kesey , however through circumstance thrusts the established sinner into the role of leader of men against the authoritative reign of the head nurse. Audience and characters alike are to suspend their view of McMurphy as an unruly social outcast to look upon him with the more relevant view of freedom fighter. The fact that he takes a stance against the tyranny of the head nurse (and of course the incredible charisma of gambling conmen) creates such appeal in him that he wins over the allegiance of both the patients and the reader. The struggle between oppressed and oppressor is so universally appealing that McMurphy became not only a beloved character of fiction in the 60’s when the novel was published in the midst of a growing counter-culture movement, but remains to be today.
The fact that the point of view is of McMurphy or at least heavily focused on McMurphy is a device used in literature to create some sort of investment of trust by the reader into believing that there is some sound reason for our protagonist to be in fact worthy of the role. Point of view can play heavily in the manipulating of a readers view on a particular character whether that be the belief of a drunk conman being a noble hero or a nurse attempting to keep control of a psych ward being a dictator. Kesey is not alone in wielding the power of point of view, point of view is how readers are able to read through a whole story believing a whiny brat like Mr. Holden Caulfield wasn’t just a whiny brat.
Literature has a way of making the most seemingly unworthy figures into beloved protagonists with hearts of gold; however that’s just the reason, its literature. In fiction an author has countless tools in his disposal to create a story where the one who logically just simply shouldn’t be a protagonist into a hero. It’s almost the irony of it which makes these characters so appealing. Kesey through the circumstance created by him was able make the amoral yet lovable (also contrived for reader appeal) McMurphy into the hero of a classic tale of struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor.