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Differences Between One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Randle McMurphy, has a great impact in changing the attitudes and perspectives of the patients after he arrives at the hospital ward. McMurphy soon realizes that Nurse Ratched’s actions does more to ensure her superiority over the patients than to help them improve. When the other patients see that McMurphy’s accusations are true, they begin to follow his lead of rebellion. The transformative fishing trip that McMurphy organizes for the patients represents a resurgence of the patients’ virility. Although there are some differences between the novel and the film, McMurphy’s motive for the fishing trip remains the same: he wants the patients to realize that they actually have the strength to make decisions for themselves and to achieve their sense of self-worth. To do this, in both the novel and the film, McMurphy teaches the patients how to fish, showing them how to put the bait on the hooks and how to reel in the fishing line. In both scenes, Billy also approaches Candy and talks to her, which initiates their new …show more content…

The fishing trip in the novel is a planned event that Nurse Ratched disapproves of, constantly reminding the patients of the possible dangers out at sea. In the film, the fishing trip is a spontaneous event: McMurphy hijacks a waiting institutional bus with the help of Chief Bromden and escapes with the patients. With the absence of George and Bromden in the filmed version, McMurphy instead puts Cheswick in command of the steering wheel, creating humorous moments such as the time when Cheswick stops steering the boat to spy on McMurphy with the rest of the crew. Also, unlike in the novel where all the patients wear uniforms issued by the mental hospital, all the men instead wear casual clothing during the length of the entire fishing

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