One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Themes
Madness
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest forces us to ask tough questions about what counts as madness and what doesn't. Is McMurphy crazy in any specific way? Is Mr. Harding or any of the other patients, o...
Language and Communication
One of the first things you realize when you see inside the mental hospital of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is that none of the patients can communicate with each other. It's clear that they all...
Rules and Order
It's fair to say that Nurse Ratched runs a tight ship in the mental hospital. Or at least she does until R.P. McMurphy shows up. Then things go totally haywire and Nurse Ratched decides she'll do w...
Gender
It's pretty clear that a violent man like R.P. McMurphy doesn't like having his life controlled by a female nurse like Miss Ratched. It can be subtle at times, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest e...
Power
It's not a stretch to say that some stark power relationships exist inside a mental hospital. We'll even go ahead and say that there's a total power imbalance between the people who run the hospita...
Freedom and Confinement
McMurphy wants only one thing out of life, and that's to be free. That's why he nearly falls over when he finds out that many of the other patients in the mental ward are living there voluntarily....