We are all part of a great machine whether we like it or not. It moves us like little dolls on a string directing our every move and propels our lives forward without our control. Deep inside all of us, we know that we need to fight it, but its hold is to great and the risk too dangerous. Breaking free from the strings takes tremendous courage and a strong heart but all it takes is one person to stand up to the machine to free us all from its oppression. Some great men come along from time to time and make a change but we are still a victim of its judgment every day.
Are those in mental wards really crazy? Why are they not deemed normal? If a greater amount of us were like them wouldn’t the “normal” man become the outcast? Society does indeed decide where to put us but we can decide who we are. Most of the time society is wrong, and we fall victim to whatever ways its strings move us. If declared crazy, one becomes crazy. If declared normal one becomes normal, and few men try to go against the rules of society. For most it is not worth fighting. Most people become what society declares them even that they know it’s wrong. These people only make the machine stronger yet because although society is wrong, they accept what they have been declared thus strengthening the rules of society, becoming part of the machine and accepting that the strings will always be controlling them. That is the exact reason society is so strong. Although its strength makes it seems infallible, changing it is so simple. Just one strong human being, man or woman needs to break free from the string and not accept their judgment. Just one. Because we are the ones who make up the machine, it can be defeated by standing up to judgment and not becoming what society wants us to be.
Defeating society must come in small victories in a massive war. One of the exceptions that defies that society makes you whatever you become is the story One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Society made men that were never crazy actually mad. Randle McMurphy, the main character realizes this and although he goes against society and stands up for his friends he pays a price. Society’s judgment is overruled and the men overcome their sickness in which they never had, while McMurphy sacrifices himself on a cross shaped platform, just like another man who sacrificed himself two thousand years ago. They both gave themselves up to greater the people and change society. Because of them, many broke from their strings and were freed from their oppression or learned not to judge themselves.
There are many examples of people who became something different than society wanted them to and there will be more to come. It seems as if those who changed society the most have to pay in some way or another, and for many it’s their lives. To change it permanently, we all need to stand up with people like Martin Luther King Jr. and if we all stand up to society together, we change it.