One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

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In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest we seen many examples of the four characteristics of a controlled environment. The four characteristics are status hierarchy, depersonalization, adjustment, and institutionalized. The characteristic that stood out most to me in this movie was institutionalization. Institutionalization is the action of establishing something as a convention or norm in an organization or culture. In this movie there were many examples of institutionalization from the patients. The first incident is when the chief thought that if he left he wouldn’t be able to survive, this is similar to when Billy Bibbit told McMurphy that he isn’t ready to leave the hospital yet but he will meet him later when he is. Another example …show more content…

Adjustment is used in these type of institutions to keep things in a order and try to assure that things will run right. One example of adjustment is their “medication time”, each person lines up and comes and gets their assigned meds and a small cup of water at the same time everyday. Another example of adjustment is their group time, this happens everyday at the same time and they talk about their problems and the others comment on it. Depersonalization is the act of divesting someone or something of human characteristics or individuality. Someone in an institution similar to the movie or a prison may become part of a majority and not be individually recognized. An example in the movie would be when McMurphy had the lobotomy at the end of the movie. He no longer could function as himself, they did that procedure often to violent patients. Status Hierarchy is your social status to others. An example of status hierarchy is the respect of nurse Ratched’s position with the patients as well as the other nurses. She has the most authority over the patients when it comes to structure and order. McMurphy in a sense also has a status hierarchy over the patients because he tries to connect with them and when they get into trouble he is always leading it. The patients follow and go along with his scams and mostly anything he

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