One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes place in a ward of a mental institution. The biggest conflict throughout the film is the fight for power, which is a reoccurring theme. If you’ve ever seen the film you probably thought to yourself there is a very corrupt ruling system in place. If you know anything about The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo then you begin to realize the evil elements shown in the film. What is the lucifer effect? The lucifer effect is the exercise of power to intentionally harm, hurt, kill, or commit crimes against humanity. In the film McMurphy is transferred from a prison farm to the mental institution to be evaluated. Upon his arrival you see the other patients look like zombies. They walk around with blank stares and don’t talk much. Then we meet Ms. Ratched the head nurse in the ward. Upon first glance she seems sweet, nice and innocent but we quickly learn how she really is when McMurphy begins testing her. …show more content…
In the film I would say Nurse Ratched would be the focus of the lucifer effect.
Why do good people do bad things? Throughout the film the part that made me raise my eyebrows would be when Ms. Ratched sends McMurphy to electroconvulsive therapy which is shock treatment that has electric currents pass through the brain triggering a brief seizure. This is where we see part of the lucifer effect where people intentionally harm someone. In the scene prior to electroconvulsive therapy we see the doctors and Ms. Ratched in a meeting and all the doctors agree that there is nothing wrong with McMurphy but Ms. Ratched insist on keeping him in the institution. Even though all the doctors expressed there was nothing wrong with him, when McMurphy did something she did not like she sent him for electroconvulsive therapy. Electroconvulsive therapy is used to treat major depression and other serious mental illness like schizophrenia and should not be used as a form of
punishment. As you are watching the film you also begin to notice the patients stick to a very strict daily routine and Nurse Ratched uses manipulation to make them believe they need to be in there. So, in the institution it is almost like a dictatorship. Every morning the patients wake up and take their medication then they can either play cards or watch television, nurse Ratched only allows the patients to listen to one song. When McMurphy asked Nurse Ratched if she would turn on the baseball game she said no because it would throw off the routine. Before McMurphy arrived in the institute it is very clear Nurse Ratched used her power to scare the other patients because they never questioned or tried to change the routine the way McMurphy did. McMurphy was the antidote to evil. He was everyone’s hero and the voice of the people. When McMurphy discovered most of the patients were there voluntarily it seemed that he pushed against Nurse Ratched a little harder. The other patients did not have to be in there and I think McMurphy was trying to show them that they could over power the authority of the institution. At the very end of the film when Billy is caught in bed with Candy, Nurse Ratched threatens to tell Billy’s mom. The thought of his mom knowing clearly scares him and makes him very upset which resulted in him committing suicide. Even when Nurse Ratched saw Billy on the floor covered in blood she still showed no emotion and just closed the door.
Kesey through changing the structure of power in a society showed the similarity between the oppressed and the oppressor. This was a demonstration of the corruption of power, and a push back to the era. It symbolized an era of radical thinking of changing the power structure, but he advocated making all equal. In addition it exemplified the communist views of the era and the oppressive regime of those with absolute control. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest advocates the quest for equality in a time where disparity in power was great.
In my opinion the main theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is conformity. The patients at this mental institution, or at least the one in the Big Nurse’s ward, find themselves on a rough situation where not following standards costs them many privileges being taken away. The standards that the Combine sets are what makes the patients so afraid of a change and simply conform hopelessly to what they have since anything out of the ordinary would get them in trouble. Such conformity is what Mc Murphy can not stand and makes him bring life back to the ward by fighting Miss Ratched and creating a new environment for the patients. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest represents a rebellion against the conformity implied in today’s society.
He would always sneak in wine, gamble with them, and would have them play along on all his jokes. His need for freedom was refreshing to everyone else, that what kept them going. At points when he gave up from being a rebel, other patients gave up. McMurphy wins this war between him and Ratched because he helps other patients continue to be excited and helps them get out of there. McMurphy influences patients to stand up for themselves and not take orders from Ratched. Harding listened to McMurphy and did exactly that. He started to call her out on things and make fun of her, and she couldn't respond. It was clear that Nurse Ratched wasn't the same person and because of what McMurphy did, she couldn't get back in control. Ken Kesey writes, “She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings… she couldn't rule with her old power anymore… She was losing her patients one after the other” ( 320-321). McMurphy has always taught them to follow their own rules and not obey Ratched. In particular, he influenced Chief, a quiet patient that watches his surrounding carefully. After teaching Chief what it's like to follow your own rules, Chief begins to follow McMurphy’s role. After the incident of stripping Ratched’s identity, he learns that McMurphy was a hero to him and although he doesn’t physically help him out, McMurphy has taught Chief how to play this game. Chief tries to be like McMurphy by taking over. DOing so he tries on his cap, trying to be the new McMurphy. Ken Kesey writes, “I reached into McMurphy’s nightstand and got his cap and tried it on. It was too small” (323). Chief realized that no one could take over McMurphy's role, but that Chief would have to be in control over himself to make a statement. Chief does exactly that, he runs for it, making him happier than he has ever
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...
