The Ultimate Sacrifice
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey immerses the reader into the distorted environment of a psychiatric ward, where male patients are robbed of their identity and forced into a state of insecurity and fragility. The reader connects with the patients through the narration of Chief, who comments on the inhumane acts committed within the ward. He is a half-Native American that decides to portray himself as a deaf and mute, in response to the constant disregard of others. However, he also acts as a vessel and voice for the main protagonist, Mcmurphy who feigned insanity in order to serve his sentence in a hospital rather than a prison farm. When Mcmurphy arrives at the ward, he is quick to notice that the men are at the hands of the stern and controlling Miss Ratched or Big Nurse. The Nurse strategizes to form group therapies that instead of being meetings to acquire healing and validation of others, become sources of mental destruction. Unknowing of the future price he would have to pay, Mcmurphy begins to feel attached and somewhat responsible for the sanity of the men. This impels him to confront and challenge the perverted system that is controlled by the Nurse. He starts to grow a fraternal love within the men, that unifies them but also strengthens their weakness. Mcmurphy is persistent in his efforts to “save” the men, but this causes them to become vulnerable at the demands of the Nurse. The Nurse doesn’t lose her composure in response to Mcmurphy's confrontation. Instead, she waits to attack the men, the ones who are most emotionally destroyed and fragile. When Mcmurphy witnesses the deaths of some men, due to the manipulation of Nurse Ratched, he decides to give out his last fight and attack the matriarchal figure himself. Mcmurphy deliberately gives his life, in return for the gift of healing and freedom the men could now choose from. His actions not only serve as a testament of rebellion against authority in society, but it is a source of inspiration that drives the men to break the cycle of dependency, and choose freedom. Something they couldn’t do before. Kesey teaches us that even though society is corrupt and destructive to the human mind, it is the love and sympathy for the weak that drives us to extreme measures to save those that don’t have the will to do it themselves. To society, it will seem as an act of insanity, or even foolishness, but to those on the outside, it is an act of ultimate sacrifice, of moral obligation.
Chief often refers the hospital as part of the combine, a metaphor for the demands and restrictions imposed by society. According to Chief, the combine is seen as a machine itself where damaged parts end up in the psychiatric ward, waiting to be repaired by the Nurse. There is no escape to the rules of the combine, and anyone that dares to challenge it, is automatically defined as insane. Chief further describes how “the ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold” (209). Within the combine the Nurse represents the value of repression and conformity, of complying to society’s standards without complaint. Onto the eyes of society, being different or rebelling is a sign of insanity, that needs to be fixed at all cost in order to function and adapt into the mainstream of the normal world. In fact, Chief describes this notion when he observes the outside world beyond the ward, on a trip with the men. He comments how “five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the factory they're still linked together like sausages”(189). This shows how the combine, or society, demands conformity and uniformity in order to establish control and power more efficiently. However, society demands this in order to quickly seek any deformity or difference that stands out from a monotone world, and change its behavior back into normal. The Chief later adds how in a school for boys “there were five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullover sweaters playing crack-the-whip across an acre of crushed gravel. The line popped and twisted and jerked like a snake, and every crack popped a little kid off the end, sent him rolling up against the fence like a tumbleweed” (189). The combine has achieved a sense of homogeneity. It has forced everyone in society to fit in and be the same. For those that are different, weak, and vulnerable (like the little kid), they are the ones that get hurt by society, because they stand out. However they can avoid being damaged, and one way is to comply in being “fixed” by a matriarchal figure.
Nurse Ratched is the combine’s accomplice that seeks to repair men so they may adapt well into society. However, in her efforts to help the men achieve normality, she instills fear and exerts dominance over the patients. She is portrayed as a big machine that has mechanical tools in her bag, so she can adjust the men she asserts authority over. She controls and manipulates the men’s sexuality and masculinity in order to rule over their freedom. The best strategy that she has to make the men vulnerable and submissive to her demands is through group therapy. In a normal world, group therapies allow the individual to acknowledge their problem to bring out what is repressed, or what is painful to talk about. It is also a form to connect with people that are going through the same situation as you. However, such valuable process is suddenly perverted by an inhumane nurse that feeds off the vulnerability of the weak. Chief describes that the purpose of the meetings is for “a guy .. to learn to get along in a group before he'll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place; how society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up” (41). The Nurse utilizes these situations as an opportunity to expose the men’s weaknesses and therefore, cause them to become fragile and easier to dominate. On the other hand Mcmurphy presents the meetings as pecking parties where the “flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin' at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (48). At these moments, the Nurse starts by demanding the man to describe their problems. However, unknowingly they begin to peck each other to death and not at the Nurse that started it. They attack each other until they all become victims of their own deficiencies. The men may be blinded to the destruction brought by the Nurse, but Mcmurphy’s rebellious nature against authority and ability to challenge the Nurse, fuels his need to change the men to become free of choosing for themselves.
