Descartes and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Descartes, in his Second Meditation, in a state of hyperbolic doubt in an attempt to determine what actually exists and can be considered true, comes to the conclusion that even without a physical body or his senses, comes to one central idea that he believes: if he, in whatever form or entity he is, can doubt the existence of everything else in his world, then there must be something that exists that contains that doubt. Since he is capable of doubt, then his own existence, in whatever form that may be, whether physical or just consciousness, he must therefore necessarily exist. Descartes then goes on to explain that even though his whole world may be false and he may be deceived in perceiving the world in the way he does, everything still seems to appear to him in this way, and are a part of the mind in the way that it exists. In order to explain how he comes to this conclusion, he proposes the example of coming to distinguish wax from the honeycomb. He is unable to imagine all the different physical forms it may exist in, and therefore only comes to know wax as wax through intuition and reason, not the senses. The distinguishing of these two is what I believe to be the overarching theme in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

            In the film, a criminal, named R.P. McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson), is placed in a mental care facility in order to be observed as to whether or not he is actually in a state of mental deficiency and therefore responsible for his criminal acts. When asked by the doctor upon his admittance as to whether or he believes there is anything wrong with his mind, he replies “Not a thing, doc. I’m a god-damn marvel of modern science.” Throughout his introduction and the entirety of the film itself, McMurphy acts a very emphatic, flamboyant, and rather blount character who seems to not base his actions fully in reason, but rather in physical pleasures (which is part of the crime he was charged with: statuary rape). McMurphy represents that which is the senses in Descartes’ Second Meditation.

            After his institutionalization, we are introduced to the character of Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched, throughout the entire film, is cold, calculative, emotionless,  and acts like a clock: never deviating from her formula and everything has to follow a certain procedure. She (as well as the mental hospital as a whole), are representative of the idea of the intuition represented in Descartes’ Second Meditation.

            Throughout the film, there is a very obvious and played out conflict between McMurphy and Ratched. McMurphy, through his rambunctious acts and attempts to get the other patients out of control and to partake in his acts, directly challenges Ratched’s power, whether it be by having the patients party with him, or take unauthorized trips out of the facility to steal a boat and go fishing out on the ocean, or even by staging a vote in an attempt to get his desires enacted as a ward policy by initiation a vote to watch the World Series instead of listening to music and playing cards quietly like normal.

            Many of his attempts to overtake Ratched’s authority fail, and when they succeed, there are usually many consequences. When McMurphy lets his emotions get the best of him, a fight breaks out among the patients and the staff. As a result, the patients who participated are subjected to shock therapy. Later on, at the end of the film, McMurphy bribes the night guard to let in his female friends and a lot of booze. They enter, all the patients get highly inebriated, and eventually this leads McMurphy and the other patients to force one patient, Billy, into a room and sexual contact with McMurphy’s female friend.
            The morning after, when Ratched arrives, she threatens to tell Billy’s mother of his actions, and Billy, fearing this, kills himself in his room. McMurphy, outraged at Ratched’s actions that led to Billy’s death, attempts to choke Ratched to death. He is subsequently given a frontal lobotomy and loses all cognition/recognition of himself as an individual. When another character, Chief, realizes this, he, out of pity, suffocates McMurphy at night, and escapes from the facility.
            Essentially, the conflict between Ratched and McMurphy is fairly analogous to the conflict between reason and the senses in Descartes’ Second Meditation. Following one’s senses, can allow one to be deceived by them and lead to deadly consequences. In the case of McMurphy, his actions, based on his desire to fulfill his physical senses, ultimately leads to the death of not only Billy, but also himself. Throughout the entire movie, Ratched, the depiction of pure reason, is seen as an unforgiving, heartless character, yet at the same time, keeps the patients safe and relatively calm. When ignoring one’s reason (Ratched) completely, the results can be deadly, and eventually lead to the loss of self. McMurphy, by only following his senses, was, in a Cartesian sense, vastly deceived by his world, and as a consequence, metaphorically through his lobotomy and death, was not able to confirm his own existence. Only those in the institution, although “mentally unstable,” had a voice of reason (Ratched and the institution) to validate their existence as beings.

Although this analogous is somewhat stretched, do you think it accurately represents the similarities between Descartes and the film, and is a way of showing the conflict of the deception of the senses that Descartes was concerned with as well as necessary existence through the confirmation of the self through reason? Furthermore, in this film, the excess of physical desire and human desires led McMurphy to his demise, but was there a possible way for him to become accepting of his own sense of reason within the institution, or is a man devoid of reason in this sense left to nothing but a life of impulsively following all his physical desires? Is there a way to readjust the two? Or is it even correct in saying that one should be prioritized over the other?