In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, R.P. McMurphy is not a typical patient stuck in a ward. In fact, McMurphy is one idiosyncratic patient that no one in the ward has ever encountered. But throughout the book, he becomes an innate leader and a “martyr” for the other patients in the book, much like Christ in the Bible. Christ is an intended symbol that the author, Ken Kesey, uses in this book. McMurphy acts like Christ in the book—a model and leader for his disciples, the other patients. He tries to free the other patients from Nurse Ratched, the psychotic, inhumane leader of them all. He “fights” Nurse Ratched by becoming a leader for the other patients so that they may have hope that they can make it out of this ward still sane, despite what Nurse Ratched has done to them to brainwash them into believing that she is a good, caring leader who can be trusted. It is right in that case to associate him with a powerful, and worshipped leader such as Christ. However, McMurphy is not a Christ-figure due to his violent, sexual and seemingly amoral behavior throughout the book, despite all the things that make him seem worthy to be compared to Christ. Christ is a sinless, holy being. That one detail may seem insignificant to some, but it is actually the stripped down reason, the core reason, why McMurphy is not like Christ. McMurphy’s weakness to gamble excessively, his want to rebel without reason, and his desire to do risqué behavior, sins which he commits, conclude that McMurphy is not a figure similar to Christ.
While McMurphy's actions and attitudes seem Christ like, soon, the book introduces McMurphy’s habits of gambling. Some of his Messianic qualities are clear even before the reader gets through half of the book. It is hinte...
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...ell as money.
In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one can deduce that McMurphy is not a Christ-like figure because he is a gambling man; he is a recalcitrant man who has few, if any, extenuating reasons for his rebellion; and he is a superficial man who engages in risqué, ungodly behaviors. His want to gamble in silly childish games reinforces the fact that he is so obsessed with material possession and wanting more in this life. His absurd “reasons” to rebel in the ways that he does, such as eating in front of the workers, makes him not godly. And his want for physical, amoral pleasure from prostitutes and from the wrong people make him a corrupt being, which Christ cannot be. And although many analogies mention Christ in this book, stripping down McMurphy’s actions to their core suggests otherwise that McMurphy is nowhere close to a Christ-like figure.
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.
By embedding tragedies such as the corruption of J.B’s family, modernizing the true disposition of the Three Comforters, and renewing J.B’s ending along with his own aspect from the biblical story of Job, Archibald MacLeish has answered the question asked by the innocent, “Why do the righteous suffer?” After all, J.B becomes a stronger person than ever, because he overcomes his own obstacles and fear. The innocent has to suffer from the punishments from God in order to gain new experiences and to be more independent. Everyone has to suffer in order to be a better a person.
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.
R.P. McMurphy is a lively, rebellious, and rational patient that has recently been escorted into the insane asylum. Once in the bin, Randle becomes the self-proclaimed champion of the rights of the other ward patients, his adversary being Nurse Ratched (New York Times). He scrutinizes the asylum and the patients deciding that he needs to lighten the atmosphere. According to Filmsite, Movie Review McMurphy encourages the patients to participate in activities that will heighten their spirits and change their monotonous routines. McMurphy decides to challenge Nurse Ratched when he notices that the patients of the ward are overly organized and controlled through a rigid set of authoritarian rules and regulations that McMurphy questions: “God Almighty, she’s got you guys comin’ or goin’. What do you think she is, some kind of champ or somethin’?”--- “I bet in one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she don’t know whether to s—t or wind her wrist watch” (OFOTCN). Entertainment Weekly implies that McMurphy is unwilling to surrender to Nurse Ratched’s belittling power and rebels against corr...
Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. & nbsp; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with its meaningful message of individualism, was an extremely influential novel during the 1960's. In addition, its author, Ken Kesey, played a significant role in the development of the counterculture of the 60's. This included all people who did not conform to the. society's standards, experimented in drugs, and just lived their lives in an unconventional manner. Ken Kesey had many significant experiences that enabled him to create One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As a result of his entrance into the creative writing program at Stanford University in 1959 (Ken 1), Kesey moved to Perry Lane in Menlo Park. It was there that he and other writers first experimented with psychedelic drugs. After living at Perry Lane for a while. Kesey's friend, Vik Lovell, informed him about experiments at a local V.A. hospital in which volunteers were paid to take mind-altering drugs (Wolfe 321). Kesey's experiences at the hospital were his first step towards writing Cuckoo's.
