One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Laughter Analysis

Jihun Kang
Dinh
English 11 CP, period 3
17 November 2015
Laughing Liberation Laughter can free a man’s soul. Even when he has been beaten over and over again, laughter can lift his spirits. This is also seen in books such as the Bible. Apostles Paul and Silas were disempowered by their enemies, yet they laughed and praised and were eventually let out of jail-- literally attaining their freedom. In Ken Kesey’s renowned novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and movie directed by Milos Forman (1975), a prevalent motif that occurs is the disempowerment of controlling and restrictive people and things like the Big Nurse and the combine and empowerment by the patients when they laugh. In order to ensure that the patients do what they are told to
In the movie, when the Big Nurse finds out that Billy spent the night with a prostitute and he tells her that he is not ashamed of sleeping with her, the patients start to cheer. However, when the Big Nurse gravely tells Billy about telling his mother about the incident, the patients stop applauding. This threat causes the patients to become scared and shrivel up again because of the Big Nurse and her passive-aggressiveness. Unfortunately for Billy, he ends up committing suicide because of the Big Nurse’s intimidating taunts. Not only does the Big Nurse misuse her powers to keep the patients from stepping over boundaries, but she also controls the fog that contains the patients. Bromden thinks that the Big Nurse is in control of the fog machine that, “she’s got the fog machine switched on, and it’s rolling in so fast I can’t see a thing but her face, rolling in thicker and thicker, and I feel as hopeless and dead as I felt happy a minute ago-- even more hopeless than ever before, on account of I know now there is no real help against her or her Combine” (Chapter 9).This observation shows that the Big Nurse has the power to control how much fog is dispersed and even what kind of gas: a gas that evidently turns into plastic in order to prevent patients from moving even a single muscle. Using these kinds of methods of disempowerment, the
Before McMurphy came to the ward, no one laughed, in fact, when Bromden heard McMurphy laugh, he realized that he forgot what genuine laughter sounded like. When the men got back from the fishing trip, the Big Nurse had plans to blame McMurphy about all the things that were going awry as, “ She sat back in her chair, getting ready to go in and point out who was to blame and why...when McMurphy broke her spell into whoops of laughter…” (263). This quotation shows that laughter had broken the devious spell the Big Nurse was under. As she plotted to bring down McMurphy, she halts because of the sound of joy and happiness coming from the patients. Showing how vulnerable the nurse can get in situations where laughter is involved, it is evident that she loses her control over the combine and the patients when they laugh about things that the nurse does not instigate. In the movie as well, when Bromden runs away to his freedom by breaking the window of the disempowering combine, the patients cheer and laugh to show that they have finally attained their freedom from the tyrannical characters and the ward. This spectacle shows the audience that they have broken away from the firm grasp the combine and the Big Nurse had on them and has finally acquired their freedom thus empowering