Nurse Ratched was bad, but Mcmurphy wasn't a hero either. - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Discussion

[–] movies789 10 years ago

True, and I'm not even sure that Nurse Ratched was as bad as she's made out to be. After all, this wasn't summer camp - it was a psychiatric ward. She had the responsibility of bringing her charges back to some degree of psychiatric normalcy, and that process isn't always tidy and comfortable. To be sure, she had a manipulative streak that wasn't pretty, but she wasn't a monster, either.

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[–] SamGGD 9 years ago

Come on, she was unbelievably cold. The only jollies she got was from fxcking with the mental patients. Antagonising them, manipulating them, she was terrible.

See you at the party, Richter!

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[–] Funky12345 9 years ago

I agree with Sam. McMurphy helped these men find their voice. Nurse Ratched was a passive-aggressive, subtle, manipulative woman; no one said it was supposed to be "summer camp" - that's a ridiculous argument. Ratched threw these patients under the bus by way of glance and insinuation instead of bluntness and words and this needs to be recognized.

"Jesus is coming. Look busy."

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[–] Katiedidd 9 years ago

Very well said. I still can't believe this eludes people who defend her. Pay attention to her nuances and framing, people. She's pure evil.

McMurphy can be a hero and still be falwed too. Why does it have to be all black and white? Rached carried out her diabolical control through seemingly benign actions. However, she was pure evil.

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[–] cartesianthought 9 years ago

Most of the patients were there on a voluntary basis until McMurphy incited violence and they were held involuntarily.

Had McMurphy not intervened, most of them would have just completed their voluntary program and then had gone home.

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[–] CeroneSicario 9 years ago

Not to mention she kind of saves McMurphy from being sent back to prison. Wasn't the whole reason McMurphy ended up the looney bin so he could avoid prison time? From a technical standpoint, she's actually his hero.

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[–] Ultrashiver 8 years ago

I thought once he was released from the lunatic asylum, he was supposed to go back to prison and do his time.

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[–] CeroneSicario 8 years ago

Yeah, probably.

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[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

She didnt rescue him from anything. In prison he would be out after 65 days. Instead she made sure he was in the asylum indefinitely and got lobotomized to top it of.

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[–] Kawada_Kira 9 years ago

She had the responsibility of bringing her charges back to some degree of psychiatric normalcy

Oh yeah, she was just a well-intentioned saint, wasn't she? Can anyone explain how shaming and threatening Billy Bibbit, knowing how vulnerable he was, was intended to bring him to psychiatric normalcy? She knew full well what she was doing to him. She wasn't helping people; she was a tyrant on a power trip.

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[–] 8 years ago

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[–] SamGGD 9 years ago

He wasn't perfect, but he showed empathy and encouragement to the patients they had certainly never seen before. They loved him, he breathed some life into their dismal existence.

See you at the party, Richter!

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[–] cartesianthought 9 years ago

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm not convinced that McMurphy cared about the wellbeing of the prisoners so long as he himself was having a good time at their expense.

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[–] Wuchak (8850) 5 years ago

McMurphy, despite his obvious flaws, is the protagonist of the story. Although he's impulsive and has a weakness for the female gender, which got him into prison in the first place, he has a spirit of freedom and life. His problem is that he needs to learn a bit of wisdom; then he can walk in his freedom without causing unnecessary harm to himself and others.

Nevertheless, he does more good for the guys in his ward than Ratched and the institution could do in a decade. How so? Not only because he has a spirit of freedom and life, but because he loves deeply, but only those who deserve it – the humble – not arrogant abusers. When you cast restraint to the wind and love with all your heart you'll reap love in return, as long as the person is worthy. Chief hugs McMurphy at the end because he loves him in the sense of a close friend/brother. McMurphy set him free from the shackles of mental illness and, worse, the institution that refuses to actually heal people because it needs mentally ill people to exist; it only goes through the motions of caring and healing (not that there aren't any good people in such institutions, of course).

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[–] bigbadwolf666 (4707) 5 years ago

I agree.

The institution refuses to heal and of course are after their own interest.

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[–] LadyLovie 9 years ago

YEAH, DOESN'T matter how willing she was. she was 15!

