The Gamble

The mental hospital portrayed in the book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” presents a tense environment for patients. The ward consists of people labeled acutes, those who seem to have a future beyond the ward, and chronics, those who are permanently “crippled”. A better word to describe the nature of this ward would be “authoritarian”. There are ridiculous rules that nobody questions because of fear of the head nurse except the new patient.

The new patient, McMurphy, comes into the ward strong, immediately having the goal to “run” it. He is soon accepted by the patients but thrown off by their submission to the nurse who runs the ward, Big Nurse. When Mcmurphy inquired about why they fear Big Nurse so much, a patient tells Mcmurphy that they could be threatened with things like “Shock Shop” which is where cruel “electrotherapy” takes place. Or they’ll be given a lobotomy, turning them into a “chronic” forever (62).

I was skeptical about the criticism placed upon the ward at first. I had chalked it up to the staff actually wanting to help the patients and these cruel “treatments” were because science at that time made people believe these treatments were beneficial. But, later on into the book, we see Big Nurse in a staff meeting. In the meeting, they discuss how to make McMurphy look “schizophrenic” or “homosexual” in order to send him up to the disturbed ward where the most “difficult” patients reside to receive lobotomies and electroshock therapy (134). McMurphy technically had done nothing wrong but challenge their authority or intimidate them because of his boldness. At that point I had seen the ward for what it was.

That’s not the only realization I had. I was also forced to think about how similar but different my attitude to authority is. I appreciate order and someone to lead. I do believe that’s necessary for any organized group of people. But, my problem with authority comes from when power is abused, much like McMurphy. McMurphy first speaks up about the abuse the patients experience after the first group therapy session we see. He compares it to a “pecking party” and explains that a pecking party is when “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it,” ( ). The patients were encouraged by Big Nurse to berate a single patient during the therapy session. I felt disgusted and sympathetic for the patients after witnessing how they all jump on one patient in order to please Big Nurse.

McMurphy and I are similar in that aspect too. I remember when I first started working and I was learning the ropes of having a job. There was this one manager and if they weren’t having a good day, nobody would be having a good day. They made work unbearable. There was this one thing they would do that would drive me crazy. They’d come to your station and nitpick at anything you were doing, “correcting” things that weren’t wrong, just their preference. Knowing my temper, I tried my hardest to avoid confrontation but they made it extremely difficult with their tyrant-like behavior. Much like Big Nurse who purposefully picked at McMurphy before he started to mess with her (23). My breaking point was a few months into my employment and I had been on the station that involved packaging food. Every few minutes she’d look over my shoulder and tell me something I was doing “wrong”. “You’re not supposed to put that into a box”, “Only bump off one ticket” . After a certain point I snapped a little bit and told her that maybe she was telling me one thing while another manager had told me something else. “Maybe you should get on the same page as your coworkers”. There was a bit more back and forth between us before she finally walked away and we were never put on shift together again.

I was upset because of her and most of my coworkers did not like her because she did the same thing to them. I wanted to get back at her in a way or annoy her enough so that she’d leave me alone but I soon realized that there was no action to take. It simply wouldn’t be smart to gamble with my job which was a great job. I couldn’t do anything about it. Mcmurphy had this same realization after talking with the lifeguard. He had too much to lose to go against authority.

I thought about if it was actually possible to go against tyrant authority figures without losing something. McMurphy was appalled at the way these men bowed down to Big Nurse at first. He was even critical of them. I was guilty of criticizing the men within the ward too. But I also didn’t consider the fact that they could literally become the victim of a lobotomy or electrocuted. The stakes are high for them. Mcmurphy felt those stakes rising, he finally felt the threat that day at the pool. After seeing McMurphy finally become docile, I realized that there was little to nothing we could do to challenge authority without losing more than we gain.