Transcript One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Study notes
context
 Based on Ken Kessy’s novel
 Based on his personal experiences with
mental patients.
 It explores: individuality and rebellion
against conformity.
 It critisizes American institutions as
totalitarian
plot
 Life in the mental institution ward, harshly and
mechanically run by Nurse Ratched changes
dramatically with the arrival of a new patient:
McMurphy.
 Changes bring entertainment but also
awareness, rebellion, tragedy.
 Patients divided in Acute and Chronics get
community therapy where they attack each
other weak aspects and old-fashion treatment:
shocks and lobotomy.
Main charaters
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Chief Bromden
Randle McMurphy
Nurse Ratched
Harding
Billy
Doctor Spivey
Aides
Chief Bromden
 Paranoid, bullied, surrounded by
hallucinations, oppressed, weak, low selfesteem.
 Appearing deaf and dumb.
 Dominated by his childhood with a
dominant mother.
 His paranoia is a metaphor of the
dehumanization in his life.
Randle McMurphy
 Representing: sexuality, freedom, selfdetermination, rebellion, disconformity.
 Appearing as manipulator, he’s the
metaphor of self-sacrifice.
 His rebellious character attracts patients
and moves them to awareness.
 Seen as Christ’s metaphor: speeches,
disciples, sacrifice to redeem others.
Nurse Ratched
 Representing: the oppressive mechanization,
dehumanization, and emasculation of modern
society.
 Able to show a false self to weaken patients.
 Keeping her power by the strategic use of
shame and guilt, a determination to “divide and
conquer” her patients.
 Only faced by McMurphy, who symbolically
exposes her hypocrisy and deceit ripping her
shirt.
Harding
 Educated, homesexual though married.
 Voluntarily secluded because of fear of
social prejudice against homesexuals.
 Opens McMurphy’s eyes about the
institution.
 Reemerging as a person with
McMurphy’s help.
Billy
 Shy with a stutter.
 Dominated by his mother.
 Voluntarily in the institution because he’s
afraid of outside world.
Spivey and Aides
 Dominated by Ratched
Themes: the fundamental and
often universal ideas explored.
 Women as castrators
 Society’s Destruction of Natural
Impulses
 The Importance of Expressing
Sexuality
 False Diagnoses of Insanity
Motifs:
recurring structures, contrasts, and
devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.
 Invisibility
 The Power of Laughter
 Real Versus Imagined Size
Symbols: objects, characters,
figures, and colors used to
represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
 The Fog Machine
 McMurphy’s Boxer Shorts
 The Electroshock Therapy Table
Bibliography
 http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/cuckoo/