17. If you could spend a year with any real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose? Why? (Kalamazoo College/93)
This year in English 11, I read Ken Kesey's masterpiece: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This book talked about society's main goal, conformity. McMurphy, an "admission" (Kesey), tried to change the ways of the mental asylum and tried to show the patients that they could do anything as long as they put their mind to it. If I could spend a year with any person, I would spend my year with the character for Ken Kesey's novel, McMurphy.
This might be a peculiar thing to state, but when I first read this question, I knew this was exactly who I wanted to spend my year with. But not in the real world that we know today. I would want to spend a year with McMurphy during the 1950's. The society in which we live in today tries to do everything in its power to conform us and make us into "business men in black suits and a briefcase" walking on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1950's New York. We go to school to learn what everyone wants us to learn. Teachers teach, not to allow us to think for ourselves but to let us believe that we're thinking for ourselves. We go to college because it is expected that students who go to an elite school such as Woodstock are meant to go to college. We dress the way the media says is correct. We talk with an "accent" because if we don't we're looked down upon. We'll be said to have a "local" accent. I don't really know what that means, but that's reality. Everything we do is already predetermined. Everyone, like the Big Nurse in Cuckoo's Nest, already know what the outcome of our actions are going to be. It just shows that there isn't anyone who is different, let alone unique.
If I spent a year with McMurphy, I would understand the way that society started conforming people. The suburban homes, the mundane jobs, and oppression of women would be all clear to me. I want to spend a year with McMurphy because he was one of those people who tried to change the idea of conformity into nothing but a hushed whisper to the mouths of those who want to feed on others despair and hopelessness. I want to spend a year with the rabbit between the rabbit and the wolf. I would learn lots of things. I would learn how people react to those that try to change the status quo, I would learn how society worked, and I would learn how difficulty it was to stand up for your rights. No matter how much we think we know it, we don't know anything about gaining an identity compared to those who lived before us.
I would take all that I learned and bring it into the real world. And maybe try to eliminate "conformity" from our vocabulary, and allow people to be the way they want to be, not the way others want them to be.
This year in English 11, I read Ken Kesey's masterpiece: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This book talked about society's main goal, conformity. McMurphy, an "admission" (Kesey), tried to change the ways of the mental asylum and tried to show the patients that they could do anything as long as they put their mind to it. If I could spend a year with any person, I would spend my year with the character for Ken Kesey's novel, McMurphy.
This might be a peculiar thing to state, but when I first read this question, I knew this was exactly who I wanted to spend my year with. But not in the real world that we know today. I would want to spend a year with McMurphy during the 1950's. The society in which we live in today tries to do everything in its power to conform us and make us into "business men in black suits and a briefcase" walking on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1950's New York. We go to school to learn what everyone wants us to learn. Teachers teach, not to allow us to think for ourselves but to let us believe that we're thinking for ourselves. We go to college because it is expected that students who go to an elite school such as Woodstock are meant to go to college. We dress the way the media says is correct. We talk with an "accent" because if we don't we're looked down upon. We'll be said to have a "local" accent. I don't really know what that means, but that's reality. Everything we do is already predetermined. Everyone, like the Big Nurse in Cuckoo's Nest, already know what the outcome of our actions are going to be. It just shows that there isn't anyone who is different, let alone unique.
If I spent a year with McMurphy, I would understand the way that society started conforming people. The suburban homes, the mundane jobs, and oppression of women would be all clear to me. I want to spend a year with McMurphy because he was one of those people who tried to change the idea of conformity into nothing but a hushed whisper to the mouths of those who want to feed on others despair and hopelessness. I want to spend a year with the rabbit between the rabbit and the wolf. I would learn lots of things. I would learn how people react to those that try to change the status quo, I would learn how society worked, and I would learn how difficulty it was to stand up for your rights. No matter how much we think we know it, we don't know anything about gaining an identity compared to those who lived before us.
I would take all that I learned and bring it into the real world. And maybe try to eliminate "conformity" from our vocabulary, and allow people to be the way they want to be, not the way others want them to be.
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