#r.p. mcmurphy

[tsebranothlit]

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest should join the “you’re missing the point by idolizing the protagonist” media list.

[manitat]

😊

[artificialcaretaker]

There’s no fucking way I got into school mandated classic lit yaoi again why the fuck does this keep happening……

[Literally praying that we read page 222 in class I need to see everyone’s reaction to that.

Also, Bromden is literally me. Bro will start talkin about his paranoid delusions and how the Shadow Government is controlling him and I’ll be like “ONG TWIN 🫡🫡🫡”

That may or may not have some implications on my current mental health status.

ALSO also, I finally changed my signature. I no longer want to be associated with the same thing I used to mark the yaoi hentai I drew in middle school. That ain’t me. I’m a changed man. Like hell I’ll ever find it again but the important thing is that I’m moving on.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday the Scottish actor, Alexander “Sandy” Morton born 24th March 1945 in Glasgow.

Morton became one of Scotland’s most popular arch-villains when he was cast as Andy Semple in the long running soap opera Take the High Road.

Career highlights include the title role in Raindog Theatre’s critically acclaimed Scots rendition of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, directed by Robert Carlyle; R.P. McMurphy in One flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest, also directed by Robert Carlyle. He has also appeared in three different series of Taggart as different characters and was ithe pnly character to appear in every single episode of Monarch of the Glen as the servant, Golly Mackenzie. In Nicholas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, he featured as Barde, the chieftain and temporary owner of One Eye.

Has appeared with actor Clive Owen in TV series Second Sight 1 & 2, and Mike Hodges films I’ll Sleep when I’m dead, and Croupier.

Alexander recently played the Prince of Darkness in the Dracula-inspired Robert Forrest BBC radio play Voyage of the Demeter. For BBC Radio he had the title role in Jekyll and Hyde, playing both parts. Also on radio, he was the first actor to play Inspector Rebus in the first adaptation of Ian Rankin’s Rebus series of books.

And on the small screen Sandy has been in the excellent Luther with Idris Elba and Shetland, he was also cast as a rival to Lenny Murdoch in our Scottish soap River City, as Billy Kennedy.

[readingforsanity]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Ken Kesey | Published 1962 | *SPOILERS*

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. 

A mordant, wickedly submersive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collusion between its hell-raising, life affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitatian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy’s revolution against Big Murse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results. 

Boisterious, ribald and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey’s novel is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy’s heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned. 

We’re first introduced to the hospital patients by Chief Bromden, a large half-Indian man who has been committed to the hospital for many years. At the start of the book, we find that he has been there the longest out of everyone. He portrays himself to be stupid, deaf and dumb just so he can squeak by without issue. While he was introduced to various things within the hospital, like electric-shock and the like, he tries to avoid all of that by doing what he’s told the first time he’s told to do it. 

Enter R.P. McMurphy. He’s like a storm coming through the ward, and is meant to challenge the authority placed over them. He befriends everyone on the ward, and gives them the confidence needed for them to speak out against Nurse Ratched, the nurse in charge of the ward during their daytime hours. She’s a horrid woman, who takes joy in watching them all slowly suffer through her reign. 

When McMurphy comes, he begins questioning her authority, trying to get her to break. It isn’t until he’s told that she is the one keeping him held to the ward that he begins to back off a little. When he arranges for a fishing expedition for at least 10 men to attend, including himself, it really changes things. Chief begins speaking again, and having a wonderful time, and the group has such a great time that even one of the committed boys, Billy, decides that he’s ready to enter into a relationship with a woman who joined them on the trip. 

When it’s arranged for the woman to return on a Saturday evening, they all agree that this is the perfect time for them try to get McMurphy out of the hospital. However, their plan fails and it ultimately leads to the death of one of the patients. Soon after, a lot of the patients begin signing themselves out and leaving the hospital. 

Discussion Questions 

1. In what way is Kesey’s novel representative of the 1960s. The book, issue in 1962, is nearly 50 years old. Are the thematic concerns of Cuckoo’s Nest still relevant today, do they speak to the 21st century...or are they outdated? I find some of the things discussed outdated. In the 1960s, not much was known regarding mental illness and their differences. A lot of them are treated the same as other mental illnesses when in fact they’re quite different. For example, they no longer perform lobotomies or electric-shock treatment. 

