Individual Behavior and Social Control
The movie pits the anarchic spirit of Randall Patrick McMurphy against Nurse Ratched's desire to control chaos. McMurphy’s arrival represents a threat to the carefully orchestrated routine that Ratched uses to maintain control over the illogic and whimsy of the mental institution. McMurphy represents the individual and Ratched represents the order of society, the authorities. The film shows the way authority figures manipulate and oppress individual impulses in order to maintain their authority and control of the group. An overarching theme of the film, therefore, is that authorities control and manipulate individual behavior to keep order in society.
Who Decides What Counts as Insanity?
Randall Patrick McMurphy is a rebellious non-conformist with little regard for institutions. Even though he maniacally attacks Nurse Ratched for driving Billy to suicide, the film makes clear that on balance, he should not be considered clinically insane. While McMurphy's aggression and disregard for authority is a kind of threat to society, he does not suffer delusions or alienation from reality. Additionally, McMurphy questions whether the men in the ward are even insane. When he learns that many of the men have the freedom to leave the ward, he becomes incensed, saying, "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." The movie suggests that the standards that distinguish sane from insane behavior are arbitrarily determined. At the time the film is set, homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder, which goes to show the ways definitions of mental illness change with the times. The movie is not so simple as to come down on the side of McMurphy and say that insanity does not exist, but it calls into question the ways we as a society define insanity. Jack Nicholson’s manic performance at many times seems to inch right up to the line separating sanity and insanity, suggesting that the boundaries between sanity and insanity are not always so clear.
If You Don't Try, You've Already Lost
In a pivotal scene in the film, a disheartened and angry McMurphy makes a bet that he can lift up a huge ceramic water fountain affixed to the floor. The fountain must easily weigh at least a couple of hundred pounds, and he struggles to lift it with all the intensity of a human trying to steal fire from the gods in ancient mythology, but inevitably fails to even budge the fixture. The other inmates view his failure as their win, but McMurphy unexpectedly snatches victory from the jaws of defeat through the simple act of shame: “Well, I tried, didn’t it I? At least I did that.” McMurphy believes that it's always possible to change one's situation, and that the failure to try is what holds us back. The irony is that McMurphy's cocksure boundary-pushing edges on hubris, and his belief that he can get away with anything ultimately leads to a lobotomy.
Deviance and Conformity
One of the tools by which order is maintained in the ward is the engendering of suspicion toward any deviance from the norm. Deviance from protocol is viewed as a threat by Nurse Ratched, and she instills this belief in the patients in the ward. The equation of difference with danger allows Ratched and the hospital to control the community more effectively. Ratched runs a tight ship, and does not change policy easily, expecting everyone to be as orderly and precise as the classical music she plays in the ward at all hours. Conformity is the engine upon which the hospital runs, so McMurphy's deviance and transgression becomes a dangerous threat. The central conflict of the plot is the struggle between Nurse Ratched's investment in conformity and McMurphy's wild and deviant disposition.
Freedom and Captivity
The setting of the mental hospital presents a paradoxical environment, as it is a place of captivity, but also, allegedly, a place to recover from mental illness and become integrable with the outside world. McMurphy thinks going to the hospital is preferable to working at the prison farm, but he soon comes to realize the coercive and controlling structures that hold the patients in the ward captive. When they steal the boat, the men experience freedom, not only from the ward, but from society. Out on the water, they are no longer "insane," they are just men. When McMurphy realizes that many of the men in the ward are committed by choice, he cannot believe it. The fact that they have chosen captivity is unthinkable to the freedom-loving McMurphy, but he cannot quite convince them to leave as he wishes he could. McMurphy's desire for freedom only gets him into more trouble, and eventually, consigns him to the ward indefinitely. Chief Bromden is the only patient who is inspired by McMurphy's call for freedom, and the final scene shows his escape. Chief is the cuckoo of the title, flying free from the nest.
Emasculation, Sexuality, and Gender
Nurse Ratched tries to keep strict control over the men, and one of the ways she does this is by humiliating them for any displays of sexuality or power. This reflects a broader dynamic in which the authorities keep the inmates docile by repressing their sexuality. Part of McMurphy's frustration with conditions in the ward is with the men's subservience to the matriarchal power of Nurse Ratched. He is infuriated by her cool wielding of power, and while he can reason with Dr. Spivey on the level of gender and sexuality (as when he tries to justify statutory rape in their first meeting), he cannot find common ground with Ratched. His misogyny is on full display when he is in a meeting with Spivey and he says, "Well I don't wanna break up the meeting or nothin', but she's somethin' of a cunt, ain't she Doc?" McMurphy prefers an uncomplicated and consenting woman like Candy to the hard-nosed Ratched. On the flip side, Ratched does not allow the men to express their masculine qualities with freedom, forbidding them to watch the baseball game and shaming Billy for sleeping with a woman in the ward, in spite of knowing his structures of guilt around sex. Emasculation and misogyny come head to head between Ratched and McMurphy.
Natural Impulses
McMurphy represents the free man, who follows his impulses and his libido. When McMurphy arrives at the hospital, Dr. Spivey asks why he was sent there, to which McMurphy responds, "Well, as near as I can figure out, it's 'cause I, uh, fight and fuck too much." McMurphy is the image of the liberated man, to whom rules and manners do not apply, whose only aim is to satiate his own appetites. If we look at psychoanalysis as a process of questioning and confronting the Freudian "id," then McMurphy represents a subject who has no interest in such confrontation. He is the "id" itself, all instinct and primitive sexual desire and aggression. In becoming aligned with McMurphy's plight, the viewer recognizes his or her own "id" and the ways it is inhibited or controlled by institutions and organizations. By contrast, however, McMurphy's fate—a chaotic existence, untamable aggression, and the ultimate lobotomy—shows us the consequences of letting the "id" control our lives and our actions.
