Film Overview: One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest's R.P McMurphy

1398 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Treatment in American prisons

The mentally ill, are given refugee in facilities also know as asylums. Although these facilities are meant to help these people, in 1975, they were detrimental because they restrict choice, and do not provide a meaningful life. This is depicted in the movie One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In the movie, the protagonist R.P McMurphy, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a current inmate at the state penitentiary for statutory rape and other crimes. He is a rugged, scummy, lazy man, who is in his late 40. He is a great manipulator and to avoid the work set for him at the penitentiary he hatches his newest plan; McMurphy fakes mental illness. Of course the penitentiary does not believe Mr. McMurphy, so they send him to the state mental facility for evaluation. Here he meets the other patients that he will be spending the next couple of weeks with on Ward B. McMurphy also meets the person who will challenge his freewill. This movie shows the struggle of man who fights for free choice, and purpose. This facility is very regimented much like any state run facility. Decorated with bright white walls, and filled with seemingly solemn patients. As the patients enter the facility, they are forced to live in a structured environment ran by Nurse Ratchet. On Ward B, she keeps the men on a medication regiment of different tranquilizers, meant to keep the men subdued and calm, along with her schedule meant to keep the men on task. If these men refuse their medication or to stick to the schedule, they are sent for treatment, which can range from electroshock therapy to a frontal lobotomy. Nurse Ratchet is very kind when speaking to the men, but not telling them their medication or giving them choices, effects ontology. In Barnet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia... ... middle of paper ... ...nyone tries, the individual must make his own decisions, and decide what type of life he or she may live, and they must try to achieve authenticity, even when the present situation is difficult, their attitude will help them achieve this purposeful life. Works Cited Berardinelli, James. "Reelviews: Berardinelli Sees Film." Reelviews Movie Reviews. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Jan. 2014. "Existentialism." Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 334-35. Print. Killinger, John. "Existentalism and Human Freedom." The English Journal 50 (1961): 303-13. JSTOR. Web. 12 Aug. 2008. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Dir. Milos Forman. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield. Warner Bros, 2010. DVD. Stierlin, Helm. "Existentialism Meets Psychotherapy." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24 (1963): 215-39. Jstor. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • Did Mcmurphy Change In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, patients live locked up in a restricted domain, everyday taking orders from the dictator, Nurse Ratched. Once McMurphy enters this asylum, he starts to rally everyone up and acting like this hospital is a competitive game between him and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy promotes negative behavior, such as, gambling and going against the rules, to mess around with the nurses and so he can be the leader that everyone looks up to. McMurphy soon learns that he might not be in control after all. Nurse Ratched decides who will be let out and when. After realizing why no one has stood up to Nurse Ratched before, he starts to follow rules and obey the nurses. This changes the whole mood of the hospital,

    Read More

  • AP Lit Final

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...

    Read More

  • Is Mcmurphy Transformation In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    1348 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos Forman, the character of Randle McMurphy is portrayed as being a reckless and carefree man who eventually becomes a symbol of strength and determination in the mental hospital that the film takes place in. This film shows how an individual that can start off with an insignificant and unimportant purpose, but then becomes improved by the environment that they are placed in that they establish ambitions and aspirations that radically impact both themselves and others around them.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Microcosm In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    The 1950’s, a time of oppression and confinement. A time when people were ignorant of their own situations and were manipulated by those in power. Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, represents an asylum as a microcosm of the 50’s society. It shows how the patients are oppressed by the rules of Nurse Ratched. The patients are unable to stand up for themselves due them fearing and in some ways relying on Nurse Ratched. Eventually, a hero, McMurphy comes to the asylum and free the patients from Nurse Ratched’s grasps. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Ken Kesey uses the ward as a microcosm of the 50’s society. Kesey confronts the negative impacts of such a society with the use of allegories throughout the novel, he shows how society takes away takes away freedom, the ability to make decisions and how those in power benefit from this.

    Read More

  • Character Analysis: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.

    Read More

  • The Wrath of the Big Nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the mid-twentieth century, America withstood a period of revolutions as younger generations started to challenge society’s standards and beliefs. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes place during the end of the 1950s and in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, a time when many citizens began to challenge conformity. This novel was set among patients and workers of a mental institution. The mental institution is designed to cure patients who are deemed “insane” as a result of lack of submission within society. However, the institution is controlled by society and operates in the same manner as the Outside world. Although the facade of the mental institution makes it appear to be successful through major advancements, the patients still suffer the consequences of being unique and not fitting perfectly into society. Ken Kesey uses black humor in order to expose the horrendous treatment that citizens endure within mental institutions when they do not conform to the deranged idealistic beliefs of an inhumane society.

