Powerful Legacy

After acknowledging McMurphy as a legitimate threat, Nurse Ratched now has to find a way to get rid of him. However, she is in a difficult position since if she sends him to a different ward, the patients will only remember McMurphy as a hero. She figures that she has to beat him at his own game and then expose him for what he truly is: a con-artist. Already, McMurphy has been able to rally the support of his fellow patients and few of the staff members as well. I find it particularly interesting that McMurphy’s legacy is posing just as much a threat as he himself is. In addition to this, I found it interesting to note that the vast majority of the patients under the care of Nurse Ratched have the choice to leave the institution if they want. The reason they do not, most likely, is due to the perception that they are different from the rest of society, a notion enforced by Nurse Ratched during her “Therapeutic Sessions.” This acts as a good example of the theme of appearance versus reality since the Nurse is able to make the patients believe that they are the “left-behinds” of society, making them unwilling to even try to be cured.