(Authors Choice) One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest discussion and summary - Essay Example

It turns out that patients in the asylum have no rights and no life of dignity. The ward in the mental institute, where McMurphy gets to, is run by Nurse Ratched, who is a tyrant with sadistic inclinations. She cows and terrorizes the patients, most of whom have admitted the asylum on their own desire. McMurphy sees that many of the patients are not insane and he revolts against Nurse Ratched and her methods of “treatment” and “care”. He wants to teach people to be free and happy. In the course of the film, you see that sanity is a matter on question, while nurse Ratched seems to be more abnormal and socially dangerous then most of the patients do.

Besides, you can’t get rid of indignation about the humiliating position that the patients of the mental institute are put into, as well as start doubting as to the appropriateness of many methods of treatment and the verity of some diagnosis set. McMurphy finds close friends in the ward. He treats Billy Bibbit, a patient with suicidal syndrome, permanently humiliated and frightened by nurse Ratched, as his younger brother, who needs his support and guard. “Chief” Bromden, a huge Native American, considered to be deaf and submitted with schizophrenia, becomes McMurphy’s confidant, after he learns that Chief is not deaf and is quite sane.

McMurphy decides to treat patients in his own way. He teaches them to enjoy life, playing cards and basketball with them, and taking them fishing on a boat without permission. Having learnt that many of the patients were submitted to the ward voluntarily, he attempts to show them the prerogatives of the free life outside the hospital. Despotic Nurse Ratched starts putting screws on patients. For the first time, they are severely punished by electro shock (which is to be a way of treatment but not punishment).

It is surprising that the rest of the staff doesn’t resist the obviously illegal actions of their chief as if everything that