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Randle McMurphyCuckoos Nest Transformation: Randle Mc Murphy &# 038; Patients He waltzed into the ward and introduced himself to every patient as a gambling man with a zest for women and cards. Randle P. Mc Murphy, a swaggering, gambling, boisterous redheaded con man, arrived at the ward from the Pendleton Work Farm. He was sentenced to six months at the prison work farm, but pretended to be insane in order to obtain a transfer to the hospital because he thought it would be more comfortable than the work farm.
Bromden senses that there was something different about this new patient. After his first experience with the excruciating routine of the Group Meeting, Mc Murphy tells the patients that Nurse Ratchet is a genuine ball-cutter. The other patients tell him that there is no defying Nurse Ratched because, in their eyes, she is an all-powerful force. True to his nature as a gambling man, Mc Murphy makes a bet with the other patients that he can make Ratched lose her temper. At first, the confrontation between Ratched and Mc Murphy provides some humorous entertainment for the other patients. However, Mc Murphys confrontation soon becomes their confrontation as he draws them into the conflict by encouraging their rebellion.
The success of his bet hinges on a failed vote to change the television schedule so they can watch the World Series. The Series was on television during the time allotted for cleaning chores. Mc Murphy and the other patients staged a protest by sitting in front of the blank television instead of doing their work. Nurse Ratched becomes hysterical and screams at them to return to their chores.
The struggle between Ratched and Mc Murphy takes on the symbolic overtones of a mythological, comic battle. Mc Murphy learns that involuntarily committed patients cannot leave the hospital without staff approval. Therefore, he cannot leave at the end of his six months sentence, but when Nurse Ratched says he can and he begins to submit to her authority. However, by this time, he had become the leader for the other patients. Their sanity, their claim to manhood lies in the balance. Cheswick, dismayed by Mc Murphys surrender, commits suicide.
Cheswicks suicide signals to Mc Murphy that he has unwittingly taken on the responsibility of rehabilitating the other patients. However, after protecting Big George from the cruelty of Ratched's aides, Mc Murphy is sent to Disturbed for electro-shock therapy. The weight of his obligations to the other begins to wear away his strength and his sanity. Nevertheless, Mc Murphy arranges a fishing trip for himself and nine other patients. He guides them through the process of dealing with the hostility of the outside world and sets the stage for Billy Bibbit to lose his virginity by arranging a data between him and Candy Starr, a prostitute from Portland.
When the other patients sense that Mc Murphy is weakening, they urge him to escape. He tells them he will leave early in the morning after Billy has his date. He arranges a going away party for himself. While Billy finally enjoys the pleasure of sex with Candy, Mc Murphy and the other patients smoke marijuana and drink.
However, when the time comes, Mc Murphy cannot bring himself to leave the hospital. Like the other patients, he has become unable to deal with the outside world. In the morning, Nurse Ratched finds out about their party and Billy's sexual encounter with Candy. When she threatens to tell Billy's mother, Billy becomes hysterical and commits suicide by slashing his throat.
Mc Murphy attacks Ratched and rips open the front of her dress and tries to strangle her. In retaliation, she has him lobotomized. However, she has lost her tyrannical power over the ward. Her patients transfer to other wards or check themselves out of the hospital. Before he escapes from the hospital, Bromden suffocates Mc Murphy so that he can die with some dignity rather than living out his life as a vegetable.
Bromden's ultimate fate is ambiguous. He states that he leaves in the direction the dog took earlier. In that scene, the dog seemed to be headed for a fatal collision with a car. It is possible that Bromden is doomed. Alternately, Bromden's words might imply that the battle with the Combine is unfinished, that Nurse Ratched was only one representative of the much larger oppressive organization of modern society, and that if Bromden is to become Mc Murphys disciple, then he must carry on the legacy of resistance. Perhaps the greatest weakness of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is its misogynist elements.
Women are largely concentrated at two personality extremes. Nurse Ratched, Billy's mother, and Bromden's mother are dominating, castrating women. Candy and Sandy, two prostitutes, are characterized as happy tools of masculine empowerment, as toys to be passed around from man to man. Many of the patients have been driven into the ward because of their relationships with domineering women. Key often seems to imply that modern society's biggest problem is the combination of women and power. Ultimately, Mc Murphys success comes through male violence against women, providing Harding's earlier predictions true.
Unfortunately, the reliance on sexist tropes to represent the problems of modern society weakens the overall impact of an otherwise powerful novel.
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