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Randle McMurphy, the protagonist, is introduced to break down the nurse’s oppressive ways. McMurphy, a con man who was sentenced to a work farm, was diagnosed as a psychopath and sent to the mental hospital, which he much preferred. Serving as a savior figure to the patients of the ward who have already been battered by the Big Nurse, McMurphy causes interference to the nurse’s control. He supports the men as they are ridiculed in meetings and supports their attempts to change policy. Although he does help other patients, he first looks out for himself. He cons the patients out of their money and then follows the nurse’s rules for awhile because of the threat of being kept on the

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey during a time in our society when pressures of our modern world seemed at their greatest. Many people were, at this time, deemed by society’s standards to be insane and institutionalized. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a ward of a mental institution. The major conflict in the novel is that of power. Power is a recurring and overwhelming theme throughout the novel. Kesey shows the power of women who are associated with the patients, the power Nurse Ratched has, and also the power McMurphy fights to win. By default, he also shows how little power the patients have.

Randle Patrick McMurphy is a criminal who was sentenced to prison for a short period of time. He then decides to have himself declared insane so he can be transferred into a mental institution. There, he expects to serve the rest of his term free from prison labor and in comfort and luxury. In the mental institution, he is led by tyrant, Nurse Ratched, who had cowed the patients into dejected institutionalized submission. McMurphy becomes captured in many power games with Ratched for the minds and hearts of the patients. However, constantly, the question is how with it are any of the players in the ward. During McMurphy’s stay at the institute, he forms friendships with two fellow patients: Billy Bibbit and “Chief” Bromden. Billy Bibbit is a suicidal man-child who stutters. Ratched has humiliated him so many times that he became a quivering mess. “Chief” Bromden is a huge, muscular man who has schizophrenia. The patients know him as deaf and unable to speak. They tend to ignore him but still respect him for his size. In the former, McMurphy sees a little brother figure. He wants to teach him to have fun, while the latter is his

Randle Patrick McMurphy is shown to be a flawed character because of his huge ego, making him a lecherous gambler high on his own arrogance, and his desire and hunger for power and control. He thinks he can win any gamble, including a gamble on his life. The stakes are that he bets the men that he can break Nurse Ratched without letting her get the best of him. Even when he enters the ward, McMurphy has that kind of “swagger” kind of walk and he laughs, something that has not been done by any of the patients on the ward. He is “full of brass and swagger” and “full of assurance and arrogance” with his hanging thumbs in the belt loop of his pants, his heavily scarred skin, his many tattoos, and his fresh scar on the bridge of his nose (95). After being sent to Disturbed, McMurphy was confronted with the decision to admit he was wrong and avoid electroshock therapy, to which he responded to the nurse saying, “Those Chinese Commies could have learned a few things from you, lady.” Due to this high arrogance in his confidence, McMurphy received electroshock therapy along with three other treatments that same very week. This all led up to the major consequence of lobotomy, in which McMurphy was essentially made a vegetable, to be nothing more than a cautionary tale on Nurse Ratched’s ward.

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

Both Randle McMurphy and Nurse Ratched did not rest to bring out their own methods to influence the patients. McMurphy displayed his method of rebellion by actually gathering some patients and fleeing from the hospital. He showed them something they would never forget by setting them free and letting them see what was outside of the frugal hospital. After the unexpected fishing trip, Nurse Ratched realized she was losing her control on the patients. They began to think for themselves and realize that they were being cheated. Clearly, the group meetings were not successful because the topics Ratched chose were too personal. When the nurse insisted Billy to reflect on his first suicide attempt Cheswick frantically exclaimed, “Why do you force him to talk about that?” Instead of displaying empathy and compassion to Billy, she pressured him into discussing it. Nurse Ratched needed a way to restore order and punishment was the only way. She knew McMurphy had gained the patients’ respect which was something she had never achieved. McMurphy brought something to those patients that Nurse Ratched could not contribute, and that was gratitude for life.