Mcmurphy fights for the men, and teaches them the importance of asserting one’s voice and identity without the fear of challenging authority. During his beginning encounters with the Nurse, Mcmurphy started to conform to her demands because he learned that she decides when he gets to leave. However, as he starts to talk with the men he discovers that they are not commited and have chosen to voluntarily stay in the ward. Mcmurphy demands to know why they have chosen to be in place where they are controlled by a woman that robs them from their masculinity. However, Billy, a timid childish patient that stutters, responds by saying “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough. Neither is Harding. Neither is F-Fredrickson. Neither is SuhSefelt. Oh—oh, you—you t-talk like we stayed in here because we liked it! Oh—it's n-no use…”(156). Billy describes how the reason that prevents them from leaving the ward is because they are incapable of standing up for themselves. Not only does this shock Mcmurphy because somebody would choose to be there, but it is this moment that inspires him to defend and unify the men to become stronger and able heal on their own. It is the men’s vulnerability that propels him to challenge the Nurse and her authority. Mcmurphy insists that the only way to escape is by pulling down the lever of the panel to open the ward. However, as Mcmurphy tries to do it himself to prove to the men, “his breath explodes out of him, and he falls back limp against the wall. There's blood on the levers where he tore his hands. He pants for a minute against the wall with his eyes shut. There's no sound but his scraping breath; nobody's saying a thing” (101). Mcmurphy teaches the men to try and advocate for themselves, even though change is far from achieving. What counts is that they took action for changing their existing misery.
Mcmurphy’s efforts to change and heal the men, causes them to become vulnerable and at the hands of the Nurse. Mcmurphy is persistent in getting the men out of a fog that takes away the men’s masculinity and to assert their power, instead of allowing themselves to be subject of social standards. Inclusive, the Chief describes how in the fog “Your eyes were working so hard to see in that fog that when something did come in sight every detail was ten times as clear as usual, so clear both of you had to look away. When a man showed up you didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at yours, because it's painful to see somebody so clear that it's like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely. You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself” (106). For the Chief, the fog is the only source of protection because you are unable to feel compassion for those that are in need. It prevents you from coming face to face with someone that is in pain, from looking into the same pain that you are feeling. The fog in a way acts as a shield of protection for the men where they know that they will go unseen, away from danger, away from being vulnerable. That is something that Mcmurphy can’t understand and later becomes the source of destruction for some of the men. As Mcmurphy begins to expose the men to the amusements that they had forgotten, it allows them to grow united, but still fragile to authority. On an occasion when the men were talking about their restrictions, one of the patients, Cheswick challenges the Nurse in her inability to let the men smoke. As an instinct he seeks for the support of Mcmurphy but gets none. As a result of his failure against authority, he drowns himself. Not only does this incident cause Mcmurphy to realize that he is responsible for the lives of the patients, but their vulnerability is becoming endangered. The Nurse recognizes the leadership that Mcmurphy has established within the men, and is ready to attack the men’s weakness to gain her power once again. When the men choose to have freedom, despite the strict regulations of Ratched, they bring prostitutes to the ward for the amusement of Billy. The men seem to enjoy themselves, until the next morning when Nurse Ratched asks for Billy. She soon finds Billy in bed with a prostitute, and is quick to humiliate him by threatening to tell his mother of his shameful act. Billy is fearful to the future that awaits when his mother finds out he has been out of character. As a result he kills himself. At the cost of two innocent lives, Mcmurphy is ready and conscious of his final attack against the Nurse.
Through the deaths of Billy and Cheswick, Mcmurphy knows there no other way to escape the manipulation of the Nurse than to attack her directly. The Chief admits that “We couldn't stop him because we were the ones making him do it. It wasn't the nurse that was forcing him, it was our need that was making him push himself slowly up from sitting, his big hands driving down on the leather chair arms, pushing him up, rising and standing like one of those moving-picture zombies, obeying orders beamed at him from forty masters. It was us that had been making him go on for weeks” (251). It was men’s incapacity to stand for themselves and challenge authority that drove Mcmurphy to physically attack and expose the Nurse. It wouldn’t matter if Mcmurphy had escaped the ward, the Nurse would have induced Billy to commit suicide and Mcmurphy would have come back and done the same, all because he had sympathy for the people he loved. As a result, the Nurse orders Mcmurphy to be lobotomized. The Chief can’t let Mcmurphy become another victory for Ratched, or an example of what could happen if one rebels against authority. So, he decides to end Mcmurphy’s life. It was the only way to let his life become a sacrificial testament of the conviction he had to change the lives of the men. Matter of fact he did. The remaining patients had the confidence to leave the ward, and Chief found his lost voice and decided to leave. Mcmurphy’s death was justified and needed to happen in order to bring life to a group of men destined to misery. Mcmurphy took the ultimate sacrifice, out of love, for the healing of his friends. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”.