Symbolism in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with the symbolism of 1960s popular culture. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. The novel often refers to the music and cartoons of the time. These help exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution. Popular culture provides the music that is used as a recurring theme in the novel. McMurphy doesn't like the tape playing in the common room because it represents the way the department is run regularly and without change. McMurphy also uses music to achieve good relationships with patients. On his first morning in the hospital, McMurphy is heard singing several lines from "The Wagoner's Lad": "Living hard is my pleasure, my money is my own, and them that don't like me, they can leave me alone" (Kesey 93) . In this scene he sings to express his good mood (Twayne). Later, in the hall, as one of the assistants goes to speak to the angry Big Nurse, McMurphy whistles, with an illusion to the Globetrotters, "Sweet Georgia Brown" as "a fun accompaniment to the aide's evasive shuffle" (Sherwood 399) . After shocking Nurse Ratched with his whale shorts, he accompanies her retreat to the nurses' station with the song "The Roving Gambler" to establish his style, define his character and show his indifference to politics: "I he brought into his parlor, and cooled me with his fan - I can feel the blow as he slaps his bare belly - he whispered softly in his mother's ear, I love that gambler" (Kesey 97). The cartoon symbolism demonstrated in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest helps create dynamic characteristics and traits in each character. Bromden is quick to point out that the department is "Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, moving through some sort of silly story that could be really funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures that are real kids..." (31). The hospital technicians speak in voices that "are forced and too quick to return to be real chatter – more like cartoon comedy talk" (33). Kesey chooses to depict some of his characters as symbolic caricatures, and others as stock figures that surpass their black outlines (Twayne). The Big Nurse remains a cartoon villain, funny in her excessive frustration and hateful in her manipulations of patients.