You're just a young kid. What are you doin' here? You oughta be out in a convertible, why—bird-doggin' chicks and bangin' beaver! What are ya doin' here, for Christ's sake? What's funny about that? Jesus, I mean, you guys do nothin' but complain about how you can't stand it in this place here and then you haven't got the guts just to walk out!
In this moment McMurphy has just learned that many of the patients have committed themselves to the institution and have the freedom to leave. He is speaking to Billy Bibbit when he says that he "ought to be...bird-doggin' chicks and bangin' beaver!" He is almost offended that Billy has chosen to cloister himself in the ward like a monk rather than pursue the earthly pleasures of youth. McMurphy cannot believe that anyone would choose the oppressive and controlled culture of the ward over a life of freedom. His criminality and belief in his own entitlement to freedom is in contrast to the infantile obedience of the men in the ward. It also shows how much McMurphy equates freedom with specifically sexual freedom.
Dr. Spivey: The funny thing is that the person that he's the closest to is the one he dislikes the most—that's you, Mildred.
Nurse Ratched: Well, gentlemen, in my opinion, if we send him back to Pendleton or we send him up to Disturbed, it's just one more way of passing on our problems to somebody else. You know we don't like to do that, so I'd like to keep him on the ward. I think we can help him.
In this moment Nurse Ratched insists that McMurphy stay in the ward so that she can control his actions and help set him straight. Spivey suggests that underneath their hatred for one another is an alignment, that McMurphy is similar to her, despite his hate for her. Ratched believes unconditionally in her own ability to control others, and so wants to keep McMurphy in the ward. This reveals the similarity between Ratched and McMurphy; even though they both loathe each other's qualities, they are fascinated with each other, and see the other's power as a challenge to be taken on. Nurse Ratched sees McMurphy as a challenge that she would like to solve, as an unusual case that puts her expertise as a nurse—and a dictator—to the test.
Rules?! Piss on your fucking rules, Nurse Ratchet!
This is the first moment in which the other men in the ward begin to take McMurphy's side in his rebellion against the tyranny of the ward. Cheswick gets upset because Nurse Ratched is pressing Billy about a traumatic incident in his life in which he wanted to ask a girl to marry him and ended up attempting suicide. In seeing the ways that Ratched's therapeutic methods are exacerbating the pain Billy feels, Cheswick becomes upset. McMurphy's arrival and his irreverent attitude also encourages the obedient Cheswick to speak up and exhibit his own irreverence. His attitude and rudeness in this moment feels out of character, and shows the viewer the profound effects that McMurphy's presence is having on the psyches of the patients.
She was 15 going on 35 Doc and she told me she was 18, she was very willing. I practically had to take to sewing my pants on shut. But once you get that little red beaver right up in front of you, I don't think it's crazy at all, and I don't think you do either. No man alive could resist that and that's why I got into jail to begin with and now they're telling me I'm crazy over here cause I don't sit there like a goddamn vegetable, don't make a bit of sense to me. If that's what's being crazy then—then I'm senseless, out of it, gone down the road wacko, but no more no less, that's it.
In the first scene in which the audience meets McMurphy, we learn that he is in trouble because of statutory rape: he slept with a fifteen-year-old whom he says he did not know was fifteen. Meeting Dr. Spivey, the head of the mental institution, McMurphy seeks to find common ground and explain his criminal behavior. He tries to speak to Dr. Spivey not as a doctor, but as a heterosexual man. The strength of McMurphy's convictions are on full display here, as he asks the doctor to agree with him that it is not wrong to have felt and acted on his desire for a fifteen-year-old girl. Dr. Spivey responds cryptically, appearing to agree with McMurphy, but carefully noting his behavior and words. In this moment, McMurphy is also making the point that it is his ability to act and follow his impulses and libido that prove that he is not crazy. Crazy, in McMurphy's definition, would be to "sit there like a goddamn vegetable." McMurphy views his own vivaciousness as proof of his own sanity.
What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.
