1. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Study notes

2. context Based on Ken Kessy’s novel
Based on his personal experiences with mental patients.
It explores: individuality and rebellion against conformity.
It critisizes American institutions as totalitarian

3. plot
Life in the mental institution ward, harshly and mechanically run by Nurse Ratched changes dramatically with the arrival of a new patient: McMurphy.
Changes bring entertainment but also awareness, rebellion, tragedy.
Patients divided in Acute and Chronics get community therapy where they attack each other weak aspects and old-fashion treatment: shocks and lobotomy.

4. Main charaters Chief Bromden Randle McMurphy Nurse Ratched Harding
Billy
Doctor Spivey
Aides

5. Chief Bromden
Paranoid, bullied, surrounded by hallucinations, oppressed, weak, low self-esteem.
Appearing deaf and dumb.
Dominated by his childhood with a dominant mother.
His paranoia is a metaphor of the dehumanization in his life.

6. Randle McMurphy
Representing: sexuality, freedom, self-determination, rebellion, disconformity.
Appearing as manipulator, he’s the metaphor of self-sacrifice.
His rebellious character attracts patients and moves them to awareness.
Seen as Christ’s metaphor: speeches, disciples, sacrifice to redeem others.

7. Nurse Ratched
Representing: the oppressive mechanization, dehumanization, and emasculation of modern society.
Able to show a false self to weaken patients.
Keeping her power by the strategic use of shame and guilt, a determination to “divide and conquer” her patients.
Only faced by McMurphy, who symbolically exposes her hypocrisy and deceit ripping her shirt.

8. Harding Educated, homesexual though married.
Voluntarily secluded because of fear of social prejudice against homesexuals.
Opens McMurphy’s eyes about the institution.
Reemerging as a person with McMurphy’s help.

9. Billy Shy with a stutter. Dominated by his mother.
Voluntarily in the institution because he’s afraid of outside world.

10. Spivey and Aides
Dominated by Ratched

11. Themes: the fundamental and often universal ideas explored.
Women as castrators
Society’s Destruction of Natural Impulses
The Importance of Expressing Sexuality
False Diagnoses of Insanity

12. Motifs: recurring structures, contrasts, and devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Invisibility
The Power of Laughter
Real Versus Imagined Size

13. Symbols: objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Fog Machine
McMurphy’s Boxer Shorts
The Electroshock Therapy Table

14. Bibliography