2. Cuckoo’s Nest centers around a classic plot device - the introduction of disorder into an ordered environment. How does Randle McMurphy destabilize the psychiatric ward? First, discuss how “order” is maintained...who enforces it...and what form order takes. Then talk about what happens when McMurphy enters the story. Order is maintained by Nurse Ratched. She is the person in charge of the ward, and ultimately, wants things to run a certain way. When McMurphy enters, he doesn’t conform to the norm, therefore it throws off the balance of the entire ward. 

3. Was Chief Bromden mentally insane when he was committed to the hospital 10 years ago? How does he appear when we first meet him? What is the cause of his halluicinatory fog - his medications or his paranoia or...? I believe that he was mentally ill, but not insane. He may have also been under the assumption he was insane because someone put that into his head. He was in the army, and fought in a war, so that could very much have had something to do with it. He appears to be a large, dumb and deaf man, when he is first introduced. But, we quickly find out that he can both speak and hear the others around him, and is just playing the role that people assumed him to be. 

4. Trace the change in Bromden that occurs over the course of the novel. What does he come to understand about himself? Why he has presented himself as deaf and dumb? Why does he believe he has lost his once prodigious strength? What effect does McMurphy have on him? He presents himself in such a light because someone told him that he was deaf and dumb. It was first brought to his attention that people overlooked him despite his size when he was a young boy living on a river with his parents. But, like the affect that McMurphy has on them all, he teaches Chief that he is much more than what the ward is telling him that he is. 

5. At one point, Bromden pleas with the reader to believe him. He says, but it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen. What does he mean - how can something be true if it’s not based in reality? It’s because he believes it to be what had happened, therefore it is true to him, but not necessarily true to everyone else. 

6. Is McMurphy crazy? Under what circumstances does he enter the hospital ward? if this is a parable...or allegory, what does McMurphy represent symbolically? Can he be seen as a Christ figure, one who sacrifices himself for the good of others? Yes or no? No, he does not sacrifice himself for the good of others. He was good for the others to be around as it restored a lot of their confidences that they seemed to be lacking while on the ward. However, he even said it himself that he looks out for number one, and number one only, and that is himself. 

7. What is Dr. Spivey’s theory of the therapeutic community - and how does McMurphy challenge it? What does he mean when he compares the process to a flock of chickens? When one person is called out, and degraded in front of the entire meeting, McMurphy calls it the chicken pecking. Which is absolutely is. The nurse in charge is so hard up on making others miserable, that she calls out individuals during the meeting, and the others flock to tear them down without even realizing they’re doing it. Ultimately, though, therapeutic community is helpful to them, as it really opens everyone up in the long run. 

8. As a follow-up to question 4, what does Nurse Ratched represent? What’s funny, by the way, about her name? Talk about her ability to disguise her true hideous self, which shows readily to Bromden and the aides, from the patients. Bromden sees her as a combine...and nickna,es her Big Nurse. What are the implications of those words? Chief believes that she is larger than even he is. She is an authority figure, and like many of us, the authority is meant to be questioned (McMurphy). Her name is hilarious, because she truly is a ratched person behind everything else she is trying to portray herself to be. 

9. How does Ratched maintain power over her patients? She believes that she is the knower of all things, and that if even one person questions her authority, that the entire order will be compromised. 

10. How does Ratched eventually gain control over McMurphy? Why does he gradually submit to her - and why does the newly subdued McMurphy confuse the other patients? What has he become to them? It’s found that she has control over who leaves and who doesn’t when they’re committed. Unlike Harding, who voluntarily admitted himself to the hospital, you have McMurphy, who was committed to the hospital by an authority figure or government entity. Harding has the ability to leave at any time whereas McMurphy must wait to be released. When this is mentioned, he stops acting out so he could possibly get out, but he had already hurt his chances by questioning her authority in the beginning. 

11. Talk about the fishing trip that McMurphy arranges for the inmates. what does McMurphy teach the other patients about being on the outside? What’s the symbolic significance of the fishing expedition? It gives them a sense of renewal. Many of them likely haven’t been outside in quite some time, at least not in the way they had been. They’re able to see what it would be like to have freewill again. 

12. Why doesn’t McMurphy escape from the ward the night Billy has a date with Candy? He did it to show that the nurse doesn’t have control over everything when she isn’t there. 

13. Ultimately, Ratched looses her old over the ward. Why? With Billy’s death. I think this afffected her in a way she wasn’t able to completely understand herself, and she was trying to blame everyone but herself when truthfully, she could have turned a blind eye and said nothing. She was basically reprimanding him for doing something that is super natural to everyone.  

