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Extract From One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

765 Words4 Pages

In this extract from the part 3, everyone is drinking and catching big fish on the boat. McMurphy doesn’t help the men who plead with him to pull in the fish; he just watches and laughs. First, it is evident that McMurphy is deliberately absent because he knows the men need this opportunity to see that they can do things on their own, without him. The patients finally experienced the freedom of action – to be a normal person. When Harding realised that McMurphy would not help him, he "got the gaff and jerked my [Bromden] fish into the boat with a clean, graceful motion like he's been boating fish all his life." Suddenly Harding is not passive anymore, but moves with a "clean, graceful motion", adjectives that they are never associated …show more content…

They’re more relaxed and easygoing, and seem not to think of themselves as mentally diseased in any way. Even Scanlon – a character previously established as the only Acute patient except McMurphy that is involuntarily committed to the ward and wants to blow this up – helps Bromden and "grabs the fish and wrestles it down". The verbs used such as "grabs" and "wrestles" all belong to the lexical field of describing the exertion of physical strength. Through the fishing trip, Scanlon is not physically developed, but psychologically empowered, and that is why the author tries to give the powerful impression. In the narrator's perspective, Scanlon is no longer a weak and vulnerable patient, but powerful. The normality of the patients culminates in the fishing excursion – just about the most normal activity one can engage in. By treating his peers as ordinary, normal human beings, not specimens needing examination, McMurphy has cured them of many of their supposed psychological afflictions. Through this passage, we understand what effect McMurphy has on the patients. In the ward, the most powerful decides whether a person is sane or insane. For most of these men, they simply cannot deal with the shame of not fitting into what is conventionally normal

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In both scenes, McMurphy helps the acutes and Chief Bromden come further out of the sphere of Nurse Ratched’s influence and become more self-reliant. In the voting scene, this is the first time that together all of the acutes defy Nurse Ratched. After winning the vote and realizing the power of many together, they are pulled closer to McMurphy’s ways and further away from the Nurse’s ways of making them more like rabbits. When out fishing, there are many scenes depicting joy and laughter, which would have never happened in Nurse Ratched’s ideal world.

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McMurphy tries to instill this idea into the patients and hopes they could make a clean transition to life outside the institution. When McMurphy develops a strong relationship with the patients, he notices that the staff labels most of them as mentally challenged. Due to their lack of confidence and self-respect, the patients are never able to truly act like themselves. They feel limited because of their poor treatment. The patients have the opportunity to leave the ward, but choose not to because they are comfortable in their environment.

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1075 Words | 5 Pages

At first look it just looks like a bunch patients going on a fishing trip, but we know by now that it's never that simple. After all, Foster told us that "the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge"(Foster 3). McMurphy hopes that the fishing trip will make the others realize that they are still human, still men, still deserving of some of life's simple pleasures, and deserving of being out of Nurse Ratched's iron fisted control. Having a little fun outside of Nurse Ratched's control will help the patients remember who they are. This is exemplified by Chief Bromden when he recalls a memory and states that "it was the first time in what seemed to me centuries that I'd been able to remember much about my childhood"(Keser 215).

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638 Words | 3 Pages

The novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, follows the lives of mental patients living in an asylum during the 1960s. As another attempt to get out of the hospital, McMurphy sets up a fishing trip for him and the patients. They soon have to face their fears of the outside world, encountering the people that come with it. When they arrive at a gas station, McMurphy and the Doctor have very different approaches to the servicemen. Through this contrast, Kesey suggests that insanity can be used to one’s advantage.

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426 Words | 2 Pages

One quote that made me feel is the quote, “The real impact is measured in the widows left behind, the children who will never know fathers or mothers, the names of the fallen etched changed” (Bay Area News Group). This quote makes me feel upset that the children don’t even know their family and get left behind. One quote that makes me think is the quote “‘ Over time, the pain gets a little better, than a moment will strike you when it’s as strange as it ever was… and it’s as if you just heard it,’” (Chapman).

