One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest : Laughter as TherapyOne Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest : Laughter as TherapyLaughter is a therapeutic form. In the novel One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey laughter represents freedom and an escape from nurse Ratched’s restrictions.
Laughter also proves a vital role in helping the patients deal with their problems. Not only does it help them deal with problems but it also gave them the push toward progress on getting out of the institution.
Mcmurphy was the one who started making people laughing in the ward. When he first came into the ward he was cracking jokes and shaking everybody’s hand. (p.16)
No one in the ward responded with any real response but confusion. No body knew what laughter was in the ward, it was taken from them. The only thing they had was board games and Mrs. Ratched’s music (15). The ward was a very depressing place.
When Mcmurphy comes into the ward his laughing was making people uneasy. This showed how far away the patients were from reality. The chief says (22) “I see he is making every body over their uneasy, with all his kidding and joking.” Then right after he starts connecting to the patients and the Acutes actually show some sign of a smile (23) “The Acutes are grinning now not so uneasy any more glad that something out of the ordinary is happening.” Only after 8 pages there is progress already seen in the patients with laughter.
Chief Bromden states “The air is pressed in by the walls to tight to let loose and laugh.” Before Mcmurphy arrives it is true. After his presence is recognized by the patients Mrs. Ratcheds grip over the institution starts losing
its hold. The first thing the patients do to start breaking her hold is start the gambling. They gamble for money even though it’s against ward policy. Little by little the patients show improvement with themselves it is portrayed by the ability not just to laugh but laugh at their own qualities.
This occurs in the climax of the novel during the fishing trip (p215). When every ones lines tangle up and they start laughing at each other and themselves that is when they know that they aren’t really that crazy. They knew they were getting better. “They could sense the change that most of us were only suspecting; these weren’t the same bunch of weak-knees from a nut house.”
Nurse ratched lost a lot of her power once the patients knew that they had power in what goes on in the ward. They started demanding things like watching the World Series (even though they didn’t get to watch it they still demanded it), they wanted to tub room back. They let their voice be herd. Before they started laughing they didn’t have a voice. Dr. Spivey was also influenced by the laughter in the ward he used to be Nurse Ratched’s “manikin” he used to do what ever she told him but after he started laughing he actually took care of the patients and was opt to make the carnival and take them out for the fishing trip.
Laughter relates a lot to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is a representation of the ability to decide for your self. Billy Bibbit was always being bossed around by the nurse and his mother. Once he knew he could laugh and stop listening to what everyone demanded of him he started to loosen up. . “Its natural to all human beings to laugh. Its society which restricts us and tells us that we must settle down. (Murphy) The society that Billy was in, was putting to much pressure on him to settle down when he was just trying to be himself. That was the part that was making him crazy. The pressure the ward and his mother put on him to be restricted led him to his suicide. When Billy started laughing he actually started to seem normal. He actually slept with a prostitute, knowing that if his mother
s and some girls were going in for him he could do the same. It was when the Ward and his mother were trying to protect Billy that he decided to take matters into her own hands to set him up again. (Murphy) There may be some truth to this, and some of it is well known to a certain extent but there is no hard evidence to support it. At least he kept it under wraps. Billy began to be quite happy when it was time to move on. The day he passed away in a private apartment had been quite a shock. He had always told himself he would be back home feeling better, as he was always doing. For the first time in his life he still felt like a normal human being, though he had never really felt like he was normal. He had been feeling like a normal human he had always known. When this was just about to happen he thought about it, that if he didn’t stop to think about it, that he just really didn’t have the guts to think about it anymore. This was a moment he will never forget. And in trying not to feel out his depression and anger at being ignored by his family and his friends at all cost. It is an odd thing for Billy to be asked to come home crying, to be looked down upon when he had simply done what he thought was right to his mother. Well, that did not affect his mood, his feelings really were not affected much. He knew it must have been hard for the nurse to help Billy, but she also knew there wasn’t going to be any room for him out right away. He didn’t want that, and did not want her and her family to know that. He still felt like he was not going to make his real friends. All of his life he had been on the inside thinking that it was his mother who wanted to help, for what? She knew as much, and that was exactly what Billy was trying to do. He just wanted to make friends, she wanted to help him. After all, when he finally did stop loving his mother he had decided to come home and make friends. And so he said right what he was always thinking was, “This way I can go to that other family reunion and it will give me a new life. Then I will go back home and see if I live.” There was no way that it would ever happen, and he would never understand why he would keep talking about it. When he did it was because he couldn’t let anyone talk to him about it even remotely. As he finally made peace with his feelings in the very same way he had been before he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Billy didn’t have any of the anxiety and depression he was with that he’d had over six years prior to the attack. This was all he had heard from the nurses over the years. One man in particular, who was having his worst day of his life, had also taken Billy to a local therapy program on his own. There was an awful story about a therapist who was having trouble treating his feelings. One night he was having