(originally posted 30 April 2013)
Prominent among the motifs of canonical Western literature is the allusive retelling of the Christ narrative, an explicit thematic reference to Biblical interpretations of the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth. The original tale, sourced from the sacred texts of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Christian religious tradition, traces Christ’s significant teachings and “miracles” as observed and recorded by four of his twelve Apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As these constitute the only Gospels recognized by the reformed Christian church, they are, consequently, the textual source to which nearly all contemporary literature makes reference.
Two novelists writing in the middle of the American 20th century make such allusions to the story of Christ in their particular works, with each using the idea in a comparable, though notably different application. Ken Kesey, in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Cuckoo), utilizes multiple references to the aforementioned Gospels to portray the book’s tragic hero Randle McMurphy as a blatant, almost ironic Christ-figure. Similarly, in Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko creates parallels to Christ with the secondary character Harley, but includes significant components of this theme manifested in other characters, including the protagonist, Tayo. These novels, though vastly different in setting, scope, tone, time, and more, each use concrete elements of their respective plots to make strong allusions to the works and teachings of the Christ of the Gospels.
Perhaps the single most striking similarity between the modern literature and the Gospel accounts of the New Testament is the mortal fate of the implied Christ-figure and, infinitely more crucially, the sacrificial reason for which the character meets his end. As Jesus sits with his disciples at the Last Supper, he foretells of his impending betrayal; as they cry out and protest that none of them could so heinously deny their Savior, he picks up a cup of wine and instructs them to “drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 27-28). It is with this invocation, just one of four accounts of the same message found throughout the Gospels, that Jesus explains to his Apostles that, in his death, he assumes the burden of the sins of all; upon being betrayed, arrested, tortured, and crucified in the day to come, then enduring hell and returning (Luke 24:46-47), he has proverbially saved humanity from universal damnation. Such a tale, of the human sacrifice for another, is also present in the fates of both McMurphy in Cuckoo and Harley in Ceremony.
Following a frenetic sequence of events in the penultimate scenes of Cuckoo, the novel’s narrator, Chief Bromden, suffocates a vegetative McMurphy with his pillow, effectively ending the man’s life and resoundingly completing his messianic arc. His literal death, however, is simply a mercy at the hands of of the patient whom he led from the holistic throes of the mental institution to what, in the very last sentences of the novel, is a potentially liberated life and livelihood. But it is prior to his death that he is truly cemented as a martyr -- like Christ -- in the eyes of the band of patients; McMurphy himself is banished to the electroshock table as refuses to admit guilt and/or wrongdoing in the events that lead to Bibbit’s suicide. This is notably similar to Christ’s refusal, as he stood in ridicule in front of Pilate, to deny that he was indeed the Son of God (Devit). After being sent to another building for the procedure, a place which could conceivably be symbolic of Calvary, McMurphy is permanently rendered a mindless body, victimized by his own sacrifice for the other patients.
Silko forges a similar story in Ceremony, in which the protagonist, Tayo, is forced to flee from his home by Emo and his malevolent band of veterans; toward the very end of the novel, Tayo’s liberation is created only through the death-by-torture of his former companion, Harley, for the latter’s failure to bring Tayo to Emo. As Tayo observes Harley being slowly mutilated from a hidden vantage, he realizes epiphanically that “all that had been intended for Tayo had now turned on Harley” (Silko 251). With Harley’s ultimate death, and Emo’s seeming metaphysical need for blood met, Tayo sees that Emo has “a victim and a corpse” in Harley (Silko 251) and he watches as Emo loads the body in the trunk and drives away, mirroring the fates of the Apostles as they watched the slow, agonizing torture of Christ and his subsequent crucifixion (Matthew 15).
Beyond this most significant allusion to the self-sacrifice of Christ present in Cuckoo and Ceremony exists a notable series of parallels to the Gospel accounts of Jesus. Within Cuckoo, the climactic events leading to the protagonist’s doom are various, more subtle hints exist that suggest Kesey is indeed imposing a Christ-figure narrative onto McMurphy. The table on which McMurphy must undergo the electroshock therapy is “shaped, ironically, like a cross, with a crown of electric sparks in place of thorns” (Kesey 980). Within the pages of Ceremony, Silko makes further implication that Harley portrays a sort of Christ-figure; in the earliest section of the novel, as Tayo is sitting under an elm tree, “Harley came riding up on the black burro” (Silko 19), a veiled reference to the Biblical story of when “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written” (John 12:14) as he entered Jerusalem.
The primary characters in both books are also defined by the company they keep, a truth that reflects the interpersonal signature of Christ’s character as illustrated throughout the New Testament. Of particular note is Jesus’s insistence on keeping company and breaking bread with the lowest of society, even telling a crowd that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31). Kesey uses this sentiment in a crass sort of way, as McMurphy tells the group of patients they’d be sailing with “a twitch I know from Portland named Candy Starr” (Kesey 2813) and he continues on to make a closer acquaintance with her. Silko involves a working woman much more cryptically, choosing to give Tayo a mother who makes pleasure her business.
Beyond the significant events in either novel noted above, each further explores the idea with such events as Bibbit’s suicide in Cuckoo, which alludes to an identical fate met by Judas Iscariot after deceiving Christ; Harley’s interaction with the sheep in Ceremony, which alludes to the Gospel tale of “when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd...they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things” (Mark 6:34); and the strong themes of persecution and resistance in both works -- McMurphy and the patients versus Big Nurse Ratched, the Natives versus the whites -- that make strong parallels to Christ’s own repeated denials of the Pharisees (Matthew 23).
In both Ceremony and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Leslie Marmon Silko and Ken Kesey, respectively, have indeed crafted tales that overtly feature characters with strong Christ-like attributes. Such allusions in the crafting of characters can be used in several capacities within the work, and neither author hesitates to capitalize on this reality. Like many writers who’ve related their prose to the recountings of Christ in the New Testament, these two use such allusive characters as a literary mechanism to foreshadow events that would seem contextually probable given a comprehension of any of the Gospels. More ambitiously, each writer succeeds in using the literary parallels to the Biblical Christ to explore further themes of the cyclical nature of life as well as of Good versus Evil, both of which are common to all of art and all of life. Such a robust theme that relates to a story as ubiquitous as that of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, easily the most prominent and influential figure in the history of mankind, for better or for worse, is easily identified and easily related to, and, more significantly in the context of the present novels, acts as a fulcrum about which readers can more likely contemplate and enjoy the work.
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