Is Mcmurphy Role In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Randle P. McMurphy represents freedom, life, joy, and hope to the patients in Big Nurse's ward. He comes from the Outside, loud, seemingly perfectly sane, and wreaks havoc on the orderly world imposed on the patients. As Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest progresses, McMurphy displays the power of the individual against a repressive establishment. He brings many of the patients in the ward that were self-admitted to the hospital full swing, showing them what life can be like outside of the ward. Chief Bromden, Harding, and even Billy Bibbit end the novel as completely changed men. McMurphy is a messianic figure in the novel- he saves the patients in the ward from leading orderly, boring lives under a repressive establishment. The

Whereas beforehand he used to let himself be walked over by the patients and Big Nurse, now Harding sands up for himself, using his intellect to help others, even McMurphy when he refused to leave the ward the night that led to his end. Harding takes one final stand against Big Nurse, when she returns from Medical and claims McMurphy will be back, by tearing up her papers about McMurphy and saying she is “full of so much bullshit”, then checking himself out of the ward (Kesey, 268-269). McMurphy has restored Harding’s self confidence and saved him from a life wasted within Big Nurse’s

McMurphy is the type of person Bibbly so desperately wants to be; Billy sees the freedom, life, joy, and hope that McMurphy represents, and that is what inspires him. As the novel progresses and Billy spends more and more time with McMurphy, Billy changes. He stutters less and becomes more comfortable around the guys, and around girls on the fishing trip. Billy begins to accept the freedom offered to him by McMurphy, so much so as to lose his virginity the night of the party. When Big Nurse threatens Billy Bibbit with telling his mom the events that took place that night, Billy tells her it was McMurphy’s fault, condemning McMurphy to be lobotomized. Instead of living with the guilt and pleasing his mother, Billy Bibbit kills himself in a defiance of authority. Those last moments of his life were his choice; instead of spending his life wasting away in the ward, Billy decides to leave. In a twisted way, McMurphy also saved Billy from living the rest of his life in the ward under Big Nurse’s