One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken KeseyThe theme of this story "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" according to Daniel Woods is "Power is the predominant theme of Ken Kesey's story." One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: who has the power, who doesn't, who wants it, who loses it, how it is used to intimidate and manipulate and to what ends, and, most notably, how it is disrupted and subverted , contested, denied and assumed” (http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/cuckoosnest/essays/essay1.html). No, it wasn't McMurphy who flew over the cuckoo's nest, nor Harding, nor Taber. It was neither Martini, nor Cheswick, nor Bibbit, nor Chief Bromden, nor Bancini. The journey of the madmen who flew over the cuckoo's nest took place in the asylum, but they were not patients. The crazy people in this scenario were paid to be crazy. Nurse Ratched, Dr. John Spivey, and other staff members, like Washington, were paid every day to come to the asylum and inflict horrific doses of mental (and sometimes physical) suffering on the so-called "crazy people." » whose life consisted of white corridors and white floors. McMurphy lost his life because he saw the reality in the asylum, the cuckoo's nest. He lost his life because he had not yet stayed long enough to become resistant to the brutal treatment he received. He lost his life because he found out who the real weirdos were and, unlike the other inmates, McMurphy still knew enough about fairness to understand and want to remove the terrible injustice done to the helpless patients inside the prison. 'asylum. Randall McMurphy is introduced. the hospital doors by two attendants dressed in white. Among the white walls and floors, McMurphy, dressed in scuffed blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and a tight-fitting black cap, represents a figurative interference from the outside world entering this bitter, sterilized hospital. Entering the room that has also become his final resting place, he jokes with the current patients, wears a deceptive smile and has a deck of cards rolled up his sleeve. Immediately, he questions the institution's rule that requires all patients to take medicinal pills, regardless of their illness. In these early scenes of the film, director Milos Forman foreshadowed Randall McMurphy's future: McMurphy enters the asylum dressed in black, the color of death, and immediately shows his disobedience to authority by questioning middle of paper . .....o. Nurse Ratched can be easily recognized as a bad character and McMurphy as the valiant thug who challenges her authority. The film was so successful that "in February 1976, One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was rewarded by the Academy with nine Oscar nominations." (Entertainment Weekly). When McMurphy returns after receiving his second dose of electroshock therapy and a lobotomy, as punishment for his attempt to strangle Nurse Ratched to death, he is barely human. Two doctors put him to bed because he is too weak to do it himself. This arrangement beat Randall McMurphy at the game of life. He lies like a vegetable in bed, oblivious to the outside world. He is not capable of rebelling against the doctors. He cannot lead patients into rebellion. Chief Bromden sees that McMurphy's future has been stolen, along with his manhood, and chokes him to death with a pillow. McMurphy died in his bed. By dying in this way, his memory is sealed among his fellow patients. He can die as a kind of martyr for men in the small microcosm of a world inside the hospital walls. In a sense, McMurphy was crazy. It was optimistic and crazy to think that he could change such a system.