    Read More

  • one flew over the cuckoos nest

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author Ken Kesey effectively reflects on the social climate of the 1960s in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By creating a fictitious mental institution, he creates an accurate and eye-opening mirror image of repressive modern day society. While it’s both a microcosm and exaggeration of modern day society, Kesey stresses society’s obsession with conformity, while demonstrating that those individuals who reject societal pressure and conformity are simply deemed insane. However, Kesey infuses the power of the individual in his portrayal of the charismatic outlaw Randall McMurphy, and proves that it only takes one to defeat the restrictions of a repressive society. McMurphy’s evident superiority among the other patients in the hospital immediately established his power and authority over the other patients.

    Read More

  • One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Analytical Essay

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    The use of theme in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey brings upon the ideas of misogyny, sexual repression and freedom, and salvation from an omnipotent oppressor, through the story of Chief Bromden, who lives in an insanity ward. Even from the beginning pages of the novel, the reader is introduced to such characters as Nurse Ratched, or the “Big Nurse,” who is said to be the dictator of the ward and acts upon the ward with the utmost control. Another branch of the theme of oppressors and salvation that relates to Nurse Ratched, as well as Randle McMurphy, is the idea that they are both representatives of figures based in Catholicism. Sexual repression and freedom is seen with the ultimate punishment in the ward, a lobotomy, being stated as equivalent to castration. Both of the operations are seen as emasculating, removing the men’s personal freedom, individuality, and sexual expression, and reducing them to a child-like state. All of these different pieces of the theme relates to a powerful institution that, because of the advances of the time, such as technology and civil rights for women, is causing men to be common workers without distinctive thoughts that must fit the everyday working mold of the 1950s.

    Read More

  • George Lucas

    2106 Words  | 5 Pages

    Berardinelli, James. "Reelviews: Berardinelli Sees Film." Reelviews Movie Reviews. Reelviews, 2012. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.

    Read More

  • One Flew East, One Flew West

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early 1960’s, Ken Kesey worked in the psych ward in a veterans hospital as an aide. During the course of his job, Kesey realized the administrators were giving patients experimental LSD to cope with their mental illnesses. After seeing this being done, he started to wonder, who is mentally stable and what classifies a person as insane (Kesey)? With this in mind Ken Kesey wrote, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This classic novel depicts the image of a psych ward under control by the manipulative, Nurse Ratched. The patients on the ward are lifeless; every waking moment is scheduled and controlled, until one day when a new patient, Patrick McMurphy arrives. Patrick McMurphy brings life back into the patients and helps them push the boundaries. With McMurphy on the ward there becomes a new normal. When answering the question of what normalcy is, Kesey uses character development, symbols, and motifs to give insight of the psychological well-being of others and how it shifts with positive and negative changes.

    Read More

  • Sartre’s Existentialism in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

    1566 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is Humanism.” Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Ed. Walter Kaufman. Meridian Publishing

    Read More

  • Freedom to Choose in Waiting for Godot, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Iraq

    1484 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is Humanism.” Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Ed. Walter Kaufman. Meridian Publishing

    Read More

  • Human Relations in Camus' Novel, The Outsider, from an Existentialist View

    2129 Words  | 5 Pages

    Although, there was a problem in defining the existentialism because of different ideas and different use by the writers we can define it as a philosophical and literary tendency that typically displays a dismissal of abstract theories that seek to disguise the untidiness of actual human lives and emphasizes the subjective realities of individual existence, individual freedom, and individual choice. It is virtually impossible to define absolutely as it is now so broad in its approaches but some of its major strands can b...

    Read More

  • Mental State In Hamlet

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nurse Ratched has such a control on the ward that she has gotten he patients to believe that their conditions are a lot worse than they actually are. The patient’s ultimate goal is to leave the hospital mentally stable and healthy, being told that their conditions are worse than they were before only strikes a panic. McMurphy is desperate for an escape from the ward but he knows the only way out is through Nurse Ratched. He knows that she can keep him in the ward for as long as she pleases, and he worries that will be a very long time. “Doctor—do I look like a sane man?” (Page 30). McMurphy has been set up to believe that he is extremely mentally unstable. This forces him to seek confirmation in his doctor. McMurphy does not let it show, but he deeply fears that is mental state will deteriorate during his time in the ward. Asking the doctor whether he thinks that he looks sane is McMurphy’s way of admitting that he is desperate for a release from the hospital and from Nurse Ratched’s controlling ways. “You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane."(Page 19). The way in which Nurse Ratched addresses the mental institution resembles her dehumanization of the patients in the ward. Nurse Ratched speaks of the mentally ill as if they should be ashamed and punished for something they have no control over. The nurse inflicts pain onto those whom are mentally ill as a way of treatment. McMurphy, who is originally the most mentally stable of the patients, is given pain treatments prescribed by Nurse Ratched. The treatment, in which Nurse Ratched gives McMurphy, is a punishment for not being in the right mental state. Because McMurphy’s mental state has not yet deteriorated tremendously, the pain treatment does nothing but make him internally fight with

    Read More

  • Existentialism In Metamorphosis

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    Existentialism can be defined as a philosophy that a person is responsible for their choices and the purpose of their existence changes with the decisio...

    Read More

More about Film Overview: One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest's R.P McMurphy

Open Document