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental hospital. The main character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to get out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of running the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out between reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures most influential stories. The dominant theme in this novel is that of conformity and it's pressure on today's society. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromden's mind a combine . To the Chief, the combine' depicts the conformist society of America, this is evident in one particular paragraph: This excerpt not only explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more poignantly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients are casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy represents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents nature and it's unregularity. Another key theme in Kesey's novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey proceeds to compare the male role to spontaneity, sexuality, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ...
The dominant discourse of conformity is characterised predominantly by influencing to obey rules described by Kesey’ novel ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. At the start of the novel, all the acute and the silence chronic conform to Nurse Ratched’s rules before the arrival of McMurphy. Since, she was in complete control over the ward until McMurphy arrived. After he arrived, he begins to take control of the patients. He begins to take the role of leader, a leader that was unexpected. Kesey has foregrounded the character, McMurphy to be different thus creating a binary opposite that is represented in the novel. Kesey shows the binary opposites as being good versus evil. The former represents the con man McMurphy, and the latter represents the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. An example of this would be, “She’s carrying her wicker bag…a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle…” (pg.4), showing that Nurse Ratched is a mechanic. McMurphy is portrayed as being a good character by revitalising the hope of the patients by strangling Nurse Ratched. This revitalise the hope for the pa...
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?
Foreshadowing clues and images are used to contribute to McMurphy as a figure of Christ. In the beginning of the novel McMurphy is baptized with a shower before entering the ward. The reader is also introduced to Ellis, a character who spends the entire novel in a cross position "nailed against the wall, arms out," (page 20). Another clue to McMurphy's developing character is presented during the electroshock therapy. McMurphy willingly lies down on a cross shaped table, ending up in the same position Ellis foreshadowed. McMurphy also asks for his crown of thorns. Before the therapy a schizophrenic patient approaches him and says "I wash my hands of the whole deal", as Pontius Pilate said to Jesus before sentencing him to death. Jesus was also friends with a prostitute named Mary, just like McMurphy was friends with prostitutes.
In both “Roger Malvin's Burial” and “The Minister's Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne centralizes the themes of sin, guilt, and repentance. Both are very much set in terms of what defines sin and, in turn, what would constitute action leaving an opening for forgiveness, and both leave many a question unanswered in the story being told. The main question for us becomes, then, one of applicability. Does either story hold a message, if so, what? In considering the two, it may be that they do indeed hold a message, but maybe that message is not one that Hawthorne himself could ever have intended. In this paper I will deal with the themes of guilt, sin, repentance and how Hawthorne developed them in both stories.
Over the past few days, the class and I have watched a film titled One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Throughout the film, you began to see some parallels to the main character, McMurphy, and that of Jesus Christ. There are many references to the Christian religion within the film.
People often find themselves as part of a collective, following society's norms and may find oneself in places where feeling constrained by the rules and will act out to be unconstrained, as a result people are branded as nuisances or troublemakers. In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the author Ken Kesey conveys the attempt McMurphy makes to live unconstrained by the authority of Nurse Ratched. The story is very one sided and helps create an understanding for those troublemakers who are look down on in hopes of shifting ingrained ideals. The Significance of McMurphy's struggles lies in the importance placed on individuality and liberty. If McMurphy had not opposed fear and autocratic authority of Nurse Ratched nothing would have gotten better on the ward the men would still feel fear. and unnerved by a possibility of freedom. “...Then, just as she's rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine ... holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! ” In the novel McMurphy shows little signs like this to combat thee Nurse. His defiance of her system included
...s control through power, authority, and fear. 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. This idea does not occur to either of them until after they have lost everything they sought to control. This is what makes the element of control such an important theme in One Flew over the Cuckoo?s Nest.
The most obvious hero type of McMurphy is an out-law hero. This is evident in his struggle against the nurse and the combine which represent society. He is an outlaw because he is his own person. He has freedom to act how he wants, think what he wants and be what he wants, and society is out to make him be like everyone else, to conform. At first, McMurphy’s rebellion against authority is just a selfish attempt to make his life on the ward more comfortable. But later on he realizes that the other patients rely on him and need him to help them be free. This is seen in the book when Cheswich drowns himself after McMurphy starts to give in to the nurse. Then, McMurphy sees that he has to be the leader and continue to resist authority. In this way McMurphy is sort of the like Christ, whom...