MEDS and JESUS

“Jesus, I mean you guys do nothing but complain about how you can’t stand it in this place here and then you haven’t got the guts just to walk out? What do you think you are for Christ sake, crazy or something? Well, you’re not! You’re not! You’re no crazier than the average asshole out walking around on the streets.” 

This quote by McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to me is very telling. This quote is a definitive moment in the story when the reader is prompted to ask “are these men really ‘crazy’? ”

Although it could be said that anyone who willingly stays in a place they despise has to be crazy, these men find a twisted sense of comfort, it seems, in forced schedules, and medication. Instead of Randall concluding that they are insane after hearing that they could walk out whenever they want, he tries to convince them that they’re not. This led me to think, what if the only thing that defines one’s craziness is the how easily they allow themselves to be controlled? If this was true, it would further explain why McMurphy does not fit into the confines of the hospital, because he wasn’t there willingly.

I also found it interesting that he mentions Jesus two times in this rant. Instead of using god’s name in a religious sense, he uses it to express his outrage- just as he uses the man made contrast of the mental hospital system in his favor, avoiding the use it was designed for. After all what is the difference between following a leader in the sky, dictating your life, and a nurse in charge of everything in your day? Some people don’t use electronics on certain days as their religion instructs them  to do, and some, like patients, cant watch TV because Nurse Retched tell them so.  The use of god in this quote further shows the rebellious nature of  R. P. McMurphy, and the normalcy of the “psychotic”  patients.  Maybe McMurphy is crazy, he is the one that is different in the story.