How and why does the play make the audience identify with McMurphy

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One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

How and why does the play make the audience identify with McMurphy?

The play ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ is set in the 1950s.  During the 50's there were many patients that were coming back from WWII who was addicted to morphine and suffering what we now call PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). There were a huge number of the ‘old style’ mental hospitals that were still applying treatment such as shock therapy, psychotropic drugs and lobotomies.  Community care was bought in but it failed to come into many of the hospitals, and the long-term patients were mistreated and undermined.  However, the abuse of these patients did not go unnoticed.  The government started to make small steps in an effort to help, particularly in 1953 when the government set aside millions to help refurbish the homes that the patients lived in, and they did it again in 1954-1957 when the government reconsidered and changed the laws on how mentally ill should be treated and viewed, but few actually made any change.  By bringing out this play the audience had a chance to identify with McMurphy and it gave the audience a unique look into the terrible things that happened behind the closed doors of the institutions.  When people watched this play and saw the hospitals through a patient (McMurphy) eyes, their views were influenced by the themes and dramatic devices used in this play.

One of the major themes in this play is power.  As soon as McMurphy is introduced onto the ward, we see his power by over throwing Harding “well, you tell bull goose loony Harding that R.P McMurphy is waitin’ to see him and this nut-house aint big enough for the two of us”.  McMurphy looks to control the patients and have them all look up to him; however the only person that the patients are influenced by is Nurse Ratchet.  This immediately causes a divide between the two characters as we see their personalities will determine a clash.  Throughout the play McMurphy’s character grows in understanding of the how wrong the institutions are, and he eventually uses his ‘power’ repeatedly to overthrow Nurse Ratchet in an attempt to save the other patients on the ward.  We even see him pretending to be insane by watching a TV that isn’t even on, just so that he can triumph over Nurse Ratchet.  

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The power of laughter echoed throughout the play. McMurphy’s laughter is the first genuine laughter heard on the ward in years. McMurphy’s first clue that things are strange among the patients is that none of them are able to laugh; they can only smile and snicker behind their hands. Bromden remembers a scene from his childhood when his father and relatives mocked some government officials, and he realizes how powerful their laughter was: “I forget sometimes what laughter can do.” For McMurphy, laughter is a potent defense against society’s insanity, and anyone who can’t laugh properly has no chance of ...

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