Jeff Saccone 12/16 4 CuckooThe value of experience plays a major role in the poem The Waking by, Roethke and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by, Kesey. Both portray a similar message, which seems to suggest that in life you must learn to live by gaining different experiences, which contribute to making you the person that you are. The quote “I learn by going where I go” from The Waking would be the same philosophy that McMurphy used in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to teach the ward members how to live on their own and gain a sense of individuality. You can not shy away from things or go through life doing the same things over and over again or you become a machine incapable of making your own decisions. In The Waking the author tells of how you must ask questions about things you don’t know and you must learn things by actually venturing into the unknown to gain new knowledge. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy tries to make the patients believe in themselves and not have to go by the strict rules of the nurse. By allowing them to learn to help themselves he in a sense opens each inmate to a new world in which they can succeed and therefore they do not need to be sheltered from society. He tries to let them gain new experiences and even if they are not successful ones they still learn something and gain confidence and individuality.In The Waking the poem can be compared to an a patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest before McMurphy got a chance to teach the patients about experience. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow describes how the inmates would wake up only to go through a planned out schedule that they didn’t have to think about at all. So in waking they were basically asleep and just moving slowly through life with no purpose. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear shows how the patients believed they should go through their lives without feeling fe...
