One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a quintessential novel from the 1960s, known for its strong stance against the establishment. The story depicts a classic battle between Good and Evil, where Kesey places the individual in opposition to the Combine, a vast, mechanical bureaucracy represented by the Big Nurse. Within the psychiatric ward's microcosm, control is the main goal — a sinister control that replaces freedom with strict rules, prioritizes routine over spontaneity, and punishes expressions of personal opinion with trips to the "Shock Shop." This leads to dehumanization, as the men in the ward lose their self-worth and become mere cogs in the Combine's machine. Kesey is deeply concerned about the perils of conformity and the mindless surrender to a system. As the narrative unfolds, he illustrates that the Combine's influence extends beyond the hospital to American society, as exemplified by Chief Bromden's vision of 5,000 children, identically dressed, residing in 5,000 homes "punched out identical by a machine," owned by 5,000 men who emerge from a commuter train "like a hatch of identical insects."