Flavia
Campbell – 20/03/06
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKO’S NEST
This
is a story about McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who was sentenced to a prison work
farm because of the crime of statutory rape and five assaults; he faked being insane
to get himself transferred to a mental institution.
In the hospital, McMurphy started
questioning all the rules and the reason why the inmates were being treated
that way. They were forced to stand in line to take their medicine, they
couldn’t stay in bed after a specific time and they couldn’t watch TV any time
they wanted to. There were a lot of
authoritarian rules and regulations that McMurphy didn’t agree with and he had
arguments with Nurse Ratched, who was the ward supervisor and loved to show her
power and control.
McMurphy was always trying to defeat
the system and once, in a group therapy session, he asked Nurse Ratched to
rearrange the work schedule so he and the other inmates could watch the opener
of the World Series baseball game. She didn’t agree, but proposed a vote,
knowing that the majority wouldn’t vote against her authority. Only three
people voted in favour of McMurphy, which made him very upset. He decided to
escape and go downtown to watch the game. His plan was to pull up the watering
station and break the glass and escape. He wasn’t able to lift the watering
station, so he gave up.
In the next therapy session, an
inmate suggested another vote on watching the second game of the World Series.
McMurphy encouraged his fellows to vote, and when McMurphy sensed victory (9
people voted in favour of watching the game), Nurse Ratched said that there
were eighteen people in the ward, and he needed a majority to change the rule.
Although the deaf-mute Indian guy had raised his hand, she said that the
meeting had been adjourned and the vote was closed.
In another example of disobedience,
McMurphy hijacked the field bus and took the inmates fishing. He considered
what he had done with them better than a therapy session!
The head doctor wanted to send him
back to prison because he knew he wasn’t crazy and considered McMurphy a
dangerous person, but Nurse Ratched wanted to keep him there just to control
him. As punishment for his disobedience he was sent to the ‘disturbed’ ward for
electro-shock treatment. When he came back to his ward, he decided to escape to
Canada with Chief Bromden, who he discovered wasn’t deaf and mute after all. He
organized a pre-escape party with alcohol and prostitutes, and everybody got
drunk! One of the inmates had sex with a prostitute and slept with her in the
ward.
The next morning, when the nurse
arrived, she saw the terrible mess that McMurphy had caused. He was going to
escape, but he came back when he found out that Billy, the one who had had sex,
had committed suicide, so he couldn’t escape any more.
McMurphy was given a lobotomy and lost all his vital strength. His friend the Chief decided that he shouldn’t live in this way, so he killed him. In the end, Chief Bromden pulled out the watering station, broke the glass and escaped to freedom.