14. What is this novel about? What dichtomy is being suggested by Ratched and the hospital vs. the patients? Good vs. evil? Power and authority vs. freedom? Repression vs. expression? Women vs men? The machine vs. nature? War vs. humanity? The novel shows what it was like to be in a mental ward in the 1960s. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, regular men go in and when they get out, they’re not the same. 

15. Why does Bromden narrate rather than McMurphy? McMurphy isn’t a central character because he was only committed because of a battery charge. Chief was in the longest out of everyone on the ward present at the time of the book beginning. 

16. Ultimately, how does Ken Kensey challenge societal notions of sanity and insanity? Who is sick, according to Kesey? Nobody is truly sick, according to Kesey, but those who are in charge. 

17. Who is the book’s hero? To me, the book’s hero is Chief. He changed everything he knew about himself because of one person’s confidence in him as opposed to the many people rooting against him. 

18. What is the title’s significance? It’s a allegory for what the Chief’s grandma used to say to him when he was a boy. 

[sharkaiju]

Mack: I think we're gonna die, Chief.

Chief: We're all gonna die, Mack.

Mack: No, I mean soon.

Chief: So did I.

[lonelinessfollowsme]

“Which one of you nuts has got any guts?”

[laranatbod]

I pranked R.P. McMurphy...

I’ve got a small part in a local amateur theatre company’s production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Anyone who’s read the book, or seen the movie or play is aware that SPOILER, McMurphy recieves electroshock therapy. Hey Mama welcome to the 60s.

In our play, the guy playing McMurphy gets a little rubber rectangle put it his mouth, they used to do that to stop them biting their tongue when recieving “treatments”, and McMurphy has to talk around the thing. One rehearsal I suggested we replace that thingo with a harmonica.

I wish I’d got it on video.

Here we are, doing a speedrun. The electroshock scene is pretty intense, there’s hollering, and McMurphy being the cocky son of a bitch he is. Technician shouts “Clear!” and suddenly,

harmonica music.

Everyone started CACKLING, including McMurphy who is usually great at keeping his cool. He plays a jaunty tune, everyone aplauds. By far the second funniest thing to happen during rehearsals, right behind me screaming and falling on my face as Tinkerbell.

[aiiaiiiyo]

[droogiesanddiscourse]

HCs: R.P. McMurphy with an Artist S/O

Original Message: @anon “HELLO YOUR MAJESTY MAY I PLEASE REQUEST H/C’S FOR R.P MCMURPHY WITH A ARTIST S/O?❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️”

A/N: HELP!!! WE’RE WRITING FOR R.P. MCMURPHY NOW AAA!!!! I am so so so so SO excited to get into this, I love this man so much I believe in Jack Nicholson supremacy. I love u bby thanks for the request! No warnings! Have fun! 

• This man is the biggest, most lovable goof out there. I don’t think he has a serious bone in his body. He’s always got new tricks up his sleeves to keep you on your toes, and you never know what to expect with your relationship with Mac.

• Of course he knew you were an artist even before you started dating. But he never really got to see much of your work, or your work process in general. And that’s okay, he respects your privacy. 

• Kinda. 

• Okay, not really, he wants to see what’s in that sketchbook one way or another. 

• “Whatcha’ doin’ there, baby?” He’ll sneak up behind you, catching you off guard as you try to frantically hide the sketches you made of Mac. Always being too quick for you, he snatches your sketchbook up, dangling it above your head out of reach. 

• “Aw my baby’s an artist!! Don’t be shy, don’t be shy! Let me see what you’re up to, okay?” He holds it above your reach again as you frantically jump up, trying to take it back. He can’t help but smile at this, you were just so cute when you get flustered. 

• Much to your dismay, he opens up your sketchbook and flips through the pages, shocked when he finds multiple sketches of him. His face drops in surprise, finding page after page of just nothing but him in various poses - sitting on the couch, his face in his hands, smoking a cigarette. For the first time, Mac is actually rendered speechless. He couldn’t believe someone would actually care about him enough to actually draw him. 

• “Look at that! That’s me, isn’t it?” Mac points, You nod your head, happy he likes your art and didn’t find it weird or anything. He gives you a smile back, matching your energy. “Wow, and after all this time you were hiding this from me??”

• Mac will hold the book up to his face, trying to match the pose you drew him in. He’ll point at the sketch, then back at his face, then at the sketch, then back at his face. “Ya, see that? Like lookin’ in a mirror!” This makes you both laugh. 

