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Mcmurphy Symbolism In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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The nature of man, beyond the black-and-white differences, are clearly portrayed between the characters in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as Ken Kesey continuously alludes to the bible. McMurphy is portrayed as a Christ-like figure throughout the novel. The ward symbolizes the broken world filled with sin and death. In the beginning, when McMurphy enters the ward, he is baptized with a shower. “16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him” (NIV Matthew 3:16.) The fishing trip was organized by McMurphy in order to test and strengthen the faith the patients had in him. This a reflection of when Jesus advised his disciples to let down their nets. “4…he said to Simon, …show more content…

However, he resists the temptations of sin and completes his forty days of mediation. “1Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (NIV Matthew 4:1). This is referenced when McMurphy holds back his true thoughts and appeases towards Nurse Ratched. Nevertheless, when McMurphy returns to his old self, he punches through the glass window of the nurses’ station. This is a metaphor of Jesus ragging and clearing the merchants of the temple or Christ’s last glorification as a human on Palm Sunday when he returns to Jerusalem to die. The party in the ward before McMurphy’s lobotomy is parallel to Christ’s last supper before he was crucified. The narcotic cough syrup mixed with vodka resembles the wine and the two prostitutes, Candy and Sandy, are analogous to Mary Magdalene. Judas’s betrayal of Jesus is referenced with Billy Bibbit’s “betrayal” of McMurphy. Bibbit's betrayal is not in his attempts to push the blame of his time with Candy on McMurphy; it is with his suicide that follows. Judas committed suicide after trading Jesus to the Roman soldiers for thirty pieces of

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It’s common for some works of literature to improve upon their writing by sustained allusions to myths, the bible, or other literature references. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Ken Kesey makes use of frequent allusions from the bible. Because of this, McMurphy, the main character, is painted as a Christ-like figure.

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In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the prolific Christian imagery serves not only to align the protagonist, Randle McMurphy, with Jesus Christ, but to provide an overarching allegory: only God can rescue mankind from the inexorable, bleak future it will spawn. The novel suggests that the bleak, oppressive future is caused by the presence of societal constraints, since government is inherently flawed as are the humans that created and maintain it. The depraved future is fully realized through the careful, populist affectations of the Combine which bely its emasculating ways. Functioning as a modern-day version of Christ, McMurphy, persists in his contrarian, self-immolating efforts to deliver his peers--his disciples--from the evils

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In response, McMurphy strangles her, however, she sends him away and he received a lobotomy. While McMurphy is on a different ward, the men stand up for themselves and some even find the courage to sign out of the hospital. McMurphy’s lobotomy is equivalent to Jesus’s crucifixion because afterwards McMurphy is presented as a martyr. This shows that McMurphy choose to rebel, which proves that he chose to sacrifice

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In the novel, McMurphy attacks the nurse brutally and attempts to kill her, “doctors and supervisors and nurses prying those heavy red fingers out of the white flesh of her throat as if they were her neck bones, jerking him backward” (Kesey 319). Also, the narrator shows mercy towards McMurphy by smothering him in his sleep, “and scissor the kicking legs with mine while I mashed the pillow into the face. I lay there on top of the body for what seemed days. Until the thrashing stopped” (323).

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