One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Essay by elgxl June 2004

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

In the movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, there was a character named McMurphy, played by Jack Nickolson, who was admitted into a mental institution for medical testing after having been convicted of statutory rape. It was obvious that he was only faking and he thought that he could get off from having to serve his sentence in a work camp. He pretty much saw everything and everyone as a joke but the only person who he didn't fool was nurse Ratchet. He thought that he would be able to leave in a couple of months, the time of his sentence in the work camp, until he found out that he wouldn't be allowed to leave.

After a few days he began to see the patients as a group that needed more enjoyment in their lives and he wanted to try to find some way that they could get out and go to a bar and watch the world series.

The nursing staff seemed uncaring to their lack of enjoyment to life and basically refused to allow the patients to even watch the game on the TV during their chores even after having took a vote where a mute patient nicknamed 'Chief' for the first time communicated that he wanted to watch the game. McMurphy had befriended Chief and later discovered that he was not deaf and dumb but was only faking his muteness and they planed to escape together.

McMurphy later found out that many of these patients were here only because they put themselves here and didn't want to leave even though they had the option to. He tried his best to bring some life to these patients such as teaching them to play poker and gambling for cigarettes.