Randle Mcmurphy Essay

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Randle McMurphy— McMurphy is a charming and handsome man, with long red sideburns and a tangle of curls. When he is introduced he swaggers around the ward in his motorcycle cap and dirty work-farm clothes, with a leather jacket over one arm. He introduces himself as a “gambling fool”, Randle is a big man who is loud, sexual, dirty, yet confident. His characteristics clash with the oppressed ward, which is controlled by Nurse Ratched. McMurphy is larger than life, a man destined to change the asylum forever. McMurphy is used to having his way and is a natural leader. He represents freedom, and self-determination in this story. Randle is not, in fact, crazy, but rather he is trying to manipulate the system to his advantage. He believes that the hospital would be more comfortable than the Pendleton Work Farm, where he was serving a six-month sentence, but soon discoveres he is haunted by the power Nurse Ratched holds over him. She can keep him committed as long as she likes and McMurphy’s sanity will be questioned. The nurse can become as “big as a tractor” when she is angry. McMurphy manipulates the attempts of the daytime aides to make him get into the routine of a shower, an injection, and a rectal thermometer. He refuses to be submissive and just accept their attempts. When McMurphy enters the day room, he notices that there are the some patients that appear curable and others that appear as vegetables. The common practice of this hospital include brain surgeries and shock therapies which lead to this vegetable state. McMurphy joins the group meeting going on in the day room led by nurse Rached. He notices that during the meeting nurse Rached is bringing up Harding’s (another patient) problems with his wife. McMurphy begins to make lewd jokes directed at the nurse. Nurse Rached retaliates by reading McMurphy’s file out loud about his record of

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