A Theft of Personal Identity

Based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel of the same name, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) explores themes of power, conformity and mental instability while reflecting many societal tendencies of the time period.  The film’s protagonist, Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), convicted of the statutory rape of a 15-year old, serves his sentence in a bleak mental institution governed by the iron fist of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).  Immediately, the anti-authoritarian nature of the film is revealed as the audience is aligned with an eclectic mix of unstable ward patients, dehumanized by the repression of the institution.  The insertion of McMurphy’s free-spirited will into Nurse Ratched’s dictatorial regime provides the primary conflict for the film, as McMurphy tries to help his newfound friends indulge in “real-world” activities such as fishing, gambling and baseball.  Unlike Nurse Ratched, who subjects her patients to subtle humiliation and constant medicine to make them “better,” McMurphy believes that discovering one’s identity and having fun is the best way to cure a mental handicap.  Though it was released in 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest embodies many of the counter-culture beliefs of the 1960s, using the mental institution as an extended metaphor for a societal “trap.”

            The film spends a great deal of time questioning the meanings of insanity and identity.  During McMurphy’s first meeting with the psychiatric doctor, he muses over why he has been committed, believing that he has been deemed “crazy for not sitting there like a goddamn vegetable.”  McMurphy goes on to admit that there is not a thing wrong with his mind.  With his help, the other patients slowly begin to realize that they are not as helpless as Nurse Ratched believes them to be.  As the film progresses, the unlikely heroes learn to rebel against Nurse Ratched’s mind-numbing routine and take control of their own lives.  However, the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes a slightly unexpected turn, adding a new dimension to its philosophical statement.  After a central character commits suicide, Nurse Ratched realizes that the ward has fallen completely out of her hands due to McMurphy’s rebellious ways, so she has him lobotomized.  Another patient in the ward, “Chief” Bromden (Will Sampson), smothers McMurphy to death with a pillow, believing that McMurphy would rather die than be reduced to a vegetable.  McMurphy acts as a martyr for the rest of the patients, in that his personal identity is taken away by the oppression of the mental institution.  John Locke explores similar values in his discussions of personal identity and consciousness in Of Identity and Diversity. 

The question is raised as to whether McMurphy is the same person he was before the lobotomy.  He is obviously still in the same body, and he has the ability to retain literal consciousness (so to speak) and passively observe situations.  However, all his desires and inhibitions have been taken away, so can he still lay claim over his own identity?  Locke begins to define personal identity by considering what a “person” is, concluding that a “person” is “a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self” (195), similar to Descartes’ conclusions in his Second Meditation.  However, Locke takes this argument to another level, making the assertion that substance, whether physical or mental, has nothing to do with the personal identity of one’s self.  Locke states that, “Nothing but consciousness can unite remote Existences into the same Person, the Identity of Substance will never do it.” (200).  As mentioned earlier, the lobotomized McMurphy is able to stay awake, but this definition of consciousness refers to the ability to feel, experience, and maintain control over the mind.  By the end of One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy’s forced conformity is taken to a more extreme level than the rest of the patients, and Locke would most definitely argue that Nurse Ratched succeeds in crushing his personal identity. 

Personally, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of my favorite films ever because it mixes the perfect amount of entertainment value and social commentary, so I would obviously recommend it to anyone.  In a realist film that relies on stellar acting instead of intriguing settings and special effects, the tension in the scenes with McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is remarkable to watch.  The film also features now-famous actors such as Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd in more minor roles, and I would argue that Nicholson gives one of the best performances of his career as McMurphy.      

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?

The Mortality of Identity (or, How to Lose Yourself in Ten Days)

Although “ten” may be an unfair estimation, in this instance. A quick note: this post discusses significant plot points in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Milos Forman's film adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel of the same name, is largely a movie about human identity. The text I found most pertinent to the film was John Locke's essay, Of Identity and Diversity. In it, he outlines some basic qualifications for identity retention over an extended period of time, breaking everything down into three categories: substance, organism, and person. For a substance, its identity consists only of matter, or the specific arrangement of atoms and elements. For living organisms, whose chemical composition changes over time, identity lies in the life of that system; if it stops living, its identity is changed, and it is reduced to a substance. Man is the term Locke uses for the part of human beings comparable to an organism – a highly relevant concept to keep in mind for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The final category, person, is most central to Locke's philosophical exploration. When regarding the human as a rational, thinking thing (like Descartes, among others), identity rests entirely in consciousness, and the continuous link of memory. I am the same as my childhood self because my consciousness, and the memories tied to it, are also the same. Thomas Reid rightly points out significant weaknesses in Locke's logic here, for anyone who is interested.

Before discussing the ways in which the film engages with the destruction – or for you ruthless optimists out there, the transformation – of identity, I'd like to briefly examine the human mind's ability to manipulate its perception of reality. In Cuckoo's Nest, Randall Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is plucked from prison, suspected of some kind of mental derangement (see: five arrests for assault and one incident of statutory rape). As he begins to settle into the hospital, he encourages impossible actions, namely tearing a heavy sink from the floor, throwing it through a window, and heading for Canada. It's awfully reminiscent of Steinbeck's American Dream. Nonetheless, such ambitious fantasizing certainly aligns with Descartes's Second Meditation. If all you can know for certain is your thoughts, or your existence based upon the fact that those thoughts exist, then the world around you is in constant flux; thus, it is open for manipulation. A mental institution seems to be the perfect setting for an overhaul of your perception of the surrounding “reality.”

Though I strongly believe McMurphy's narrative depicts a triumph of the human consciousness (more on that later), it also reveals the mortality of identity. Throughout the film, both the material and the spiritual substance of the mind – terminology courtesy of Hume – are poked and prodded. For material poking, electroshock therapy is used, bringing about bodily revulsions. For spiritual prodding, group therapy is employed. Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), when reflecting on a past patient, says the hospital staff “worked on him” until he was so drastically altered that he was no longer himself. To borrow Locke's terms, the person was new, but the man was the same. The same fate was reserved for McMurphy, whose frontal lobotomy completely changed his personal identity. His body – that is, he as a man and an organism – remained the same. This makes the closing scene, when Chief discovers the horror that the surgeons have committed, especially tragic, as he is confronted with the shell of a friend who is no longer conscious of his past. 

There is no doubt that the personal identity McMurphy once had is now gone, but was it replaced with a new one? Locke (like Descartes and other philosophers before him) defines a person as a “thinking thing,” but could the same be said for post-lobotomy McMurphy? It seems he is lower on the intellectual totem pole than the wondrous parrot that Locke mentions, so has he been officially demoted from Person to Man? Given that supposition, what do we make of Chief smothering him to death? Could it be termed murder? If McMurphy is a mere organism without the capacity to think, is killing him no different than uprooting a plant or putting a wounded animal out of its misery? Perhaps it requires a different set of terms, but perhaps not. It seems, at the close of the film, that nothing of McMurphy’s identity remains. Chief killing him is no more than separating the material substance from the Life that it has clung to through all its years of existence.

Of course, Milos Forman does not roll the credits immediately after the image of McMurphy’s lifeless corpse. Cuckoo's Nest continues on for a few moments more, allowing the hospital patients’ former delusions to win out in the end. The sink is torn out, the window is shattered, and Chief heads off into the sunrise, presumably toward Canada to live off "the fatta the lan." McMurphy’s unrealistic imaginings become a reality, and the allegedly impossible tasks are completed. If it were not for the human consciousness of the characters that began entertaining such fantasies, such an ending could not be won.