Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Prince of Thieves: A Mythological Analysis of Cuckoo’s Nest
In Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, our story unfolds around our hero, McMurphy, overthrowing an institution Nurse Ratched developed. Every story has a hero, and a villain, but the archetype of Kesey’s tale unravels the prospect of a mythic taking power and giving it to the less fortunate. Or rather, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. McMurphy is a parallel to Robin Hood, in the same sense Nurse Ratched reflects the Sheriff of Nottingham.
McMurphy is Robin Hood with his ‘saving-the-day’ mentality. During the shower scene, where George was vehemently against taking the soap Mc Murphy was the only one to stand up and do something at the abuse from the workers.

Obviously for the hero this means fighting the bad guys and even when he was knocked down, “He kept coming, taking ten blows for one”(274). These displays of grandeur are classic Robin-Hood behaviour. He takes from the ‘rich’ and gives to the ‘poor’, metaphorically at least. “... he said… he could use one of those smokes… then ran his hand through the glass”(201). Still, metaphorically speaking, McMurphy breaking the glass of the Nurse’s Station takes her pedestal, her castle away and brings her at the level of the rest of the men.
Nurse Ratched in comparison would be Sheriff Nottingham in the story, being corrupt, and repeatedly outsmarted.

During the sessions the Nurse runs, where all the men blurt out embarrassing things about themselves or others, this is torture for the patients. “Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting gallery target”(71). The men are afraid of her, so much so that they don’t even ask to vote on things that they want in fear of getting the electro shock therapy or even worse, the lobotomy. She uses this, plus her threat of never letting them out of the ward and telling them that they wouldn’t make it in the real world, manipulatively, making her system a corrupt one, the same one that Robin Hood was fighting against. The Sheriff in his tale was constantly working directly with the kings of the land to keep the poor people poor and stupid and the nobles in charge. And as Harding States, Nurse Ratched isn’t on the top, she’s purely just a worker in the Combine. But, just like Sheriff Nottingham, Nurse Ratched can be outsmarted by those fighting the system. “You know ma’am… this is the exact thing somebody always tells me about the rules… just when they figure out I’m about to do the dead opposite”(23). McMurphy then goes on to commit several shenanigans between the World Series game, the whore and the fishing trip, breaking the glass, constantly establishing that she isn’t as powerful as she thinks she

is.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the classic Robin Hood tale, with the hero taking from the rich and giving to the poor and the villain working for a corrupt system. Though, it could be argued that because of the narrator, who obviously has schizophrenia or at the least schizoid episodes, is an unreliable source and that Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are not portrayed accurately. But everyone always love a good underdog story.