Cuckoo's Nest Final Project

Lindsay Barber

F Block

English

12/7/14

McMurphy

1. “It’s my first day, and what I like to do is make a good impression straight off on the right man if he can prove to me he is the right man. Who’s the bull goose loony here?” (Kesey, 19)
2. “Miss, I don’t like to create trouble. But I don’t like to swallow something without knowing what it is, neither. How do I know this isn’t one of those funny pills that makes me something I’m not?” (Kesey, 34)
3. “No,” I told him. “I couldn’t.” “Couldn’t tell them off? It’s easier than you think.” “You’re … lot bigger, tougher’n I am,” I mumbled. “How’s that? I didn’t get you, Chief.” I worked some spit down in my throat. “You are bigger and tougher than I am. You can do it.” “Me? Are you kidding? Criminy, look at you: you stand a head taller’n any man on the ward . There ain’t a man here you couldn’t turn every way but loose, and that’s a fact!” (Kesey, 219)
4. "Is this the usual pro-cedure for these Group Ther'py shindigs? Bunch of chickens at a peckin' party?" (Kesey, 57)
5. “Damn it, Harding, I didn’t mean it like that. You ain’t crazy that way. I mean— hell, I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average asshole on the street—” (Kesey, 65)
6. “But I tried, though,” he says. “Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?” (Kesey, 125)
7. “Well, I don’t mean nothing personal, you understand, buddies, but screw that noise. I want out of here just as much as the rest of you. I got just as much to lose hassling that old buzzard as you do.” (Kesey, 194)

Explanation of Quotes Chosen:

McMurphy is depicted as a typical masculine figure who takes charge, with a strong urge to win and be the best at everything.  For example, “It’s my first day, and what I like to do is make a good impression straight off on the right man if he can prove to me he is the right man. Who’s the bull goose loony here?” (Kesey, 19)?” McMurphy is trying to find out who is the best so that he can beat them, insisting that he is crazier than the “head loony.”  

Why this character advances the overall theme of the novel:

R.P McMurphy is a static protagonist in, The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  He is a man whose personality mirrors his physical appearance, “I did see scars worn deep into the white palms…”  His “wounds” run deep internally through his demented mind as well as on his physical body.  Although McMurphy may not convey as a man who is holy and righteous, he is compared to Jesus Christ.  The number of men accompanying McMurphy on the fishing excursion is twelve, just like the number of Christ's disciples. The bravado displayed by the patients following the gas station incident is revealed by Chief to be a bluff, much like the actions of Christ's disciples prior to his crucifixion.  Christ's “trial and punishment” is paralleled when McMurphy and Chief are removed to the Disturbed Ward.  During this event, a patient repeats the words of Pontius Pilate: "I wash my hands…." McMurphy lies down, arms outspread on the table and refers to the administration of electroshock therapy.  The doctor sets the machinery in place, similar to the anointing of Jesus’s head with "a crown of thorns."  These religious motifs allow for the advancement of the text and let the reader to recognize themes, such as power, manipulation, and rebellion.

Nurse Ratched

1. “The Big Nurse tests a needle against her fingertip. "I'm afraid"-she stabs the needle down in the rubber-capped vial and lifts the plunger-"that is exactly what the new patient is planning: to take over. He is what we call a 'manipulator,' Miss Flinn, a man who will use everyone and everything to his own ends." (Kesey, 27)
2. “You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane."(Kesey, 28)
3. "Now. Who will start? Let out those old secrets." And she'd put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question, quiet as an electric alarm about to go off, waiting for somebody to start telling something about themselves. Her eyes swept back and forth over them as steady as a turning beacon. The day room was clamped silent for twenty long minutes, with all of the patients stunned where they sat. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, "Am I to take it that there's not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted?" She reached in the basket for the log book. "Must we go over past history?" (Kesey, 50)
4. "No. She doesn't need to accuse. She has a genius for insinuation. Did you ever hear her, in the course of our discussion today, ever once hear her accuse me of anything? Yet it seems I have been accused of a multitude of things, of jealousy and paranoia, of not being man enough to satisfy my wife, of having relations with male friends of mine, of holding my cigarette in an affected manner, even-it seems to me-accused of having nothing between my legs but a patch of hair-and soft and downy and blond hair at that! Ball-cutter? Oh, you underestimate her!" (Kesey, 64) - about Nurse...by Harding
5. "You men are in this hospital," she would say like she was repeating it for the hundredth time, "because of your proven inability to adjust to society. The doctor and I believe that every minute spent in the company of others, with some exceptions, is therapeutic, while every minute spent brooding alone only increases your separation." (Kesey, 167)
6. “First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit!  I hope you’re finally satisfied.  Playing with human lives- gambling with human lives- as if you thought yourself to be a God!” (Kesey, 318)

