Ambiguous Character In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Albert Einstein once said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey portrays this quote through the main character McMurphy’s internal and external conflicts of falling into Nurse Ratched’s trap of becoming an obedient patient and being under her control or rebelling and fighting for the patients’ rights and freedoms. McMurphy’s actions can lead the reader to assume that he is an evil character, but he redeems himself by partaking in the selfless acts he does for other patients. One way it can be proven that McMurphy is a morally ambiguous character in this novel is that Nurse Ratched uses McMurphy and forcefully puts an idea in other patients minds that McMurphy has purely evil motivations. After McMurphy takes the patients from the ward on a fishing trip, Nurse Ratched has a

McMurphy trains Chief Bromden, until he is stronger and bigger, just as McMurphy promised him. McMurphy convinced Bromden to lift the control panel to test his strength, little did Bromden know that McMurphy would later on use this knowledge in a bet and make a profit off of Bromden’s work. Chief thought that he would at least credit Bromden about how big he became and that McMurphy saw him lift the panel to prove that he wasn’t motivated by money. All the patients betted that he couldn’t lift the panel because they’ve never seen anyone do it. McMurphy lifted it, of course with the discredited previous help of Bromden. After winning, , he offered Bromden a share of the money won, but Bromden refused. McMurphy betrayed him, because Bromden has always been on McMurphy’s side and been loyal, this time he couldn’t accept the fact that McMurphy is selfish. Although the patients realized (with Nurse Ratched’s guidance) that McMurphy is all about money, his actions in the future contradict their opinions on