One flew over the cuckoos nest ending questions Literature Coursework

Please read one flew over the cuckoos nest ending chapter 26-29 part 4 and complete the questions.

The end of the book should not have been a surprise (the particulars perhaps). Today we’ll analyze the final scenes of the novel, note personal reactions and author’s message.

1. First, note your personal reaction to the end of the book. This is obviously informal. Just a few sentences. Did you expect the ending? What was your emotional reaction?

Now look at certain sections from Chapters 26-29 to see what leads up to the ending.

1. Read this quote and highlight/comment/close read etc:
   1. In Chapter 26, as Nurse Ratched is trying to turn the patients against McMurphy, Harding defends him. Why does McMurphy do what he does for the patients? Do you agree with Nurse Ratched? (Even just a little bit?):

“I’ll admit I was confused by his actions at first. That window-breaking— Lord, I thought, here’s a man that seems to actually want to stay in this hospital, stick with his buddies and all that sort of thing, until I realized that McMurphy was doing it because he didn’t want to lose a good thing. He’s making the most of his time in here. Don’t ever be misled by his back-woodsy ways; he’s a very sharp operator, level-headed as they come. You watch; everything he’s done was done with reason.”

Billy wasn’t about to give in so easy. “Yeah. What about him teaching me to d-dance?” He was clenching his fists at his side; and on the backs of his hands I saw that the cigarette burns had all but healed, and in their place were tattoos he’d drawn by licking an indelible pencil. “What about that, Harding? Where is he making muh-muh-money out of teaching me to dance?”

“Don’t get upset, William,” Harding said. “But don’t get impatient, either. Let’s just sit easy and wait—and see how he works it.”

1. After McMurphy tricks Chief into lifting up the control panel, and winning money off of all the patients, Chief says: “You’re always… winning things!” What does he mean by that?

1. At this point in the reading, complete this phrase: “McMurphy as _____” Choose a word to describe McMurphy (could be a noun or an adjective) and defend its usage.

1. In the “cautionary cleansing,” when McMurphy sticks up for George, and the fight with the black boys begins, “Everybody could hear the helpless, cornered despair in McMurphy’s voice.” What does that mean? When have we seen this type of idea before?

1. Up on Disturbed in Chapter 27:

                                                               i.      How is Japanese-American nurse different from Nurse Ratched?

                                                             ii.      As Chief gets the “treatment,” describe two images that come to his mind. What is happening in these pages?

                                                           iii.      The last two paragraphs of the reading capture a VERY different Chief.  What is different about him?

1. What are the patient’s reactions when Chief starts talking? Why do you think that is?

1. What is McMurphy’s reaction to EST? What are the patients’ reactions to McMurphy’s EST?

1. During the party (Chapter 28), when McMurphy. Harding and Chief are talking about McMurphy’s escape. Read this quote and highlight/comment/close read etc:

“McMurphy took his arm from around the girl and looked from me to Harding, thinking, that strange, tired expression on his face again. He asked what about us, why didn’t we just up and get our clothes on and make it out with him?  “I’m not quite ready yet, Mack,” Harding told him.

“Then what makes you think I am?”

Harding looked at him in silence for a time and smiled, then said, “No, you don’t understand. I’ll be ready in a few weeks. But I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out that front door, with all the traditional red tape and complications. I want my wife to be here in a car at a certain time to pick me up. I want them to know I was able to do it that way.”

McMurphy nodded. “What about you, Chief?”

“I figure I’m all right. Just I don’t know where I want to go yet. And somebody should stay here a few weeks after you’re gone to see that things don’t start sliding back.”

“What about Billy and Sefelt and Fredrickson and the rest?”

“I can’t speak for them,” Harding said. “They’ve still got their problems, just like all of us. They’re still sick men in lots of ways. But at least there’s that: they are sick men now. No more rabbits, Mack. Maybe they can be well men someday. I can’t say.”

1. Why is the party such a big deal? Or if you believe that it isn’t, defend that position.

1. How are the men different, the morning after the party? In particular, explain: “But the men were immune to her poison”

1. What evidence do you have that many of the Acutes got better by the end of the novel?

1. What happens to Billy? Was this a surprise?

1. Conduct a close analysis on the following passage from Chapter 29 when McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched (imagery, diction, etc.):

We couldn’t stop him because we were the ones making him do it. It wasn’t the nurse that was forcing him, it was our need that was making him push himself slowly up from sitting, his big hands driving down on the leather chair arms, pushing him up, rising and standing like one of those moving-picture zombies, obeying orders beamed at him from forty masters. It was us that had been making him go on for weeks, keeping him standing long after his feet and legs had given out, weeks of making him wink and grin and laugh and go on with his act long after his humor had been parched dry between two electrodes.

We made him stand and hitch up his black shorts like they were horsehide chaps, and push back his cap with one finger like it was a ten-gallon Stetson, slow, mechanical gestures — and when he walked across the floor you could hear the iron in his bare heels ring sparks out of the tile.

Only at the last — after he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swinging around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed for her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front, screaming again when the two nippled circles started from her chest and swelled out and out, bigger than anybody had ever even imagined, warm and pink in the light — only at the last, after the officials realized that the three black boys weren’t going to do anything but stand and watch and they would have to beat him off without their help, doctors and supervisors and nurses prying those heavy red fingers out of the white flesh of her throat as if they were her neck bones, jerking him backward off of her with a loud heave of breath, only then did he show any sign that he might be anything other than a sane, willful, dogged man performing a hard duty that finally just had to be done, like it or not. He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out:

A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn’t care any more about anything but himself and his dying.

1. Did the novel have to end the way that it did?

1. Does the word that you chose in 2c still apply to McMurphy? Why/why not?

1. What is Kesey’s final message?