"A Radical Concept" a campaign of shame

For this Lit Log, I assembled magazine cutouts (entirely Playboy) to represent McMurphy’s view of the Ward— specifically pulling from the conversation he has with Harding on his first day, after the group meeting. McMurphy immediately knows the power he will have over the Ward in the coming weeks, and he seeks to have power everywhere he goes. Even after hearing of the unstoppable force that is Nurse Ratched - he is confident that he can “get her goat”, saying on page 67, “Bug her till she comes apart at those neat little seams, and shows, just one time, she ain’t so unbeatable as you think.” This piece is split up into a few different parts- one is how he learns most of the Chronics came to be the way they are, which is being sent to the Shock Shop. Harding describes this experience to McMurphy on page 62, “Even when you do regain consciousness you are in a state of disorientation for days…Enough of these treatments and a man could turn out like Mr. Ellis you see over there against the wall.” McMurphy is skeptical of these “treatments” that are given to the patients from the shocks to the group therapy, that seems to only humiliate and silence the men in the Ward, as seen in the picture of men with fingers pointing at them, and the sea of wires and electricity that the pictures of men swim in, their mouths covered. One man’s face has turned into a sort of screaming monster while his hair frizzes out from the electricity. A second part is the depiction of Nurse Ratched - her head is huge and she looms over this piece like a big round sun, watching every move at all times. Though she attempts to show a false sense of kindness and security towards McMurphy, he sees right through her faḉade to her foul intentions. Though Harding does depict her as a “mother” of the Ward, on page 54 he says, “Our sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy, Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter? Why, friend, that’s most unlikely.” As much as they wouldn’t like to admit it, she is their caretaker and without her they would have no one to look after them. The final part to this piece is McMurphy’s idea of himself and Bromden, and how it reflects on Bromden. Though we know McMurphy is large, he is obviously smaller than our main character, who he speaks down to and pities. Being in the Ward so long, Bromden doesn’t realize how small and helpless he feels until he sees the new patient take charge of things so defiantly, especially after being force fed pills earlier that day. McMurphy sees that even a man that large can be suppressed and puppetted, but still does not feel threatened. As shown in the piece, McMurphy is a big, cowboy-like, cigarette-smoking, multi-limbed entity that looms over Bromden as he’s being lowered into a catatonic state. The pills represent the men’s inability to fight back. They cannot beat the Nurse because they cannot beat the treatments.