One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

The movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, a Milos Forman film which is based off Ken Kesey’s novel,Big Nurse Ratched’s suffocating authority and power over the patients is the catalyst that triggers reactions and vents as she also uses non-verbal communication such as excessive eye contact and silence during group time so she isn’t the “bad guy”; she also demonstrates and verbally controls the men of the ward by enforcing a schedule that doesn’t let them have any control over their day. The movie is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a schizophrenic Native American man who pretends to be deaf and dumb so that everybody ignores him. The movie starts out when a new admission Randle McMurphy, is introduced to an insane asylum where Chief is the longest-residing

patient. McMurphy took an insanity plea with the “nuts” and is sent to the state mental hospital instead of prison work farm.

This shows a major theme of the movie, false diagnosis of insanity or mental condition. Mc Murphy is intelligent, and very observant. Immediately, he stirs up the ward by introducing friendly contention, rivalry, and gambling with cigarettes; furthermore he encourages the men to rebel against the petty rules created and enforced by Nurse Ratched. The movie progresses and McMurphy places a bet with the other men on the ward that he can break Nurse Ratched without getting sent to the Disturbed Ward, being treated with electroshock therapy, or being lobotomized. The electroshock therapy table is explicitly associated with crucifixion as it is shaped like a cross, with straps across the wrists and over the head. Moreover, the table performs a function similar to the public crucifixions of Roman times. Ellis, Ruckly, and Taber serve as public examples of what happens to those who rebel against the ruling powers. Ellis makes the reference explicit as he is actually nailed to the wall. This is foreshadowing that McMurphy, who is associated with Christ images throughout the movie, will be

sacrificed. Over time, McMurphy weakens Nurse Ratched’s system of control by encouraging the other patients to ask questions. McMurphy doesn’t realize that since he’s a committed patient in the asylum, she can keep him locked up as long as she wants unlike the voluntary who can leave when they feel like it. In this ward if a patient rebels, he is sent to receive electroshock treatments and sometimes a lobotomy, even though both are frowned upon by the medical community. Later in the movie McMurphy challenges her authority again, but this time he goes too far. He sneaks two prostitutes into the ward, gets everybody drunk, and they have a good time. After this incident, Nurse Ratched guilt-trips all the men back into her control. She even threatens one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, by saying she’ll tell his mother about his visit with a "cheap" woman. Bibbit panics and he unexpectedly commits suicide. Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for Bibbit’s death, which McMurphy doesn’t take so well. In fact, he’s so angry that he shatters the glass over the nurse’s station for a second time. Then, in one of the biggest scenes in the movie, McMurphy mangles Nurse Ratched physically and chokes her almost to the point of asphyxiation. In retaliation for this she has him lobotomized, and he returns to the ward as a vegetable. That night, Chief Bromden suffocates McMurphy in his bed, enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live as a symbol of Ratched’s power over the men. Chief Bromden then having recovered the immense strength that he had believed lost during his time in the mental ward, escapes from the hospital by breaking through a window. His getaway is only possible because of McMurphy, who previously had taught Chief how to lift a heavy panel in the tub-room and break the windows. Chief reaches the highway where he heads to freedom.
Every day, Nurse Ratched sets up a very unhealthy group therapy session that she uses to divide and conquer the men living in the state hospital mental ward. According to Halter in Varcarolis' Foundations of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, “It is sometimes difficult for students to grasp or remember that patients, regardless of their relationship factors, are in a position of vulnerability. The presence of a hospital identification band is a formal indication of a need for care, and as a caregiver, you are viewed in a role of authority. Part of the art of therapeutic communication is in finding a balance between your role as a professional and your role as a human being who has been socialized into complex patterns of interactions based, at least in part, on status.”(Halter, 2014) Nurse Ratched knows the power her position has in the hospital and she uses it to her advantage every time. During the scene of the first meeting, she asks the men to discuss problems and she brings up Mr. Harding and his wife. By doing this, Nurse Ratched is a cruel and vicious woman, during the daily Group Meetings she encourages the acute (curable) patients to attack each other in their most vulnerable places, thus shaming them into submission. During this meeting she remains silent, non-verbally communicating, that she is the good guy here by not attacking Mr. Harding as he starts discussing his marital problems with some redirection by Nurse Ratched. She uses psychological intimidation both by punishing those who rebel against her and question her actions as well as turning the men against each other to force the men to conform to her will. At the end of this meeting, McMurphy catches nurse Ratched smiling and trying to fight back from smiling. After the meeting, Harding denies that the group is against him, instead insisting that the session was for his own benefit. According to Harding, McMurphy must be a “stupid brute” not to have understood what was really happening during the meeting and that it was for Mr. Harding’s good that the discussion occurred.
The movie is narrated by Chief Bromden, a tall Native American, who has schizophrenia and shares some of his hallucinations with us as well as the story of what happens in the ward. We can say Chief has schizophrenia because he meets criteria as noted in organizer below such as seeing a “fog” in the ward no one else sees, and hearing the “combine” machine. He also has some negative symptoms like lack of emotion, making eye contact, and decreased talking. When Chief and McMurphy get sent to the disturbed ward after getting into a fistfight with the aides to defend Mr. Sorenson for electroshock therapy. While the two men are sitting on a bench in the disturbed ward, Chief is offered a piece of gum by McMurphy and then responds to him saying “Juicy Fruit”. This is the first Chief lets on that he isn’t deaf or dumb, from here the men go on to plan an escape to Canada.
When he returns to the ward there is a big party planned, McMurphy bribes Mr. Turkle, the night aide, to sneak Candy into the hospital, and they have a party on the ward. Billy has sex with Candy while McMurphy and the other patients drink. Harding tries to get McMurphy to escape with Candy and Sandy to Mexico, but McMurphy is too wasted and falls asleep on the way out the window. When the staff gets there in the morning and discovers the mess it really sets things off between Nurse Ratched and the patients. She finds Billy with Candy in a back room and she threatens to tell Billy’s mother. Billy becomes hysterical and is carried off screaming by an aide who places in another room to wait for the doctor. Nurse Pibow goes to check on him and found he had committed suicide by cutting his throat. Billy kills himself because Nurse Ratched humiliates him and threatens him with his greatest fear and possible cause for his mental problems, mother's derision and disapproval, after she catches him with a prostitute. According the the Mayo Clinic this act fits in with common reasons for suicide, “Most often, suicidal thoughts are the result of feeling like you can't cope when you're faced with what seems to be an overwhelming life situation. If you don't have hope for the future, you may mistakenly think suicide is a solution. You may experience a sort of tunnel vision, where in the middle of a crisis you believe suicide is the only way out.”(Suicide and suicidal thoughts, 2012) His suicide serves as the event that propels McMurphy’s final confrontation with Nurse Ratched, McMurphy attacks Ratched attempting to strangle her.
This movie is a very interesting mix of mental health problems, especially McMurphy who comes in because we think he is being lazy and doesn’t want to work on the prison farm. After getting to know him there is the question of could he really have a personality disorder. For example, in borderline personality disorder the person essentially lacks a sense of self, has feelings of emptiness, and fears of abandonment; there is a pattern of intense but unstable relationships, emotional instability, outbursts of anger and violence (especially in response to criticism), and impulsive behaviour (Halter, 2014). During the movie we can see irritability and outbursts of anger many times from the character, he also has impulsive behavior both while incarcerated and on the streets to get him in trouble with the law to begin with. Just as we start to see some traits of a psychiatric disorder, Nurse Ratched has McMurphy lobotomized as punishment for attacking her.