A person must follow a certain quest to become a hero. The quest that a hero must take consist of seven traditional steps. By becoming selfless like McMurphy did in, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in order to help the others around him to achieve the goal of becoming a hero. One is also considered to be a hero when he or she stands up against fear and shows courage towards a greater power. These basic concepts of hero are shown in the character Randle Patrick McMurphy. In the novel McMurphry sacrifices himself to go on his hero conquest to help the patients of a mental institution to become from from the struggles of Nurse Ratched.
In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy first confronts his call to …show more content…
In the novel, McMurphy coming to know that all the patients on the ward are not not committed while he is meaning that they can leave whenever they want to unlike him exemplifies the stage of despair, darkness, and hopelessness. The stage is also exemplified when he finds out that Nurse Ratched is the one who decides when he will be able to leave the ward exemplifies the stage of despair, darkness, and hopelessness. After he realizes this, he starts to stop being rebellious which sets him back on his quest and main goal of helping the patients. McMurphy feels obligated to the Nurse and feels hopeless against her because he wanted to to leave and be able to help the patients out. He feels hopeless against Nurse Ratched after finds out that she decides if he leaves or not because he had always been rude and rebellious towards her the minute he first came in to the ward. He fears that she will use this reasoning against him so he doesn’t leave the ward. McMurphy feels that he has to do anything that Nurse Ratched wants and stop being rebellious if he wants to get out of the ward quickly. This can be seen when Harding says, “Why friends, you don’t suppose there’s anything to this rumor that Mr. McMurphy has conformed to policy merely to aid his chances of an early release?” (166). Here Harding is telling the other patients on the ward about how their “savior” McMurphy has lost and conformed to Nurse Ratched’s rules. He is saying that McMurphy conformed to Nurse Ratched and stopped trying to get rid of Nurse Ratched’s power and authority just because he found out that he is committed and that she is the one who decides whether he get to leave early or not. This supports the fact that this is the stage of hopelessness because him coming to the acknowledgement of Nurse Ratched being the one that decides