One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

One flew over the Cuckoo's nest is a feature film that focuses on the issue of democracy being important to society. Democracy is the people's freedom to choice their ruler. In the film Randal Patrick McMurphy also known as McMurphy is a representative of democracy and Mildred Ratched also known as ratchet is a dictator standing in the way of achieving democracy. This theme is evident through the traditional narrative techniques of symbolism and foreshadowing shown through the conventions specific to a feature film of camera techniques, behaviour and costume. The types of power that Randal and Ratched have covey to the viewer the significance of what they symbolise and why.

In the film we see that McMurphy has great charisma or personal power. Nurse ratchet on the other hand has positional power as she is head nurse of the ward. Personal power reflects the value of democracy in society as those with charisma are more likely to succeed as rulers in a democratic society. Dictatorship in societies is all about positional power as the reason that the person is in charge is not through the people but by some other
Their unification does not happen by chance. We can see their progress to unification through the meetings that they have through out the film. When McMurphy arrives and they have their first meeting with nurse ratchet, the meeting breaks down into chaos with them ganging up on each other. Their second meeting is about voting to see a baseball game. McMurphy, Cheswick and Tabor vote for it but none of the others. The next day the meeting starts of with ratchet talking to Billy. Cheswick then changes the subject to voting to see another baseball game. All the patients present at the meeting vote to watch it. This progression is clear when the scenes are put from end to end. Through this progression the viewers can see the unification of the patient under McMurphy to form