Rebellion In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

As people become isolated in an environment of chaos, it leads to a pattern of rebellion and insubordination that is demonstrated throughout the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. It is a thrilling story written about a group of men in a mental asylum, who are divided into groups of acute and chronic patients. The narrator of the story is Chief Bromden who tells the story of how a well organized and structured institution gets overthrown by a new psychopath, Randle McMurphy. Nurse Ratched takes care of the asylum and holds the place together despite being a tyrant and manipulative. Randle McMurphy is a powerful and mutinous character that challenges the themes of the book to be rebellion and insubordination.
Randle McMurphy

enters Oregon’s psychiatric hospital and automatically demonstrates he’s an outcast for this systematic place. He was originally sentenced to work on a prison work farm but was involuntarily send to the hospital because he was said to fight too much and be a sex maniac. Immediately he gives off the impression that he’s a very boisterous character unlike the others, he’s not scared of anyone and speaks freely for what he believes. During one of the sessions for group therapy, McMurphy notices how Nurse Ratched can manipulate the acutes into telling her the truth because she is such an intimidating character. She goes around to each other patients and picks on them to tell her one of the incidents they have been accused of in their lives. A lot of the patients are terrified and scream out incidents of rape or killing animals and participate in letting themselves speak about mistakes they’ve made. Once the Nurse gets to McMurphy and asks for his opinion about the patient, Mr. Harding, and his wife, he makes an impolite comment that infuriates Ratched to read why he’s been committed. From the file of McMurphy’s record, it states him to be, “a dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination...Drunkenness, Assault, and Battery, Disturbing the peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest -- for Rape”(Kesey 45). Automatically, McMurphy tries to defend his name and explain his situation for the case of rape although it shows how disobedient he truly is. The nurse continues to let the doctor know that he’s a new patient and isn’t aware of the therapeutic community. McMurphy stops disrupting but towards the end of the session speaks of how Ratched is a “ball-cutter.” The patients disagree and speak about the power she has in the hospital. McMurphy does not agree with what they think and makes a bet with them, he states:
Just what I said: any of you sharpies here willing to take my five bucks that says that I can get the best of that woman -- before the week’s up -- without her getting the best of me? One week, and if I don’t have her to where she don’t know whether to shit or go blind, the bet is yours. (Kesey 73).
This automatically shows how he is willing to disrupt the natural pattern of the ward and how he is willing to challenge the Nurse in a way that pushes her to her limits that no one else is willing to do. McMurphy is a gambler and likes to be challenged and he finds that Ratched is a worthy opponent to provoke. He will act as a delinquent to prove to the other patients that he will not lose to a woman who seems to be manlier than himself. The patients believe that she is a dominant woman and bet him ten dollars he won’t be going anywhere.
As the patients go about their daily routines often they get to spend time in the day ward. McMurphy decides to confront the Big Nurse to help provide better entertainment for the patients. They all talk about how the entertainment that is played is a recording that is set on repeat and eventually he should not be aware that it is playing anymore but rather just a form of background noise. He wants the patients to be able to watch the World Series but the other patients are too scared of Ratched to rebel against her the ward’s routine. Ratched decided to form some form of democracy against and take a vote, the patients all decide to vote in honor of McMurphy that builds up rage towards Nurse Ratched. She is furious with McMurphy and exclaims how he is under the jurisdiction of her and the staff. McMurphy takes this stage and helps organize a protest that then stimulates the beginning of the rebellion not only within McMurphy but with the other patients. The acutes and chronics suddenly act insubordinate to anything that she says and individually starts to get chairs and sit with McMurphy while they all watch the World Series and she rants and screams. Everyone notices how McMurphy has gained control over the nurse and begins to act disobedient towards her and more submissive towards him. Bromden narrates, “Then Cheswick goes and gets him a chair, and then Billy Bibbit goes, and then Scanlon and then Fredrickson and Sefelt, and then we all put our mops and brooms and scouring rags and we all go pull us chairs up,”(Kesey 144). McMurphy is the only person in the ward that is willing to provoke her that leads the rest of the patients to be contumacious. They all support him and his upcoming power in the hospital.
After McMurphy flaunts that he has officially won his bet again the patients and successfully made Ratched lose control, Big Nurse sends the rest of them to the disturbed ward leaving McMurphy. Slowly, he figures out that the staff is in control of when the patients are able to be sent home when they think that is fine to do so. He is unaware that most of the patients are committed to the psychiatric hospital voluntarily. One of the patients, Cheswick gets into an argument with Nurse Ratched about and ends up drowning in the pool with unknown possible suicide. McMurphy then realizes that he has become an unintentional leader of the patients after being arrogant of becoming in charge again Billy Bibbit. He also notices how rebellious his actions had impacted the others into acting in manners which the would never. This demonstrates how his character causes the relationship between him and rebellion, within the other patients. Nurse Ratched knows that she is losing power against the patients and gathers them together to express how she feels about their behavior since McMurphy has gotten there. She expresses, “We waited this long to say anything, hoping that you men would take it upon yourselves to apologize for the rebellious way you acted. But not one of you has shown the slightest sign of remorse,” (Kesey 199). Upon lecturing the patients she decides to take away privileges from the patient's, cut off anyone that tries to speak up, and potentially scare the patients to show that she still has power over them. McMurphy has caused the patients to act insubordinate for weeks that she is lost to keep them under her authority. She feels the need to take privileges away from them and give them different punishments.
Another week of group therapy occurs and McMurphy convinces Doctor Spivey to let them all go on a fishing trip. Upon this fishing trip, they go into a gas station where a cashier talks down to them, McMurphy shows the patients how to act defiant and use being a psychiatric patient as power. He would stand up against the service station man who accused them to be nothing but a bunch of lunatics from an asylum. He taught them how to defend themselves against people who were discriminating them. Eventually, the Bromden finally starts to figure out that McMurphy was trying to get them to not be so scared of the world. One of his thoughts included, “He’d shown us what a little bravado and courage could accomplish, and we thought he’d taught us how to use it,” (Kesey 239). This quote helps prove a sense of clarity within the book to show that the patients are finally starting to realize that everything McMurphy tries to portray to the patients about having the courage to be bigger than a woman who orders them what to do.
The fishing trip provided the patients a sense of fun and gave them an experience that they would treasure and allow them to let loose finally.

