Who is McMurphy?

            Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a book that had a message to convey. This message is that people are trying to stifle us – to make us robots. There are many characters in Kesey’s book who are at first submissive to the world around, but in the end they begin to fight “the system,” and the world sees these people as crazy. In the beginning of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief, the narrator of this tale, knows that the world is trying to make the non-conformists kowtow. He tries to fight it, but Chief does not know how to go about rebelling (Kesey, 2002, pp. 3-8) until Randle Patrick McMurphy shows up. McMurphy is a gambler, loves intimacy, a good drink and freedom. He believes that the world is wrong to make people submit, and McMurphy is not going to stand for it. Randle Patrick McMurphy is a man who is an individual in the way he thinks and acts.

            Who exactly is McMurphy? Kesey’s book gives the reader a glimpse into who this character is. The reader knows from the instant McMurphy enters the ward; he is “not a regular visitor at the door” (Kesey, 2002, p. 9). It is soon found that he truly is not the normal man. McMurphy was imprisoned for gambling and battery (Kesey, 2002, p. 225) and he thought it would be better to be placed in an asylum than on a work farm. To avoid the prison camp, he pretends to be crazy (McGilligan, 1995, p. 270).   

            McMurphy does not seem to think he has done anything wrong. He firmly believes in free love and having a brawl if the occasion arose. This character believes in freedom. Soon after being committed, he begins to rebel against Nurse Ratched or Big Nurse (Kesey, 2002, p. 4) and tries to rally the inmates (McGilligan, 1994-1995, p. 270). His rebellion gets him sent up to the “Shock Shop” (Kesey, 2002, throughout book) for Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without anesthesia (Frances & First, 1998, p. 52) which was “a terribly unrealistic depiction…of ECT” (Frances & First, 1998, p. 52). 

            Kesey’s character changes the world in the asylum. The people in there are at first submissive as puppies. They do what they are told without asking any questions. This changes when McMurphy arrives and starts questioning what is going on.

            The inmates look up to McMurphy, especially Billy Bibbitt. To Bibbitt “McMurphy was his special friend and hero…” (Kesey, 2002, p. 227). To other people he is the strongest person they ever had met and that “maybe he truly is something extraordinary” (Kesey, 2002, p 139). They would do anything to please McMurphy, even act as if they are not afraid of change, even though they were terrified of what might happen (Kesey, 2002, p. 205).        

            When McMurphy first comes to the institution, he seems to see it as a new challenge (Kesey, 2002, pp. 70-72). It is not only a challenge to fight for freedom, but also a way to earn money. Could he have been addicted to gambling?

            Even though he was never diagnosed, McMurphy was, it seems, a compulsive gambler. Addiction & Recovery for Dummies defines a gambling addiction as “…the betting or wagering of valuables on uncertain outcomes…” (Shaw, Ritvo, & Irvine, 2005, p. 36). Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest there are different stages of addiction. In the beginning he is winning every time he bet. His wins make him act optimistically, thus he keeps betting so that he can continue to feel this way. In Addiction & Recovery for Dummies that is the definition of the “winning” phase (Shaw, Ritvo, & Irvine, 2005, p. 37). Later on he begins to lose and the “losing” phase is defined as “…may brag about past wins…” (Shaw, Ritvo, & Irvine, 2005, p. 37) which is exactly what McMurphy does. By the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy was in the “Desperation” phase where he is making “bets more often that is normal, in more desperate attempts to catch up and ‘get even’” – which is how Addiction & Recovery for Dummies defines the last stage (Shaw, Ritvo, & Irvine, 2005, p. 38).

            After the “Desperation” phase, McMurphy changes in the way he acts. In the beginning he does things just to please himself but as he got to know the inmates, he starts to do things for the rest of the men. When Bibbitt commits suicide because of how Big Nurse spoke to him after Bibbitt loses his virginity to Candy, McMurphy takes it personally. He cracks. It happens before the suicide, but McMurphy fights it until he can no longer do so (Kesey, 2002, pp. 273-274) and then in the end he tried to strangle Nurse Ratched because she had beaten Billy Bibbitt down completely (Kesey, 2002, pp. 274-275).

