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Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Part One
Explanation and Analysis—Dr. McMurphy:
In Part One, McMurphy vies with Harding for the unofficial position of lead patient. Harding uses an allusion and verbal irony to poke fun of McMurphy:
"As you see, all these natural talents certainly qualify you as a competent therapist and render you quite capable of criticizing Miss Ratched’s meeting procedure, in spite of the fact that she is a highly regarded psychiatric nurse with twenty years in the field. Yes, with your talent, my friend, you could work subconscious miracles, soothe the aching id and heal the wounded superego. You could probably bring about a cure for the whole ward, Vegetables and all, in six short months ladies and gentlemen or your money back."
McMurphy has just suggested that Harding shouldn't have to put up with the way Nurse Ratched leads the other patients in analyzing and criticizing him. She calls it "therapeutic" for Harding, but McMurphy isn't so sure it accomplishes anything except emasculating Harding. Harding defends Nurse Ratched, and by extension his own willingness to put up with the criticism. Here, he alludes to the Freudian concepts of the "id" and the "superego" as he sarcastically suggests that McMurphy is better qualified than the hospital staff to treat the patients on the ward. According to Freud, the id is the part of the psyche that gives us animal instincts and desires. The superego, meanwhile, is the part of the psyche that gives us morals. The ego is the third part, the self that tries to balance the warring interests of the id and superego. Harding states that of course McMurphy can "work subconscious miracles" on the id and superego, miracles the likes of which Nurse Ratched could only dream.
Of course, Harding means exactly the opposite of what he says: McMurphy has no qualifications to treat mental illness. He borrows the line "six short months ladies and gentlemen or your money back" from the language of snake-oil salesmen who peddle fake cure-alls to carnival audiences. This reference makes it abundantly clear that Harding believes McMurphy is all talk. Who is he to criticize Nurse Ratched's tactics, Harding obliquely suggests, if he has no better solution to the patients' struggles? The verbal irony makes McMurphy look laughably foolish.
Harding's tone is light and mocking, but his allusion to Freud betrays deeper-seated turmoil. Freud's theories, which have been more and more regarded as oversimplifications of human psychology, were especially forced onto gay men like Harding in the mid-20th century. Society told gay men that they needed to master their "urges," bringing the id under control of the superego to live a heterosexual life. This self-denial was incredibly harmful, leading to what Harding characterizes as an "aching id" and a "wounded superego." Notably, Harding does not mention the ego, which in Freudian term is the real, decision-making self. Harding has spent his life torn between the person he is and the person everyone wants him to be. In that struggle, he has lost his sense of self and his sense that he has control over his own life. He believes that Nurse Ratched is trying to help him, but really she is tearing him further apart. The idea that McMurphy could come in and soothe this pain in one fell swoop is inconceivable to Harding.
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Explanation and Analysis—Ratched's True Form:
In Part One, Bromden introduces Nurse Ratched not as a human, but as a machine "big as a tractor" who can disguise herself as a human. When the other patients come out of their dorms, there is an interesting interplay between dramatic irony and Bromden's status as an unreliable narrator:
[S]he has to change back before she’s caught in the shape of her hideous real self. By the time the patients get their eyes rubbed to where they can halfway see what the racket’s about, all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual [...]
Bromden insists that there is dramatic irony at play: none of the other patients know what he knows about Nurse Ratched. He can see her "hideous real self" as a giant machine because she never notices that he is there to witness her take this shape. As soon as other patients are around, Nurse Ratched once again shape-shifts into the "smiling and calm and cold" nurse they all see her as.
Bromden understands that he hallucinates and that not everything he remembers from the mental hospital really happened. This is one moment where the reader can easily see that Bromden is caught in a delusion. This book is not a work of fantasy or science fiction, and the real world does not allow for humans and machines to transform into one another in the way Bromden describes. Nevertheless, he insists that he is being truthful in his account. Searching for the grain of truth in this scene, it becomes clear that he really does see something about the nurse that others fail to see. He understands the nurse as one piece in the Combine, the giant social machine that preys on people like him and the other patients. The nurse may not physically shape-shift, but Bromden identifies her as one of the moving parts in a huge system built on human suffering. This means that while she is one of the primary villains in all the men's stories, the real cause of their suffering is much larger than her. Were she to be removed from her position, she could easily be replaced. Rising up against what she represents will require completely dismantling the social systems that have failed the men on the ward.