Explanation of Quotes Chosen:

Nurse Ratched embodies the characteristics of a willed, powerful, tyrannical woman as she desires order and fights for her compelling thirst for complete power.  The reader can gather this from the way she handles herself as she evaluates the patients, in other words, who has the capability of over-throwing her.  This is notable in the quote, “The Big Nurse tests a needle against her fingertip. "I'm afraid"-she stabs the needle down in the rubber-capped vial and lifts the plunger-"that is exactly what the new patient is planning: to take over. He is what we call a 'manipulator,' Miss Flinn, a man who will use everyone and everything to his own ends." (Kesey, 23)  Nurse Ratched is explaining this to a nurse, but is overheard by the assumed deaf, mute Indian narrator.

Why this character advances the overall theme of the novel:

Nurse Ratched, or ‘Big Nurse’ is the novel’s antagonist.  She is depicted as a dictator who has complete power over the men on the ward.  In literary terms, Nurse Ratched is a flat character, who encounters no changes whatsoever throughout the book.  Early in the novel, Chief has a hallucination of Nurse Ratched transforming into a piece of machinery that holds the capability of mass destruction.  She ties into an important theme of the novel, women as castrators.  The fear of women is one of the novel’s most central features. The male characters seem to agree with Harding, who complains, “We are victims of a matriarchy here.”  Although Nurse Ratched is an antagonist of the worst kind in this book, even Chief knows that she’s simply the human face of the Combine – a machine that Chief imagines is society.    

Chief Bromden

1. “There’s something strange about a place where the men won’t let themselves loose and laugh, something strange about the way they all knuckle under to that smiling flour-faced old mother there with the too-red lipstick and the too-big boobs. And he thinks he’ll just wait a while to see what the story is in this new place before he makes any kind of play. That’s a good rule for a smart gambler: look the game over awhile before you draw yourself a hand.” (Kelsey, 49)
2. “The ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold. Watch him sliding across the land with a welded grin, fitting into some nice little neighborhood where they’re just now digging trenches along the street to lay pipes for city water. He’s happy with it. He’s adjusted to surroundings finally…” (Kelsey, 40)
3. “McMurphy doesn’t know it, but he’s onto what I realized a long time back, that it’s not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it’s the whole Combine, the nation-wide Combine that’s the really big force, and the nurse is just a high-ranking official for them.” (Kelsey, 192)
4. “I was seeing lots of things different. I figured the fog machine had broke down in the walls when they turned it up too high for that meeting on Friday, so now they weren’t able to circulate fog and gas and foul up the way things looked. For the first time in years I was seeing people with none of that black outline they used to have, and one night I was even able to see out the windows.” (Kelsey, 162)
5. “...[Nurse Ratched] saw that McMurphy was growing bigger than ever while he was upstairs where the guys couldn’t see the dent she was making on him, growing almost into a legend. A man out of sight can’t be made to look weak, she decided, and started making plans to bring him back down to our ward. She figured the guys could see for themselves then that he could be as vulnerable as the next man. He couldn’t’ continue in his hero role if he was sitting around the day room all the time in a shock stupor.” (Kelsey, 291)

Explanation of Quotes Chosen:

Chief is the main character of the novel, as he observes the men on the ward by having the men believe that he is a deaf, dumb Indian.  Throughout the novel, Chief Bromden finds his voice and grows as a person and eventually his personality matches his enormous stature.