            After he attacks Big Nurse he was sent up to the disturbed ward and a lobotomy is performed on him so he would be docile (Kesey, 2002, p. 277). It not only makes him docile, it makes him a vegetable. Chief cab not stand seeing McMurphy this way and knows that he would not want to “live” in this state and so Chief smothers him even though Chief hates it and fought against what he did while smothering him (Kesey, 2002, pp. 278-279).

            What if McMurphy had not become a vegetable? If he had what if Chief had not smothered him? Would the story have been different? Would the last few inmates have seen McMurphy differently? If McMurphy had not tried to strangle Big Nurse then he would not have had the lobotomy, however, if another circumstance arose McMurphy would have done the same thing. He was an angry, belligerent man. McMurphy loved fighting, he said so himself throughout the book (Kesey, 2002, throughout book).  Because of these hostile emotions, he would have done something to make Nurse Ratched send him to the disturbed ward, unless he and Chief escaped before something happened, just as they had, it seemed, planned. On the other hand, if McMurphy still had been lobotomized and Chief had not smothered him then McMurphy more than likely would have been looked upon differently. He would have been a let down for the rest of the inmates. They would have seen him go from being a fearless beast to a vulnerable babe. The way the book ends, even though it was possibly the worst ending, was in such a manner that Big Nurse did not win.

            McMurphy change the way the inmates thought and acted - they take control of their lives and began to be individuals and not robotic or rabbit-like as McMurphy and the Chief feared would happen (Kesey, 2002, pp. 7 to the end of the book). He frees them from the fears they had and let them think for themselves.

            Besides being a gambling addict and a violent man, McMurphy is a revolutionary. He is a firm believer in freedom of speech and acting on free will. McMurphy seems to see the world as either stagnant or turning to monotony; where everything is the same. In the early 1960’s when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set, there were other people out there who thought the same way. These thoughts began in the mid-1950’s when James Dean and Gary Cooper, among others, hit the scene.

            James Dean was the most famous of the rebels of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Dean burst on the picture with East of Eden, but the 1955 Rebel without a Cause is what made him famous. Rebel, as it was called, showed that even “young people from nice homes do rebel…” (Perlman, 1993, p. 35). This movie was the first of its kind. It not only showed that teenagers from all walks of life acted out insubordinately, but Rebel also has a “… keen understanding of young people. Rebel succeeds where others fail, because it explains youth rebellion in a language that young people understand” (Perlman, 1993, p. 37).

            In the movie, Dean’s character Jim Stark meets Plato who is a young psychotic boy who is troubled (Schroeder, 1994, p. 92), and they become very close (Schroeder, 1994, p. 93). The friendship it seems was similar to McMurphy and Chief. McMurphy was the tough guy, just like Jim Stark, and Chief was the scared, meek-like person just like Plato, though in the end it was McMurphy who was killed instead of Plato. Just like his character in Rebel without a Cause,  Dean was rebellious and reckless. He was a reckless young man who did not follow the law. During the shooting of Rebel Dean was cut in a fight scene – they were using real switchblades.

            The director cried, “Cut!”, (Schroeder, 1994, p. 91), which resulted in Dean becoming upset. He yelled, “Can’t you see this is a real moment? Don’t you ever cut a scene when I’m having a real moment. That’s what I’m here for.” (Schroeder, 1994, p. 91). Dean seemed to feel that even if he was dying, no one should cut a scene, especially if it felt realistic. Throughout his life he lived that way. A friend of his once said that “audacious” (Holley, 1995, p. 16) was the “single best word to describe Dean” (Holley, 1995, p. 16).  

            In the way he learned his lines and dealt with movie companies, Dean was a mutineer. At one film shooting especially, Dean seemed to have not learned his lines – he mumbled and fumbled with the words, but on the day of the shooting Dean nailed the performance (Holley, 1995, p. 237). 