The patients all even decide to join McMurphy’s party during the night that consisted of prostitutes, alcohol, and marijuana. It allowed them to finally enjoy something and not be so uptight all the time because of Ratched. Billy Bibbit, who was so scared of the world, lost his virginity to one of the prostitutes that helped show how the patients are being less obedient to the rules and world, but rather rebelling against everything that they were so scared to do. Ratched still had a lot of power over the acutes and chronics, however, and scared Billy to commit suicide. This infuriated McMurphy and he completely lost

control,
Only at last - after he smashed through that glass door, her face swinging around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front...nurses prying those heavy red fingers out of the white flesh of her throat... only then did he show any sign that he might be anything other than a sane. (Kesey 319).
McMurphy was always limited to the amount of destruction and rebellion he has caused.

When he was blamed for Billy being forced to lose his virginity, then Ratched made him feel so unrighteous, he lost control. He used force to cause immense physical pain to her to show her that he is a powerful person himself and breaks hers. She retaliates in a way that makes McMurphy brutally disabled using electroshock therapy.
Chief Bromden is the narrator of the story and ends the book in a very compelling way. After McMurphy is lobotomized in a way that makes him become practically nothing but flesh and bones, Bromden takes this situation into his own hands. “I mashed the pillow into the face. I lay there on top of the body for what seemed days. Until the thrashing stopped, (Kesey 323). He had taken McMurphy’s life to show him the bit of dignity he should have left in honor of everything he has done for the ward and it’s

patients.
Ken Kesey’s book demonstrates various ways that having power can lead to rebellion and insubordination for those under control of a tyrant. McMurphy demonstrates that he is able to take control out of Ratched’s hand and form a community of patients who will look up to him and act rebellious to gain control of their own lives. Insubordination does not necessarily always have to be a bad thing when fighting against someone who is very governing. Throughout the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it’s evident that Randle McMurphy presents the main themes of the book to be insubordination and rebellion against an influential character.