Why this character advances the overall theme of the novel:

Bromden, as the son of an Indian chief, is a combination of pure, natural individuality and a spirit who is almost destroyed by the corrupt society that surrounds him.  The Combine is the invention of Chief's paranoia; a large mechanized structure that enforces its control over people by making it quadrate to incompliant standards of behavior.  Throughout the novel, it is evident that Chief Bromden is changing and resisting the relentlessness of the fog that engulfs his mind.  McMurphy aides him in escaping from his internal conflict to resist the fog that is forced upon him from the evil doings of the Combine.  As the novel progresses, Chief becomes more and more vocal with the other men and is no longer only a strong man who doubts his own powers.  If The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest lacked this pivotal character, the reader would lack the eyes and ears of the novel, as well as someone to guide one through this mysterious, crazy world that was once a reality.

The Patients

1. “This world…belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. Nor more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?” (Kelsey, 64)
2. “So you see my friend, it is somewhat as you stated: man has but one truly effective weapon against the juggernaut of modern matriarchy, but it certainly is not laughter. One weapon, and with every passing year in this hip, motivationally researched society, more and more people are discovering how to render that weapon useless and conquer those who have hitherto been conquerors. . .” (Kelsey, 71)
3. “I don’t think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.” (Kelsey, 190)
4. “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.” (Kelsey, 195)
5. “m, um, well, y-y-y-you d-d-d-don't have to t-t-t-tell her, Miss Ratched.“
6. "Sure!" he screams again. "If we had the g-guts! I could go outside to-today, if I had the guts. My m-m-mother is a good friend of M-Miss Ratched, and I could get an AMA signed this afternoon, if I had the guts!" (Kelsey, 195)
7. “Billy Bibbit was the first one to say something out loud, not really a word, just a low, almost painful whistle that described how she looked better than anybody else could have. She laughed and thanked him very much and he blushed so red that she blushed with him and laughed again.  (Kelsey, 232) - Candy
8. “Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn’t it? Food for thought there.” (Kelsey, 238)
9. “Most merciful God, accept these two poor sinners into your arms. And keep the doors ajar for the coming of the rest of us, because you are witnessing the end, the absolute, irrevocable, fantastic end. I’ve finally realized what is happening. It is our last fling. We are doomed henceforth. Must screw our courage to the sticking point and face up to our impending fate. We shall be all of us shot at dawn. One hundred cc’s apiece. Miss Ratched shall line us all against the wall, where we’ll face the terrible maw of a muzzle-loading shotgun which she has loaded with Miltowns! Thorazines! Libriums! Stelazines! And with a wave of her sword, blooie! Tranquilize all of completely out of existence.” (Kelsey, 304)

Why I Chose The Quotes:
These quotes show the individuality of each character as it gives the reader insight to their challenging life on the ward. It is also evident that the men progress throughout the novel, and they all find their voice literally and figuratively.
Comparison and Contrast:

Dale Harding manifests qualities of a leader whom others turn to in times of struggle with a kind-hearted way of thinking, for he does not resent McMurphy for taking over. He represents a polar opposite from McMurphy; Harding is feminine and is attracted to men.  In addition, he also is a bright intellectual, he vigorously points out that McMurphy has, “..the most to lose” since he was committed.  Nurse Ratched can keep McMurphy on the ward forever.  On the other hand, Billy Bibbit is particularly shy, and lives in constant fear of Nurse Ratched and her overwhelming need for complete domination.  He is faced with an internal challenge of wanting to please others, and satisfy himself. Billy's desire to please his mother is so strong when Mrs. Rachted found out that he broke the rules and threatened to tell his mother and he retorts with, “m, um, well, y-y-y-you d-d-d-don't have to t-t-t-tell her, Miss Ratched.“
   

The Staff

1. Doctor - “The funny thing is that the person that he's the closest to is the one he dislikes the most... That's you, Mildred.” (Kesey, 21)
2. Lifeguard - “I’m committed…I’d of left here before now if it was up to me. Maybe I couldn’t play first string, with this bum arm, but I could of folded towels, couldn’t I? I could of done something. That nurse on my ward, she keeps telling the doctor I ain’t ready. Not even to fold towels in the crummy old locker room, I ain’t ready.” (Kesey, 129)
3. Black boy - “Why, who you s'pose signed chief Bromden up for this foolishness? Inniuns ain't able to write." (Kesey, 191)
4. Nurse - “All single nurses should be fired after they reach thirty-five.” (Kesey, 266)
5. Black boy - “What you think Mr . McMurphy is drivin’ at with that kind of talk, man? You think he wants me to take the initiative? Heeheehee . Don’t he know we trained to take such awful-soundin’ insults from these crazies?” (Kelsey, 273)

Why I Chose The Quotes:

From this, one is able to conclude that the patients are treated differently by members of the staff. Where-as some of the staff is understanding and shows compassion for them, the others are following Nurse Ratched's strict procedures.

