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. McMurphy’s initial view of the mental hospital, is that he sees it as a new opportunity to take control and become the leader of the place. This desire of his is seen almost immediately when he enters the …show more content…
McMurphy learns that he is commited in the hospital and cannot leave until the nurse says he can, he becomes despaired and distances himself from the rest of the patients in an attempt to reduce the time that he will be required to stay in the hospital. He soon realises that no one can leave the hospital because they have become so powerless and dependant, that they do not have the courage to leave. This is another turning point of McMurphy’s determination. He soon discovers that, in order to help out the others, he will have to risk his length of time staying at the hospital. Even with this threat on his shoulders, he does not hesitate to help them realise their true potential. McMurphy’s plan is first to set out to prove that the patients and Nurse Ratched are humans, they can be broken. He also decides to help Chief Bromden realise his own true potential. In everyone else’s eyes, the Chief is viewed as irrelevant and small since he is muted. In Truth, the Chief is not mute and when McMurphy finds this out he is excited since he saw the Chief as a tall and strong man, stronger than almost any man that McMurphy has ever encountered. McMurphy later on promises the Chief that he will help him feel “big” again. McMurphy decides to take the patients out fishing, as an opportunity for them to feel like they are human again. During the trip, McMurphy shows the men how they their mental disabilities against others, like the man at the gas pump. When the men stand up to the man at the gas pump, they feel as if they are not weaklings like they were in the hospital. Nonetheless, the patients seem to be unable to stand up the men at the dock that are hollering at Candy. Out on the sea, McMurphy does not help the men when they yell for his assistance at catching the fish, when the patients caught a large fish out of the sea, they felt like the were humans. When
In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle Patrick McMurphy is the patients’ savior. By definition a savior is an individual who saves someone or something from danger, and who is regarded with the veneration of a religious figure. A savior either directly or indirectly gives faith to his followers in hopes of them continuing their fight against oppression. Upon his arrival to the ward McMurphy is quick to adapt the role of a Christ-figure as he helps the patients reach salvation from the societal restraints of the combine. Christ, however, is the ultimate savior. According to the bible Christ performed countless miracles to spiritually heal and inspire his followers. Christ’s most renowned act of miracle healing is when
He continued to show the patients that the nurses were not in power in fact had little power over him. Inspired patients occurred once again he had inspired them with is lack of surrender to the wards system. With this situation in play this brought up McMurphy picking the needs of patients to motivate his own plan of
In "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," McMurphy is successfully perceived as a heroic Christ figure. Kesey uses foreshadowing and images, the fishing trip, actions and feelings of other characters to develop this character.
From the moment McMurphy enters the ward it is clear to all that he is different and hard to control. He’s seen as a figure the rest of the patients can look up to and he raises their hopes in taking back power from the big nurse. The other patients identify McMurphy as a leader when he first stands up to the nurse at her group therapy, saying that she has manipulated them all to become “a bunch of chickens at a pecking party”(Kesey 55). He tells the patients that they do not have to listen to Nurse Ratched and he confronts her tactics and motives. The patients see him as a leader at this point, but McMurphy does not see the need for him to be leading alone. McMurphy is a strong willed and opinionated man, so when he arrives at the ward he fails to comprehend why the men live in fear, until Harding explains it to him by
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,
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...
McMurphy’s resistance against Nurse Ratched begins to awaken Bromden’s own ability to resist the grip of the nurse. Bromden slowly starts to see that he is an individual that possesses his own free will; in turn the fog begins to fade. Through Clarisse’s love of nature she begins to open Montag up to a world outside conformity. She see’s that Montag is not like everyone else and that he has the potential to become a free thinking individual. Clarisse is able to force Montag to confront his deeper issues with reality eventually making him realize his own potential.
Unable to see McMurphy imprisoned in a body that will go on living (under Nurse Ratched’s control) even though his spirit is gone, Chief smothers him to death that night. Then he escapes the hospital and leaves for Canada and a new life. We begin to see the different situations in which the patients struggle to overcome. Whether insane or not, the hospital is undeniably in control of the fates of its
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
McMurphy is an individual who is challenging and rebelling against the system's rules and practices. He eventually teaches this practice of rebellion to the other patients who begin to realize that their lives are being controlled unfairly by the mental institution. When McMurphy first arrives at the institution, all of the other patients are afraid to express their thoughts to the Big Nurse. They are afraid to exercise their thoughts freely, and they believe that the Big Nurse will punish them if they question her authority. One patient, Harding, says, "All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees...We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place" (Kesey 62).
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a novel containing the theme of emotions being played with in order to confine and change people. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about a mental institution where a Nurse named Miss Ratched has total control over its patients. She uses her knowledge of the patients to strike fear in their minds. Chief Bromden a chronic who suffers from schizophrenia and pretends to be deaf and mute narrates the novel. From his perspective we see the rise and fall of a newly admitted patient, RP McMurphy. McMurphy used his knowledge and courage to bring changes in the ward. During his time period in the ward he sought to end the reign of the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, also to bring the patients back on their feet. McMurphy issue with the ward and the patients on the ward can be better understood when you look at this novel through a psychoanalytic lens. By applying Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence to McMurphy’s views, it is can be seen that his ideas can bring change in the patients and they can use their
The main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is brought to a state mental institution from a state prison to be studied to see if he has a mental illness. McMurphy has a history of serving time in prison for assault, and seems to take no responsibility for his actions. McMurphy is very outgoing, loud, rugged, a leader, and a rebel. McMurphy also seems to get pleasure out of fighting the system. McMurphy relishes in challenging the authority of Nurse Ratchett who seems to have a strong hold over the other patients in the ward. He enters into a power struggle with Nurse Ratchett when he finds out that he cannot leave the hospital until the staff, which primarily means her, considers him cured.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
Firstly, McMurphy relieves the contingency of being odd and outcasted in society for the patients. Being different in society and having faults are all frowned upon
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.