Is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest LGBT?

Dale Harding is gay in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He is admitted to the psychiatric hospital because of his preference for men.
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What does Harding represent in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Character Analysis Dale Harding

He exists totally within the realm of his mind whereas McMurphy represents a natural man. Harding chooses to lead his life as an individual repressing his homosexual urges while suffering the humiliation of never fully pleasing his promiscuously unfaithful wife.
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Is McMurphy lobotomized?

McMurphy is given a lobotomy for his attack on Nurse Ratched. When he is returned to the ward after the operation, he is a vegetable. That same night, Bromden suffocates McMurphy with a pillow. He throws the control panel through a window screen and escapes from the hospital, hitching a ride with a trucker.
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How old is Nurse Ratched One Flew?

Mildred Ratched could be around 24 in the show

Louise Fletcher, who played Mildred Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, said that she imagined the character as a 40-year-old virgin. If this is accurate then Ratched should be 24 in the Netflix series.
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What insinuation does Harding's wife make about his friends?

As he lights her cigarette, Vera leans before him to provide a clear view down her blouse. She insults Harding's friends, who stop by their house looking for him. She remarks on the friends' "limp little wrists that flip so nice," and she implies that she's being unfaithful with at least one of his friends.
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One flew over the Cuckoo's nest Explained by an idiot



What is Nurse Ratched's one weakness?

When McMurphy attacks her and tears her shirt open in front of the men, he reveals her weakness—she's a woman after all. Big breasts don't lie.
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What does Harding's wife do to McMurphy when she comes to visit her husband?

One of the orderlies arrives with Harding's wife, Vera. She blows the orderly a kiss, then starts to move (a.k.a. sway her hips) toward Harding. Harding doesn't move toward her but he looks around and realizes everybody's watching. He calls over to McMurphy to come meet his "nemesis."
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Was Nurse Ratched a virgin?

She hasn't married, hadn't done this, hadn't done that, and was self-sufficient on her own leading this life, because she dedicated her life, her earlier life, to other people who needed her.” Also, she decided that Nurse Ratched was a 40-year-old virgin, and was “very turned on by this McMurphy guy.”
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Is Nurse Ratched a psychopath?

In the book and the film of “One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, Nurse Ratched was not a psychopath, she was an unbelievably mean, sadistic person. The original Nurse Ratched's actions during the story show us that something terrible must have happened in her past to make her this way.
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Is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a true story?

The novelist Ken Kesey based the character of Nurse Ratched, the villain of his 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” on a real person—a nurse whom he once met while working the night shift in a psychiatric facility in Oregon.
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Is Chief mentally ill?

By Ken Kesey

Chief Bromden is a Columbia Indian who suffers from schizophrenia. Although he plays a central role in the story, he is largely an observer. Chief is an interesting narrator because he is certainly not unbiased, and his mental illness can also shed doubt on his reliability.
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What was McMurphy's mental illness?

Each film takes up specific gendered mental illnesses – Susanna is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, seven times more likely in women than men, and McMurphy with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, three times more likely in men than women.
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Are lobotomies still done?

Today lobotomy is rarely performed; however, shock therapy and psychosurgery (the surgical removal of specific regions of the brain) occasionally are used to treat patients whose symptoms have resisted all other treatments.
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What mental illness does Martini have?

Martini. Another hospital patient. Martini lives in a world of delusional hallucinations, but McMurphy includes him in the board and card games with the other patients.
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What does the fog represent in Cuckoo's Nest?

The Fog Machine

In this novel, fogs symbolize a lack of insight and an escape from reality. When Bromden starts to slip away from reality, because of his medication or out of fear, he hallucinates fog drifting into the ward.
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What does Nurse Ratched represent?

A former army nurse, Nurse Ratched represents the oppressive mechanization, dehumanization, and emasculation of modern society—in Bromden's words, the Combine. Her nickname is “Big Nurse,” which sounds like Big Brother, the name used in George Orwell's novel 1984 to refer to an oppressive and all-knowing authority.
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What mental illness does Mildred Ratched have?

One of those top five categories was Best Actress, which went to Louise Fletcher for her performance as the coolly sadistic psychiatric nurse Mildred Ratched. Ratched's power struggle with Jack Nicholson's Randle McMurphy is the core of the movie, and Fletcher's performance is indelible.
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Is Nurse Ratched a narcissist?

Nurse Ratchet is the classic malignant narcissist--they are made as infants, usually by abusive parents. It's a survival technique/madness that is seeded very young.
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What is Nurse Ratched's first name?

And the actress playing the ultimate authority figure, Nurse Ratched, was Louise Fletcher. Now, almost half a century later, Nurse Ratched has been given a first name - spoiler alert, it's Mildred - and a backstory.
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Is Nurse Ratched based on a true story?

While the storyline of Ratched is fiction, the title character is actually based on a real person. While the dramatic storyline in Ratched isn't true, the character of Nurse Mildred is based on a real person. Kesey drew inspiration for his 1962 novel from working in a psychiatric wing at a large hospital.
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Did Edmund and Mildred sleep together?

Edmund and Mildred decided they had to try and escape, but Edmund insisted the couple had to pay for what they had done. He went into their bedroom while they slept and gouged out their eyes with a pair of sharp scissors, ultimately killing them.
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Is Nurse Ratched based on Cuckoo's Nest?

She is a character, invented for Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. However, Kesey has revealed in interviews that he based Nurse Ratched on a real person, who had been the head nurse of the psychiatric ward where the author had worked as a night-shift orderly.
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Is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest feminist?

In his 1962 novel, he promoted sexism and misogyny through various tools like derogatory language towards women, the subjugation of powerful women and the continuous fight over masculinity vs. femininity. Misogyny in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest begins with verbal hostility toward Nurse Ratched.
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Why don t the voluntary patients leave the hospital?

Why don't the "voluntary" patients leave the hospital? Billy Bibbit overcomes his usual meekness to explain to RPM the reason he and the others stay. They are afraid and don't believe they are strong enough or courageous enough to live outside the hospital.
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What does Cheswick do to himself in the pool and why?

After he returns, on the way to the pool, Cheswick tells McMurphy that he understands why McMurphy no longer rebels against Ratched. That day, Cheswick's fingers get stuck in the pool's drain and he drowns in what is possibly a suicide.
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