Everyone at some point in their life has felt different or out of place. Everyone has also had a bully or that person they just didn't want to be around or someone they knew. Plus, everyone had that one person they admired because they stood up for themselves and said what they wanted, even if it meant sure punishment. In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, these three attributes stand out in the story. A discussion of the story's setting, theme, and character situations will help you understand how these feelings align with most people living on the streets today. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is set primarily in a hidden mental hospital in the world. Oregon forests. During an extended portion of the novel, however, the patients at the mental hospital go on a deep-sea fishing trip and the setting shifts to the open sea. Every character involved in the novel is a patient or doctor at the hospital, leaving little room for the setting to alter anything outside the institution. In this novel, each individual is pushed here and there by one person or another who is the main theme. of the new suppression of an individual. Men like Harding, Billy Bibbit, Seefeld, Frederickson, and McMurphy are not really crazy. The only reason McMurphy is in the hospital is because he pretended to be insane to get out of prison. They are here because they can't cope in society. They were beaten into submission and their individuality was taken over by Nurse Ratched. They believe that living in society is too difficult. They feel that they are unable to look after themselves, so they need someone like the demanding nurse to monitor them. Unfortunately, they cannot live with their cowardly ways and will remain cowards for the rest of their lives. Every man in the institute has some kind of deformity or problem with things like speaking which shows up as their weakness. The employees have also suffered at the hands of the company and the nurse uses their hatred to control the members of the hospital. They, in a certain sense, have been "trained" to tolerate insults and, therefore, nothing affects them. The Chief, an Indian, was treated as if he had not existed his entire life..