A Terrible Realization - McMurphy's Silence

In Part 1: we saw a rebel force enter the institution in the form of a red haired, little man. Since then, McMurphy has revolutionize the scene for everyone with his all out war (built off of a bet) to make the nurse crack. It is like poking a bear in the eye – eventually its going to get pissed right off. When McMurphy pulls his stunt of taking his towel off we see how he has won a small victory over the nurse. One may win a battle, but they may not win the war...

 McMurphy is stopped dead in his tracks... After the nurse’s outburst, he learns that because he is committed to the institution the nurse is the one that holds him, she controls how long he has to stay. In the text, the now newly educated McMurphy does not push his luck. He takes to becoming reserved and non-provocative. When Cheswick votes at the group meeting about the cigarette rations McMurphy does not support him. Instead McMurphy is now laying low and not drawing attention to himself. I believe he does this to make his possible punishment or stay at the institution less; but he too has learned and seen the nurse and her ways, does he not know she will never forget such an event?

 When the group heads to the swimming pool Cheswick gets his fingers caught is the drain and drowns – this is thought to be an act of suicide. McMurphy is to blame in my opinion. We could imagine that Cheswick was crushed and scared to not have been backed by their rebel leader. He was scared to take the vicious wrath of the nurse’s treatments or punishments. I find McMurphy to blame because he was the back bone of the whole operation, yet he abandons Cheswick in his time of need. Since McMurphy is the unspoken leader, if he were to have voted with Cheswick I guarantee that others would have followed suit.

Ok, enough of connecting/elaborating about the text. Me, how does this connect to me? Well for starters I consider myself loud and a leader in most circumstances. I could say I relate to McMurphy a lot; if I were in the same situation I would probably do the same thing standing up to this terrible system. However, it is apparent that if I were to be going against the system or to be a revolution leader there would be some pretty heavy consequences. To think, it would be like me in our English class trying to take over and rewrite the curriculum. I do not think Ms McErlean would be very joyous about that situation.

The world – how to connect you, more so what level to connect to you? If we were to look at a government, a supposedly smooth running system, we would see that there is someone in charge and there are his/her advisors and there is a system in place. Now, a system is key, all major operations run on systems. If you were to introduce someone into the system (this is purely based on the fact that we do not judge if the system is good or not) and they had their own agenda and ideas to implement into the system, the people would be mad. People hate change – simple as that.

Although, if we investigate the book and connect it to this situation, we would see that it is one measly, little guy against the hospital, government, and society. McMurphy is resisting the system of an entire nation – not literally but more so based on the fact that everything is all connected and he is against the most powerful woman in the institution. Bringing everything back to the main point; when someone disrespects or disregards a system imposed by people with major power, normally the person is simply crushed. This is interesting when we look at how McMurphy has backed off and is now trying to calm down the bear that he was poking.