Comparison and Contrast:

The aides experienced a poor childhood with a lack of education, evident by their use of poor grammar “Why, who you s'pose signed chief Bromden up for this foolishness? Inniuns ain't able to write" (Kesey, 191).  The lifeguard plays a small role in a pivotal scene.  Cheswick is ultimately sated with the men and commits suicide by diving into the pool and drowning because McMurphy doesn’t support Cheswick in his own stand against Nurse Ratched. His suicide shows McMurphy that he has more influence over the men than he realized. The Japanese nurse shows true compassion for the men, being a minority and being persecuted for being such, she understands how they feel.

Motifs

1. Importance of Laughter
1. “...free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it’s lapping against the walls all over the ward. Not like that fat Public Relation laugh. This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it’s the first laugh I’ve heard in years.” (Kesey, 12)
2. “That laugh banged around the day room all evening, and all the time he was dealing he was joking and talking and trying to get the players to laugh to.” (Kesey, 81)
3. “Whack his leg and throw back his head and laugh and laugh, digging his thumbs into the ribs of whoever was sitting next to him, trying to get him to laugh too.” (Kesey, 161)

Explanation of Motif:

The power of laughter is strung throughout the novel the second McMurphy is admitted to the ward.  His strong sense of humor brings a new atmosphere as the men adjust to this almost forgotten human emotion.  The narrator, Chief Bromden, calls forward a memory from his childhood where his father and family were laughing and mocking government officials, and the power that the laughter held.  Laughter is utilized by McMurphy as a defence mechanism against the complete insanity society exemplifies.  When the men on the ward are finally able to laugh, such as after the fishing trip, a sense of relief washes over them.  The patients are now closer to humanity then they ever were with the “help” of Nurse Ratched, laughter is sometimes the best medicine.  

2. Machinery
1. “The machinery in the walls whistles, sighs, and drops into a lower gear.” (Kesey, 78)
2. “...when you were full-sized, when you used to be , let’s say, six seven or eight and weighed two eighty or so—were you strong enough to, say, lift something the size of that control panel in the tub room?” (Kesey, 81)

Explanation of Motif:

Fog is a phenomenon that clouds the men’s vision of the world and impairs their judgement.  As used in the novel, fog embodies the characteristic of lack of insight.  As Bromden begins to slip further away from reality, he hallucinates fog in the ward.  He goes so far to believe that the staff is behind the sudden appearance of the fog and controls it through the air vents.  The fog is very comforting for him, although sometimes frightening, he uses it as an escape from society and life on the ward.  The mind-numbing routines and the embarrassing activities can also be an interpretation of the fog.  The men are blindly following procedure, until McMurphy asks what kind of medication he is taking.  From his first step in the ward, McMurphy drags all the patients out of the fog.   

3. Religious Overtones
1. “As McMurphy led the twelve of us to the ocean.” (Kesey, 239)
2. “He looked us over with yellow, scaled eyes and shook his head. “I wash my hands of the whole deal,” he told one of the colored aides, and the wire drug him off down the hall.” (Kesey, 276)

Explanation of Motif:

The religious overtones are woven throughout The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy parallels with Jesus, as far as the ultimate sacrifice one could make, giving up their own life for the well-being of others. Although, McMurphy was not dying to redeem the sins of others, but to save them from the sins society has committed against them. Prior to his death, the men had one final hurrah followed by Billy Bibbit's betrayal and suicide. In this way, Billy is being compared to another biblical figure, Peter. It is also notable that the author, Ken Kesey, used LSD, a drug that can create religious, god-like hallucinations.