• He’ll lowly whistle in appreciation as he thumbs through the rest of your sketchbook. “You don’t gotta hide this from me anymore, hear me? I think these are absolutely fantastic, and I mean it.” He looks up at you, “I really wanna see what you create next, okay? Keep me in the loop.” 

• And with that, he gently tosses your sketchbook back down onto your desk and walks away, whistling a tune to himself like nothing just happened. He always enters any room in a whirlwind, and exits casually, leaving you a bit confused. He’s got a big personality. 

• He loves holding on to the little doodles you make, but he’s kinda a whole mess and will be like “Oh this...yeah this is some of your best work! I really love this one, mind if I keep it?” and then he shoved it in his pocket like an DUMMY. But he doesn’t do this with like, any malicious intent or anything he just wants to carry them everywhere he goes but like. He crumples them haha. But that’s how he shows his extremely chaotic affection and he NEVER loses any of them. He isn’t organized in the slightest, but he has his own ways. 

• He can’t draw. At all. I mean I’m not sure if this man knows how to hold a pencil properly. And that's okay! Because sometimes he’ll just like to sit with you and steal your pretty colored pencils / markers / pastels / paints and make some of his own “art.” Eventually you just buy him his own sketchbook so he can sit next to you and doodle with you. 

• Sometimes you gotta remind him to not waste paint though, because this man will just put giant GLOBS of paint on the canvas you give him, and he’ll get it all over the place too. But he’ll claim it’s apart of his ~artistic process~ and you ~can’t rush perfection~

• “Hey, c’mon! It’s ART, don’t you see? Hold on, get a better look at it.” He’ll hold it up in front of your face, nothing but a chaotic mix of colors and textures. “It’s very deep, I guess you just don’t understand, everybody’s a critic...” he’ll mouth off in a sarcastically sassy manner, barely being able to contain the smirk coiling on his lips. 

• PAINT NIGHTS??? Yes absolutely yes. Mac seems like the type of guy to want to watch a painting tutorial on VHS or something and have the two of you follow along, step-by-step. Bonus points if you get a little tipsy beforehand too, that just adds to the silliness and fun of it all. 

• Mac is just really honored to have such a talented and amazing s/o like you :’) 

[jokerandthethief63]

[motownfiction]

book of sam

The Book of Sam is longer than most people expect. They think because he never cracked a book on his desks at school that he never cracked a book at all. They’re wrong about him. They’re always wrong about him. Almost no one else knows that Sam has eaten apricot danishes with Holly Golightly, left home with Nora Helmer, gazed at himself in the mirror with David from Giovanni’s Room, and started a revolution with R.P. McMurphy. He is a tapestry of literary achievements with the smoldering stare of a Tiger Beat poster.

The Book of Sam is musical. Of course, everybody knows that. He’s the man with a song for every situation. Sometimes, the singing is out of his control. He drives his car with a beep-beep-mmm-beep-beep-yeah! Makes dinner with Skeeter Davis and “I Can’t Stay Mad at You.” And every summer, he sits in the backyard on Saturday afternoons, playing “Expressway to Your Heart.” The neighbors get annoyed with the beeping on the track, but he doesn’t care. He is Sam Doyle, and his book is made of music. He is made of music all his own.

The Book of Sam has pictures, too. Casual readers gloss over their significance, but experts in Sam know the truth. Every picture of a perfectly whipped-up chocolate milkshake, every snapshot of Steph Armstrong painting another masterpiece in her mother’s garage, every self-portrait in front of his bedroom mirror with the flash brightly on, all mean something in the understanding of Sam. The pictures are written in a language that only the best of his loved ones could ever understand.

The Book of Sam is still being written. Its subject has been dead twenty years this December, but the best of his loved ones still take it off the shelf, tack on addendums, write whole new chapters. The daughters he never knew he’d ever have keep him alive. Make sure the Book of Sam never ends. Make sure the Book of Sam is a classic. One of the greatest ever made.

(part of @nosebleedclub august challenge -- day xxiii!)

[artificialcaretaker]

I JUST GOT THE CASE DISMISSED 😄😄😄

[Sorry that the art is blurry on the top text ones, I used a pretty small canvas size without knowin

As for this mf, I know it was the 60s but why ain’t they just keep his ass locked UP 😭😭😭 tf did he do to convince ‘em he was SO unstable that they dropped everythin and handed it to a psych ward like how did he pull that one OFF?!