Ken Kesey appears to show disgust for people of power in his book One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Throughout the novel, Nurse Ratched, the lady within whom lays all the power of the staff in a mental institution, frequently sends people who she has behavioral problems with off to the disturbed wing, like she did Maxwell Taber. It is there that they experience the pain of either electroshock therapy, or a full frontal lobotomy. Nurse Ratched uses this and her natural dominance to inspire fear in her patients. She tends to agree with old school of thought that a healthy dose of fear makes people easier to control. Thus she was able to easily putdown any uprising against her totalitarian rule before Randle McMurphy. Nurse Ratched tries to use the power that has been given to her as head nurse to change the patients as she sees fit. As Bromden puts it, "Working alongside others... she is a veteran of adjusting things" (p. 30). But to do this she has created a living hell for them. McMurphy, one of the rare man that dares to vocalize his opinion, shows his negative sentiment towards Nurse Ratched when he tells Harding, "Hell with that; she's a bitch a ball cutter..." (p. 58). The entire ward can see how power has corrupted Nurse Ratched into the pseudo-megalomaniac/sadist she now is.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a catatonic half-Indian man whom everybody thinks is deaf and dumb. He often suffers from hallucinations in which he feels that the room is filled with fog. The institution is dominated by Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse), a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed 'gambling fool' who has just come from a work farm at Pendleton. He introduces himself to the other men on the ward, including Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year old man who stutters and appears very young. Nurse Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
Upon the death of her father and the birth of her fifth child, she was found disfiguring herself because Satan told her to in an almost catatonic state. Andrea “stopped talking, drinking, nursing baby Mary, and began pulling out her own hair” (Lancet 1952). She began rocking back and forth, gnawing at her own fingers, unable to care for any of her children. Rusty suggested the possible use of electroconvulsive therapy, an electric shock treatment used to treat major depression in individuals who have not responded to other psychiatric treatments, but was told that Andrea’s depression was not severe enough and that she simply needed to “think positive thoughts” (Lancet 1953). Two weeks after being released from the psychiatric ward, Andrea Yates committed the mass murder of her children.
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
In the novel, Ms. Ratched just removed the tub room, which was used as a game room, from the patients, this angered McMurphy, so he decided to do something subtle to get revenge on Ms. Ratched. In the novel, it says, “The Big Nurse’s eyes swelled out as he got close . . . He stopped in front of her window and he said in his slowest, deepest drawl how he figured he could use one of the smokes he bought this mornin’, then the ran his hand through the glass . . . He got one of the cartons of cigarettes with his name on it and took out a pack . . . ‘I’m sure sorry ma’am,’ he said ‘Gawd but I am. That window glass was so spick and span I com-pletely forgot it was there’” (201). This quotation demonstrates that, even though Ms. Ratched has more power than McMurphy, she is still frightened of him, and that he might do something to either take away her power, or he might do something to hurt her physically. This also demonstrates how much power McMurphy has gained so far over Ms. Ratched. In the novel, Ms. Ratched tries to take away all of the power that McMurphy has gained over her by blaming McMurphy for making the lives of the hospital patients worse, and that McMurphy was the cause for the deaths of patients William Bibbit and Charles Cheswick. This angers McMurphy, and causes him to choke her with the intent to kill
In the end, they believe they have control over the other, but they do not realize that they both have lost control until it is too late. They both pay a harsh penalty for their struggle to gain control over the ward. Nurse Ratched forever loses her precious power status and authority over the institution, while McMurphy loses the friends he tired to help, his personality, and eventually his life. Throughout the novel, these two characters relentlessly fight to control each other. They both realize that control can never be absolute.
In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched is the antagonist and her use of cruel treatments is the main argument for malpractice. She uses daily doses of medication, electroshock therapy, and a lobotomy procedure to “treat” the patients in the ward. “Put your troubled mind at ease, my friend. In all
When norms of society are unfair and seem set in stone, rebellion is bound to occur, ultimately bringing about change in the community. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest demonstrates the conflict of individuals who have to survive in an environment where they are pressured to cooperate. The hospital's atmosphere suppresses the patients' individuality through authority figures that mold the patients into their visions of perfection. The ward staff's ability to overpower the patients' free will is not questioned until a man named Randal McMurphy is committed to the mental institute. He rebels against what he perceives as a rigid, dehumanizing, and uncompassionate environment. His exposure of the flaws in the hospital's perfunctory rituals permits the other patients to form opinions and consequently their personalities surface. The patient's new behavior clashes with the medical personnel's main goal-to turn them into 'perfect' robots, creating havoc on the ward.
In the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the audience is shown the character of Mc Murphy who brought out the conflict of authority, obedience, and disobedience. The film introduces Nurse Ratched as head of the ward and the main authority figure. What this essay will focus on is if Nurse Ratched really ever is negligent? She is simply just doing her job. Would Mcmurphy be considered to be the so-called “evil” character in the film? When he arrives he causes so much chaos between the patients and the nurses. Would the audience agree Mcmurphy is even responsible for a patient's death within the ward?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution. As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.