            Later on, the production company Warner infuriated Dean (Holley, 1995, p. 238). To take revenge over the production company, Dean removed every name and number plates from the office doors and attached them to different (and unusual) places (Holley, 1995, p. 238). However, this did not infuriate Warner and Dean filmed Rebel with them (Holley, 1995, p. 238).  Dean had not only a love for acting, but also a love of racing (Holley, 1995, p. 256). He had a compulsive attitude with cars. As soon as he had enough money Dean would trade for bigger and faster vehicles (Holley, 1995, p. 257). On the way to one of the races that was going to be held in Sainas, he died in a car accident – the most famous highway accident (Holley, 1995, p. 257). This was the death of the most famous rebel of the time.

            Before James Dean there was Gary Cooper. Born in 1901 in Montana to strict British parents (Meyers, 1998, p. 1), Cooper was brought up as a British lad. However, he was wild. He cussed, dressed like Huckleberry Finn, “played cowboys and Indians; hunted for arrowheads,

wolf dens and jackrabbits” (Meyers, 1998, p. 6) and hunted. When he was eight his mother sent him to England to be refined and to have good schooling (Meyers, 1998, p. 10) which is what he turned into.  However, three years later, when he moved back home. Cooper soon went back to his old ways, because he had to not because he wished to (Meyers, 1998, p. 15). Cooper even started to gamble (Meyers, 1998, pp. 14-15). In one hand of poker, Cooper lost the family’s hogs (Meyers, 1998, p. 15).

            As he got older, he became mischievous. These were some of the things Cooper did was: greased the car tracks, set off dynamite in town, and placed cheese on the school’s radiators (Meyers, 1998, p. 20).  The things Cooper did expelled him from school and sent away (Meyers, 1998, p. 20).

            When he entered his twenties, he stopped playing pranks, but still was rebellious until Cooper died of cancer in 1961 (Meyers, 1998, p. 320). He was a rebel without a cause. Because of the upbringing he had it was more of a necessity to be rebellious than for any other reason.

            What was McMurphy rebelling against? Just as James Dean had, McMurphy was fighting for freedom from conformity. McMurphy was also fighting against the injustice people like Nurse Ratched cause. The world was drastically changing, whether for the better or worse, is debatable, but McMurphy seemed to think that it was for the worse.

            Because McMurphy could not ‘fight’ how the outside was becoming because he was committed into the asylum, he decided to fight the Big Nurse and her tyrannical rein (Kesey, 1962-2002, throughout book). She held fear over all the patients’ heads and McMurphy did not like it.

            The way therapy was in the 1960’s quite different from the 1960’s. The therapist in the 1960’s had a more Freudian view of how people worked and would passive-aggressively try to figure out the problem with using an echt analysis (Gaylin, 2000, p. 158). Psychologists believed, and still do, that isolation was not good (Gaylin, 2000, p. 266). In asylums in the 1960’s they created communities and relationships that were supposedly healing experiences. These communities, as Kesey portrayed were it seemed stifling and dangerous. There was rape and abuse among the people, though it is over-stated in the book (Kesey, 1962-2002, throughout book).

            Also, instead of healing, the people working in the institutions drugged the patients so they were always in a fog and if they questioned anything, the employees sent them for special therapies (Kesey, 1962-2002, throughout book). It was wrong and McMurphy saw this. By the time he dies, he has changed the way of life in the institute. It was finally a sanctuary where people who were mentally ill could be healed instead of taken care of, just as in the book, in the “real” world, institutes for the mental were changing.

            Freedom is what McMurphy stood for. Freedom of speech, freedom of action and freedom of sexuality were things he would die for. In the end, McMurphy did die for what he believed in. Some of the ways he went about protesting to keep his freedoms was a little unorthodox, but his thoughts were clear and obvious. He knew what he wanted and had a devil-may-care attitude on how he would achieve it. At times McMurphy seemed a little careless or delusional and even once or twice acted a little bit as if he were detached from life.

            Did he have a mood disorder? There are a few types of mood disorders he could have had. Mood disorders are defined as “the presence or absence of…mood episodes…” (Association, 2003, p. 345). If he had a mood disorder, than which could McMurphy could have had? He could have been manic. A manic episode is “defined by a distinct period during which there is an abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood” (Association, 2003, p. 357). McMurphy did have that, but his mood swings lasted only a day or two whereas a manic episode lasts at least a week (Association, 2003, p. 357).