Y’all think he planned on gettin the gang together and recording a first day out track when he thought he was in for a definite time? Y’all think the only reason he got all bummed out and started emotionally neglecting his one glazer was cuz he realized he may never get back on SoundCloud? Does my English teacher know I’ve draw characters from this book kissing?

[scotianostra]

Happy 77th Birthday the Scottish actor, Alexander “Sandy” Morton born 24th March 1945 in Glasgow.

Morton became one of Scotland’s most popular arch-villains when he was cast as Andy Semple in the long running soap opera Take the High Road.

Career highlights include the title role in Raindog Theatre’s critically acclaimed Scots rendition of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, directed by Robert Carlyle; R.P. McMurphy in One flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest, also directed by Robert Carlyle. He has also appeared in three different series of Taggart as different characters and was in all episodes of Monarch of the Glen as the servant, Golly Mackenzie. In Nicholas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, he featured as Barde, the chieftain and temporary owner of One Eye.

Has appeared with actor Clive Owen in TV series Second Sight 1 & 2, and Mike Hodges films I’ll Sleep when I’m dead, and Croupier.

Alexander recently played the Prince of Darkness in the Dracula-inspired Robert Forrest BBC radio play Voyage of the Demeter. For BBC Radio he had the title role in Jekyll and Hyde, playing both parts. Also on radio, he was the first actor to play Inspector Rebus in the first adaptation of Ian Rankin’s Rebus series of books.

And on the small screen Sandy has been in the excellent Luther with Idris Elba and Shetland, he was also cast as a rival to Lenny Murdoch in our Scottish soap River City, as Billy Kennedy.

[overthecuckoosnest]

Our Hero: R.P. McMurphy

In this section, Ken Kesey uses the disappearance of the fog from Chief’s vision and some of the actions of the other Acutes in the ward as a metaphor for how R.P. McMurphy has helped to free them from the oppression of Nurse Ratched. The fog, which I have discussed in my previous post looking at Chief Bromden as our narrator, represented some kind of mental issue then, which is reaffirmed by its disappearance when McMurphy begins to turn the patients against the Big Nurse.

Kesey is rather explicit with the metaphor of the fog; Chiefs says that “I was seeing lots of things different. I figured the fog machine had broke down in the walls when they turned it up too high for that meeting on Friday...For the first time in years I was seeing people with none of that black outline they used to have, and one night I was even able to see out the windows” (162). The fact that Chief hadn’t even been able to see out the windows ever demonstrates the incredible hold that Nurse Ratched had over his psyche, that is, until McMurphy showed up and undermined her control. For the first time in years, Chief is able to see the world as it is, and not as some hellish nightmare controlled by The Combine (which might deserve its own blog post). The effect that McMurphy has on the other patients besides Chief is apparent in the line “In the group meetings there were grips coming up that had been buried so long the things being griped about had already changed. Now that McMurphy was around to back them up, the guys started letting fly at everything that had ever happened on the ward they didn’t like” (167). Based on this, it is obvious that McMurphy has freed the other patients to some extent by standing up to the nurse himself. Instead of cowering in fear as they did at the first meeting that McMurphy was at, there is now a community effort to resist the nurse. Cheswick seems particularly impacted by McMurphy’s rebellious acts, because as soon as McMurphy retreats and stops trying to get under the Nurse’s skin, Cheswick has a breakdown and screams at the nurse “I want something done! Hear me? I want something done! Something! Something!” (173) which lands him in the Disturbed and unfortunately he drowns directly after, likely because of the “treatment” he received up there. The other patients are also deeply affected by McMurphy’s retreat; Chief writes that “the white tubes in the ceiling begin to pump their refrigerated light again” (173) and describes the other inmates as having “cancelled” faces. These reactions clearly demonstrate that McMurphy was a hero to all of them and I am curious as to whether he will resume that role or he will continue to play it safe as he is now.

In writing the character of McMurphy in the way that he did, it seems as though Ken Kesey was praising those who go against the status quo and rebel against society. This makes a lot of sense given what Kesey did in real life, travelling in a van testing out psychedelic drugs on unwitting participants. This sort of messaging is also in line with the broader countercultural movement of the time.

[sharkaiju]

Ratched: You're late to Group again, Mr. McMurphy. We're all getting tired of putting up with your tardiness.

Mack: Hey! Don't use that word in front of the Chronics!