SOURCE: Semino, Elena, and Kate Swindlehurst. “Metaphor and Mind Style in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.” Style 30, no. 1 (spring 1996): 143-66.

In the following essay, Semino and Swindlehurst focus on the metaphors that inform Chief Bromden's worldview in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, asserting that the character's idiosyncrasies lead to both his mental and physical liberation.

1. Introduction

Roger Fowler coined the term “mind style” in 1977 to describe the phenomenon in which the language of a text projects a characteristic world view, a particular way of perceiving and making sense of the world. In William Golding's The Inheritors, for example, the reader must contend with the peculiar mind style of Lok, the Neanderthal man whose point of view is privileged in the first and longest part of the novel. Lok appears to have little understanding of human agency and of cause-and-effect relationships, and he seems to...