Games and Gambling (Motif)
Throughout the film, McMurphy is a consummate gambler. To gamble means to take a risk in the hopes of achieving an optimal outcome. A high-risk activity can either completely redeem one's situation or cause a huge setback. McMurphy gambles when he bets the men that he can overturn the authority of Nurse Ratched. He unsuccessfully bets that he can lift the water fountain in the tub room. He bets that he can break out of the hospital without consequence. The literal gambling that McMurphy encourages among the men becomes a symbol for the ways that his entire life is one huge gamble. Everything McMurphy undertakes is a high-risk activity, and he is constantly taking his fate into his own hands. In his pursuit of freedom, McMurphy puts his own freedom in the balance time and time again. His criminal life is a gamble in and of itself. The viewer is consistently surprised by the lengths to which McMurphy will go in the pursuit of freedom, because it appears to be at such a huge risk of loss. His final gamble is strangling Nurse Ratched, and it costs him his consciousness. However, his attitude inspires Chief Bromden to gamble his own freedom by throwing the fountain out the window and escaping the ward.
Rebellion (Motif)
Rebellion is a central organizing principle for McMurphy. Rebellion is the act of transgressing the predominate rules, and McMurphy is always trying to wriggle free of the restrictions placed on him throughout the film. His acts of rebellion include stealing the bus from the hospital, stealing the boat, punching through the glass of the nurse's office, and inviting the outsiders into the ward for a party. In addition to his physical rebellions, McMurphy is often rebelling ideologically, exhibiting irreverence towards the group therapy and all of the rules enforced by the institution. The more McMurphy rebels, the freer he feels, and the more influence he feels he has on his environment. He indirectly encourages the other men to rebel with his own confident spirit. The more he acts out, the more the other patients feel justified in resisting the often oppressive control of the hospital. The patients' rebellion against the restrictive rules of the hospital incite the action and conflict of the entire film. The film depicts a struggle between authority and the rebels who try to undermine that authority.
Cigarettes (Symbol)
Cigarettes symbolize property and freedom to the patients. Because the men have to wear specific clothes and stay within the grounds of the hospital and follow specific orders, the few possessions that they are allowed become especially important. Cigarettes are perhaps the most important possession afforded to the patients. Indeed, cigarettes become the central point of contention in Cheswick and Ratched's argument in the chaotic group therapy scene. Cheswick feels undermined because Nurse Ratched has taken away his cigarettes, and even when the other men offer him a cigarette, he protests on the basis that they are not his cigarettes. The act of smoking is not the important component for Cheswick, but instead the ability to have something that is his own. Cheswick, and all the men, want property, want things that belong to them, and cigarettes symbolize this desire for property and ownership. They use their anger at the fact that the institution deprives them of cigarettes to rebel against Nurse Ratched.
Keys (Symbol)
Keys symbolize freedom and access throughout the movie. McMurphy continually gets access to keys that he is not authorized to use, and he uses these keys to try and break out of the hospital and find freedom. He steals the bus to get the men away for the fishing trip. The nurse's office is an exclusive space to which the men do not have access, but break into on the night of the party. In one of McMurphy's most pointed acts of rebellion, he breaks the glass of the nurse's office, eschewing keys in favor of brute force. Then again at the end, he tries to break out of the window using keys, but is thwarted. Limitations of access, as represented by keys, are not limitations that McMurphy observes or respects.
Native American Struggle as Allegory for Psychoanalysis
When Chief talks about his father, he uses the word "shrunk" to describe what his father did to himself, via drinking, to blunt the violence the world was doing to him. It is understood that Chief's father is a victim of the society in which he lives, forced to make himself small rather than live his full truth in all its particularity and "largeness." Chief suggests that the world "worked on" his father in the same way that the hospital is "working on" McMurphy. Chief Bromden perceives the struggles against oppression in his own life and community as similar to the way the hospital is suppressing McMurphy's freedom. Psychoanalysis as portrayed by the film is a method of dulling the patient's impulses and instincts, and Chief Bromden aligns psychoanalysis with the structural violence that his father was subjected to in the outside world.