This is another quote from the moment in which McMurphy learns that the men have the choice to leave the ward if they want. It highlights the irony McMurphy sees at play in the ward: the fact that the craziest thing about the men in the ward is their decision to stay in the mental institution. McMurphy's definition of sanity is freedom, and so the men's insistence on captivity is proof of their insanity. In spite of this, however, McMurphy believes that this insanity is a symptom of the controlling nature of Nurse Ratched. If they could only see that they are "no crazier than the average asshole" then they would leave the ward immediately. Given Nurse Ratched's controlling behavior, however, they believe themselves to be incapable of integration with the outside world.
My pop was real big. He did like he pleased. That's why everybody worked on him. The last time I seen my father, he was blind and diseased from drinking. And every time he put the bottle to his mouth, he didn't suck out of it, it sucked out of him until he shrunk so wrinkled and yellow even the dogs didn't know him...I'm not saying they killed him. They just worked on him. The way they're working on you.
In a confessional moment, Chief Bromden tells McMurphy the story of his father, a man who was too big and too free for the outside world. The world "worked on him," Bromden says, suggesting that his father was made more and more inhibited by the world, and as a result was driven to drink, which "shrunk" him. Chief's father's drinking and the inhibiting methods of psychoanalysis employed by Nurse Ratched are set in parallel in this moment. Chief Bromden explains that society wants to inhibit its members and curb their natural impulses, or "bigness," and that is why his father, a man who "did like he pleased," could not survive in the world without turning to alcoholism. Society, he explains, does not kill people, but it can have a deadening effect on its citizens.
You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.
Nurse Ratched's most evil turn is when she invokes the authority of Billy's mother after he has woken up from his first sexual experience with Candy in the ward. From the group therapy scene in which Billy's earlier attempt at suicide is revealed, we know Billy to have a fragile relationship to sexuality and a truly Freudian conflation of his own desire with the authority of his mother. In the group therapy, Nurse Ratched presses him as to why he never told his mother about his attraction to a young woman, and we learn that Billy is afraid of his mother's judgment. In this scene, Nurse Ratched uses Billy's fear of his mother (and her friendship with his mother) to instill fear and shame, which only exacerbates his mental illness, and drives him to suicide.
In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she don't know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.
McMurphy is convinced that he can gain power over Nurse Ratched. He bets the other men that he can overturn her power and undo her controlling influence on the ward by upsetting her and making her angry. This quotation shows McMurphy's persistent confidence in his own ability to shirk institutional provision and flip a situation in his favor. It is the first of many bets that McMurphy will make with the men about his ability to gain the upper hand.
Well I don't wanna break up the meeting or nothin', but she's somethin' of a cunt, ain't she Doc?
McMurphy boldly says this in front of a number of doctors in a meeting with Dr. Spivey. He is again trying to level with the male doctors on the basis of gender, by seeking to find agreement that Nurse Ratched is a "cunt." His misogyny is not met with any agreement, as it is clear all of the doctors respect Nurse Ratched's authority and ability to do her job. While McMurphy is right to feel unsettled by Nurse Ratched's controlling and demeaning "therapeutic" tactics, his misogyny in this moment misses the mark, and shows the viewer that McMurphy's attitude, while freedom-loving, is also informed by misogyny and a violent disrespect for women. McMurphy is unable to articulate the ways that Ratched's policies are cruel and unusual, and instead resorts to the derogatory.
Koufax looks down! He's looking at the great Mickey Mantle now! Here comes the pitch! Mantle swings! It's a fucking home run!
In this scene, Nurse Ratched has refused to count the final vote needed to change ward policy so the men can watch the World Series baseball game. McMurphy takes the spirits of the disappointed men into his own hands when he pretends that the blank television screen is in fact showing a baseball game, and he pretends to announce the goings-on to the men with a spirited theatricality. In the absence of the actual game, McMurphy imagines the game the men might enjoy together and leads them through a fantasy, much to Nurse Ratched's puzzlement and disapproval. The imagined baseball game represents the freedom he imagines the men might share outside the watchful and abusive eye of Nurse Ratched.