***
you're going for, the last ride ah haaaaaaaa

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[–] mountaindewslave 9 years ago

so just because Mcmurphy doesn't live by perfect morals makes you feel as if he can't be the hero of the film?

he constantly pushes the patients to have their own voice and direction. he breaks the rules, sure, but arguably a lot of them DON'T help the patients.

hell, the main nurses seem to enjoy antagonizing and screwing around with the patients. they repeatedly make them talk about their insecurities, but not in a helpful supportive way, but in a 'make them feel terrible about it' way

and Mcmurphy is no saint, but a willing 15 or 16 year old girl having sex with him (especially when he claims she said she was 18) is hardly that big of a deal next to serious criminals

you try to spin it against Mcmurphy regarding the possibility that he was going to abandon the inmmates after the night party but the reality is that a vast majority of them were SELF admitted. and the reality is that the one individual crazy night Murphy presented to them was probably one of the only good ones they had had in a very long time

Mcmurphy is not a character that is intended to come off as honorable but the whole point is he's a lot more sane and reasonable than Nurse Ratched. and when it's a film regarding mental sanity that certainly makes Mcmurphy the hero

If i go crazy will you still call me Superman?

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] neutralneutrals 9 years ago

He's an anti-hero, I like the character without condoning everything that he did. Yes, he's violent, rude, sexist, racist(moreso in the novel) and *gasp* gambles. I like the character without necessarily sharing his moral judgment.

If he had an alignment it would be Chaotic Neutral.
MacMurphy is chaos and Ratched is order, but which is the most similar to reality? Life itself is a collection of incidences that appear random at times.

Mac is selfish, but he does possess heroic qualities, he experiences empathy for other people (he's visibly affected by their suffering) and he risks punishment in order to help them. He does care about other people, sometimes...ultimately he encourages everyone to pursue their own liberty, whereas Ratched is only interested in preserving the status quo at all costs.

The novel includes the guards raping patients, I'd side with Mac over Ratched and everybody who thought that was acceptable who didn't care about that.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] Kawada_Kira 9 years ago

Having sex with the under age girl was one of those things.

Wasn't he unaware that she was underage?

Also, encouraging the men to engage in an orgy with hookers knowing full well that they would all get in trouble.

He wanted them to have the chance to live a little for once in their lives. He wanted to bring some fun and happiness to that joyless dungeon. Who can blame him?

And he was going to leave, after putting them in the position to get busted by the nurse.

Yeah, but most of those people weren't committed there, remember? So any of them could have left at any time. They weren't all prisoners there like him.

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[–] GreenGoblinsOckVenom86 9 years ago

Personally Kawada I don't think any of them were willfully there. I think she told them all to say that just to get a rise out of McMurphy.

Green Goblin is great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1L4ZuaVvaw

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[–] TheWhiteHotel (44) 5 years ago

It's the patients themselves who tell McMurphy they are voluntary. One of the themes of the movie is that many "mentally ill" people have just convinced themselves that they are.

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[–] cartesianthought 9 years ago

I don't get the comments on here that try to defend either of them. Both were quite selfish jerk. Both had part in Billy's death.

McMurphy was anarchy and Ratched was totalitarianism. Ratched was about keeping society stable, insofar as she has control over other people. McMurphy was about shaking up the establishment, though he used people too.

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[–] themidgarzolom 9 years ago

No argument regarding the actual end result, but I do think it's a significant point that McMurphy did have positive intentions regarding Billy. Knowing Billy's backstory and remembering what McMurphy said about Billy's voluntary status there (Get out of here! Go live your life!) and his relative youth, it would seem that McMurphy believed that by getting Billy to hook up with Candy that he would get the confidence to leave the prison of anxiety and fear that he's trapped himself in, literally and figuratively. This was also a sacrifice for McMurphy, since he clearly viewed Candy as his girl, despite his assurance to Billy that he wouldn't "marry her." It only took Ratched about 5 minutes of needless fear, manipulative threats and intimidation the next morning to not only back Billy right back into his cage, but drive him all the way to suicide.

So yes, McMurphy's action played a role in the end result, but there's a substantial difference in how it could have played out if Ratched wasn't the far more evil character. After all, Billy wasn't an inmate now, was he?

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[–] themidgarzolom 9 years ago

McMurphy isn't a baby-faced and flawless hero, but rather, a textbook anti-hero. I think this is the fairest assessment. Some people will relate to him more than others.

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