             He also could have had cyclothymic disorder where a person has “a chronic, fluctuating mood disturbance involving numerous periods of hypomanic systems…and numerous periods of depressive symptoms…” (Association, 2003, p. 398). Throughout the book, especially in the last half of the book, McMurphy seemed to be quite depressed, even though he pretended to be the way he always was – full of vigor and the want of conning and gambling – mixed with periods of agitation and anger (Kesey, 1962-2002, throughout book).

            A third disorder McMurphy could have suffered from is schizophrenia, though if one read the book or saw the movie they may doubt that he had this disease. Schizophrenia is characterized with lasting “for at least 6 months and includes at least 1 month of active-phase symptoms…” (Association, 2003, p. 298). Some active-phase symptoms are: “delusions, hallucinations …grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms” (Association, 2003, p. 298). This disorder seems the least likely for McMurphy to have suffered from, if he suffered from any at all. It is never clear if he only pretends to be crazy or if he actually is. To figure out if he is or not, there are steps taken. These steps are catharsis, get insights, delve into the past, use the Therapeutic alliance, use the corrective emotional experience, have approval, acceptance and forgiveness, and finally council (Gaylin, 2000, pp. 7-9).

            The movie version of McMurphy and the book version of McMurphy are two very different people. In the movie McMurphy is a light hearted person, though tempted by his feels of anger, woman and alcoholic drinks.

            However, in the book, McMurphy is very angry. He is also a con man and exceedingly proud of it. The other inmates know this as well. They seem to look up to him because of his conning skills. The patients have never known a man quite like McMurphy. They do not know what to expect from him at first it seems and then they begin to look up, perhaps even idolize McMurphy. They protect their thoughts of his strength and “bigness” (Kesey, 2002, throughout book) by standing up for him and also begin to act like “men” instead of rabbits (Kesey, 2002, throughout book).

            After a session of group therapy that mostly about McMurphy (Kesey, 2002, pp. 137-140), Chief thinks about McMurphy’s talents and Ratched’s comments, “Maybe that makes him strong enough, being what he is. The Combine hasn’t got to him in all these years; what makes that nurse think she’s gonna be able to do it in a few weeks? He’s not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him” (Kesey, 2002, p. 140) and later on Harding says when Big Nurse says McMurphy was pretending to do what he did was for the good of the people, “He would take it as a direct effrontery to his craft “ (Kesey, 2002, p. 240).

            Randle Patrick McMurphy is a man who is an individual in the way he thinks and acts. He is a revolutionary. When he went to have his lobotomy and Big Nurse was hospitalized to fix her broken neck, the inmates change how things were run because McMurphy changed them. He opened them up to new thoughts and ways of being. This character healed the patients, who had been mentally abused so they were scared little men, and turned them into big, strong males who could take care of themselves instead of them having to be taken care of. If he had not come when he had, the patients would have continued down the insane path they were on and turned into robots. There is so much a person can take until something changes, whether for the better or worse, and these patients were going to snap and turn into vegetables – wandering around in a constant fog. Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest might have ended with the death of his body, but it was not the death of his memory or influence – that will live on forever.

Works Cited

Kesey, Ken. (2002). One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. England: Penguin Books.

Holley, Val. (1995). James Dean: The Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Gaylin, Willard. (2000). Talk is Not Enough. New York: Little Brown and Company.

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental      Disorders: Fourth Edition. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.

Meyers, Jeffery. (1998). Gary Cooper: American Hero. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc..

Frances, Allen & First, Michael B.. (1998). Your Mental Health: A Layman’s Guide to the             Psychiatrist’s Bible. New York: Scribner.

Schroeder, Alan. (1994). James Dean. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.

McGilligan, Patrick. (1994-1995). Jack’s Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Perlman, Marc. (1993). Youth Rebellion Movies. Minnesota: Lerner Publications Company.

Shaw, Brian F., Ritvo, Paul, & Irvine, Jane. (2005). Addiction & Recovery for Dummies. Indiana:             Wiley Publishing.