One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Character Comparisons

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Out of the four characters listed in this film, the one character that does not exhibit pretense is Billy. We first see Billy as a nervous, shy young boy with a speech impediment. Billy has weird relationships with women; he likes women and enjoys the company of them but is fearful of the women that are most close to him. Billy’s mother and especially Nurse Ratched are the women he is most afraid of. Nurse Ratched has a personal relationship with Billy’ mother, she has a special motherly power that she only has on Billy and not the other patients in the hospital. She can control him into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do because, Billy is afraid that Nurse Ratched will tell his mother about his wrong doings and mistakes at the time in the mental institution. Throughout the film, I saw Billy as the same character. Right away as a member of the audience, we know that Randle McMurphy “Mac” exhibits the most visible pretense out of the other characters in the film. He is putting up a front and is going along with the admittance in the mental institute only to be in a more relaxed environment and get away from the hard labor he has to serve at a local prison. Mac is smarter than what he presents himself as. The warden and nurses see Mac as a repeat criminal, and thinks the reason why he continues to break the law and does the stuff he does because there is something wrong mentally with him. Once admitted and doing time in the institute Mac can see why the other patients are in the hospital and gets closer to them by gambling and telling stories with them. He even becomes the unofficial leader of the group, because he’s the most outgoing and goes up against Nurse Ratched who all the other patients are scared and intimidated by. Mac also conducts ideas for breaking out and escaping the hospital, which is unusual for the other patients because most of them are there voluntarily. In the scene when Mac bets with