“Abnormality is very difficult to define. It can be hard to decide where normal behaviour ends and abnormal behaviour begins”

Randle picks up a woman who in her first greeting asks the patients if they are all “crazy” and they respond by nodding their heads. This shows that these individuals have come to adopt being “crazy” as part of their identity, because of being institutionalized and given that label. Further suggestion of this idea is in the scene where Nurse Ratched reveals to Randle that many of the in-patients are at the psychiatric hospital on a voluntary basis, and only few of them are committed, showing their internalization of their identity as mentally ill patients. Another point that can be drawn from the film is the way, which Nurse Ratched conducts the group therapy sessions. The sessions did not appear as beneficial or therapeutic to the individuals participating in them. It is evident that Nurse Ratched, an individual in a position of power, manipulates the patients into confinement in the hospital through her group therapy sessions. She consistently revisits past traumas and difficulties for the patients, which reinforces the symptoms they believe they suffer from which causes them to feel unstable and unable to leave the hospital. Thus, through these examples in the film, it is suggested that individuals admitted to psychiatric hospitals have come to adopt their mental illness as a defining feature of their identity.

While I agree that the heart of this novel is the power struggle that ensues and that RP McMurphy is not "mentally ill", the other patients are more clearly suffering illnesses, to reach the conclusion that McMurphy himself is "not crazy". As readers, we must first examine what it means to be "crazy", both to ourselves and to society at large. When researching Ken Kesey and his life, I had stumbled upon an interesting fact. Ken Kesey heard of a government program that paid people to take part in experiments with psychedelic drugs. When I heard this, I was so shocked, I thought “wow this is going to be a very interesting book.” There were things that I really enjoyed about the book, such as the narrator, McMurphy, and the crazy parties they both threw. Things that I disliked about the book was the death of poor Billy Bibbit, how nurse Ratched treated the

This movie is centered around a group of men who are in a mental hospital that is highly controlled, and one of the patients Randle McMurphey tries to take it upon himself to change rules and get other patients on his side to undermine the rules and routines that nurse Ratchet has set for the hospital. Throughout the movie we learn as viewers that Randle doesn’t appear as the other patients with visible mental issue. He in fact comes off as intelligent and observant. Randle on a day to day basis tries to go against the norms of hospital policies and often time’s finds ways to escape or get others to escape as well. It seems as though Randle would react witch fellow patients to in a way conform them to be and act normal as if they do not have a mental issues.

One example of this is his perception of Chief at the beginning of the film. He blindly believes that Chief is deaf and mute, going so far as to mock him by chanting a pretend war cry. However, he later learns that it is all an act and Chief is neither deaf nor mute, having inner motivations for faking a mental affliction. Another misconception of McMurphy’s is his idea that all of the patients are forced to be there. Midway through the film, he is shocked to discover that many of them stay there voluntarily. He can’t fathom why someone as young and virile as Billy would choose to stay, not realizing that Billy doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to face the outside

He really is out of control before he is put in this hospital, and instead of putting him in jail they decide to check if he has mental issues. But he is not actually crazy”,” he just acts that way so he does not have to go to real prison, and his sent to this ward where actual people are seeking mental help. Mcmurphy, when he first shows up in the ward, looks beat up has scars everywhere. “,”A seam runs across his nose and one cheekbone where somebody laid a good one in a fight, and the stiches are still in the seam. ”(Kesey 12)

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about outsider – R P McMurphy, a sane convict sent to the institution for provocation, whose charm allow him to break through a group of patients of drugged lethargy. He is a livewire, who sees his fellow patients as colleagues and defies the Nurse Ratched and the system she represents. R P is a life force, and has will to conquer, set down in the middle of a community of crushed. Jack Nicholson justifies the character of R P McMurphy in its true verbatim, his

There are four definitions of abnormality: statistical infrequency, deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, and deviation from ideal mental health. Using the definitions separately can cause wrong diagnosis, so using elements from each four would reduce limitations from them.

"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is about a con named Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who fakes being insane and moves into a psychiatric hospital. He fakes his condition so he doesn’t have to go to jail. The only person stopping McMurphy from leaving the ward is Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who is determined to keep him in to cure him of his "illness". She did not really care about the patients and only cared about power. She insisted that everyone take their pills, which drugged them into submission. Ratched and McMurphy struggled for power over the ward. Later in the film, he meets a patient named Chief (Will Sampson), who is tall, quiet and deaf. McMurphy makes bets with the patients, who he calls the 'nuts', and cons them out of their money and cigarettes.