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1389 Words | 6 Pages

In the novel, Kesey employs many characters, each with unique features. For example, Dale Harding, one of the protagonists in the story, was described as, “... a flat, nervous man ...” (Kesey 20) and in one of the group discussion lead by Nurse Ratched, he was reported of saying

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“Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.” (214). Henceforth, McMurphy, in an attempt to bring the genuine laugh back to all the patients, continuously breaks the rules. Remarkable that by the end of the fishing trip, Harding, Scanlon, Doctor Spivey, and Sefelt are all finally able to participate in real laughter, which can be regarded as a sign of their physical and psychological recovery. McMurphy is a prominent example of a

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All of McMurphy violent behavior was for the men to better themselves. He prepared them for real world outside of the ward. He helped them not to get pushed around and to not be afraid to do what they want. Mcmurphy’s madness is made reasonable as it provided the patients with hope and helped them return to a sane lifestyle. By the end, McMurphy managed to release many of the patients to their normal senses, Even though it caused him to lose his freedom.

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987 Words | 4 Pages

In the end, even though McMurphy suffers a great deal, he is shown as a capital figure he is willing to sacrifice what he has in order to save the other men in the hospital. One of the main times the men decide to defy the nurse and ward rules is when they decide to plan a fishing trip. This is an absolute crucial part of McMurphy’s story because of the fact that it references directly to the bible, Matthew eight. In the story, Jesus goes out on a boat with his twelve disciples when they are hit by a storm. It is not very different

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890 Words | 4 Pages

. Five Quotations “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” (Hemingway 18) “You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that I now can enjoy everything so well” (Hemingway 67). “In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well-off clean...every way you looked there were other [gorgeous] mountains” (Hemingway 97-99).

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1459 Words | 6 Pages

In the ward, the only individual capable of undermining Nurse Ratched’s power is Randle McMurphy. By blatantly disregarding the nurse’s strict rules, standing up for himself, and encouraging other patients to do so, he creates a situation that jeopardizes the order Nurse Ratched has created. When McMurphy manages to get a fishing trip approved, granted he gets ten other patients to sign up, Nurse Ratched uses malicious methods to thwart his plans: “The nurse started steadily bringing in clippings from the newspapers that told about wrecked boats and sudden storms on coast” (Kesey 178). In order to dismantle the immense progress McMurphy has made towards changing the attitudes of the patients, Nurse Ratched discourages them from attending his trip. Her motive in doing this is to have the patients lose faith in McMurphy, ultimately destroying the influence he has over them.

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1380 Words | 6 Pages

In the struggle between freedom and power, McMurphy’s sacrifice allows freedom to prevail. His leadership in a rising rebellion parallels many of the countercultures that arose during the 1960s. His rebellion fights against Nurse Ratched in the way that the countercultures fought against the government and society in the past to the present. The men in the asylum are unknowingly unhappy before the arrival of McMurphy. Through his antics, the men are saved from society in the form of Nurse Ratched’s regime.

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1033 Words | 5 Pages

The ward is not doing anything to help them, it is just making them worse. Billy could have gotten a wife and gone off to college if the insecurity of stutter did not scare him so much. Harding would have had it difficult but he did not even try to live that life he was so afraid of. When McMurphy brought them on the boat trip it was a huge turning point for the characters, mentally. There is still the question if mental institutions really help people with there “insanity” or keep them

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1288 Words | 6 Pages

His rebellious and free mind makes the patients open their eyes and see how the have been suppressed. His appearance is a breath of fresh air and a look into the outside world for the patients. This clearly weakens Nurse Ratched’s powers, and she sees him as a large threat. One way or another, McMurphy tends to instigate changes of scenery. He manages to move everyone away from her music and watchful eye into the old tube room.

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1379 Words | 6 Pages

Having conformed to the authoritarian rule of the mental institution, patients were forced to give up their rights and freedom. In addition, there were a few instances where social environment was shown to play a role in how mental illness is defined. This can be seen during a scene of the group sessions, where McMurphy gave a suggestion for the group to take a field trip to the opening of the World Series. Although it took a few sessions and much effort for the majority of the patients to agree but the suggestion was still rejected. Frustrated with Nurse Ratched’s actions of turning the classical musical record on instead of listening to his demands, McMurphy faces the television and begins to imagine that he is watching the World Series as if he

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