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Part Two
Explanation and Analysis—Committed:
In Part Two, McMurphy is shocked to learn from Harding that Scanlon is the only patient besides him who is involuntarily committed to the mental hospital. There is situational irony at play in this exchange:
“You have more to lose than I do,” Harding says again. “I’m voluntary. I’m not committed.”
McMurphy doesn’t say a word. He’s got that same puzzled look on his face like there’s something isn’t right, something he can’t put his finger on. [Harding] swallows and says, “As a matter of fact, there are only a few men on the ward who are committed. Only Scanlon and—well, I guess some of the Chronics. And you. Not many commitments in the whole hospital. No, not many at all.”
McMurphy has been operating under the assumption that practically everyone has been involuntarily committed to the hospital. Conditions there are so abysmal that he never imagined anyone with a decent alternative choice would decide to live there. McMurphy, who was brought up on charges for a violent crime, had a choice between hard labor (probably building infrastructure like roads) or commitment to the mental hospital. He does not even consider himself mentally ill but would rather pretend to suffer from psychopathy than endure the sentence of hard labor. He has come to the hospital with the intent to disrupt the power dynamics. He struggles to wrap his head around the idea that the entire time, the rest of the men have been submitting willingly to Nurse Ratched's tyranny.
McMurphy is unsettled on his own account to learn that he is an outlier in his involuntary commitment. He has previously thought of himself as less in need of a mental hospital than everyone else there. Still, as an outsider, McMurphy is able to see the situational irony to which the men on the ward seem desensitized. This hospital, which is supposed to be helping them improve their mental health, is instead tearing them down and turning them into weaker-minded versions of themselves. The irony infuriates him and ultimately makes him double down on his mission to teach the other patients to take charge of their own lives.
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Part Three
Explanation and Analysis—Keep Acting:
In Part Three, Bromden wants to sign up for McMurphy's fishing expedition but is afraid to do so because of the dramatic irony he has maintained so long around his hearing. He is amused by the situational irony:
[I]t’d show I’d been hearing everything else that’d been said in confidence around me for the past ten years. And if the Big Nurse found out about that, that I’d heard all the scheming and treachery that had gone on when she didn’t think anybody was listening, she’d hunt me down with an electric saw, fix me where she knew I was deaf and dumb. Bad as I wanted to go, it still made me smile a little to think about it: I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all.
Bromden has faked his own deafness for years as an act of self-preservation. It allows him to fade into the background and collect ammunition against the hospital staff without anyone noticing. Now, this decision is backfiring on him. He realizes that in order to get what he wants (a spot on the fishing expedition) he would have to reveal his secret and make Nurse Ratched so angry that she would surgically debilitate him, making sure he could never hear or speak again. Ironically, a decision made out of self-preservation has put Bromden at great risk.
The fact that Bromden wants to go on the fishing expedition is testament to the change McMurphy has brought to the ward. Bromden has always disappeared into his hallucinations of fog, and the idea of leaving the hospital has only just started to occur to him. More than that though, Bromden's smile suggests that he is starting to adopt McMurphy's tools of resistance. When McMurphy is in a seemingly powerless position, he laughs at Nurse Ratched, at the other men, and at the situation he is in. Here, Bromden finds himself in a seemingly powerless position. He cannot have what he wants because declaring that he wants it would put him in danger. Whereas this feeling of powerlessness has previously led Bromden to hallucinate fog and to despair about the conditions on the ward, he now cracks a smile at the irony of his situation. This smile is not full-on laughter, but it does hint that Bromden is starting to use laughter and joy as tools to take control of his own experience on the ward.
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Explanation and Analysis—McMurphy's Hands:
In Part Three, when the men go on McMurphy's fishing expedition, they have an altercation with some men at a gas station. McMurphy uses dramatic irony and an idiom to intimidate the gas station attendant:
He put his hands up in the guy’s face, real close, turning them over slowly, palm and knuckle. “You ever see a man get his poor old meat-hooks so pitiful chewed up from just throwin’ the bull? Did you, Hank?”
He held those hands in the guy’s face a long time, waiting to see if the guy had anything else to say. The guy looked at the hands, and at me, and back at the hands.
The gas station attendant first doesn't want to help the men because he believes they are patients at the mental hospital. Then, when the doctor lies and says they are not patients but rather a work crew, the attendant begins playing mind games. He tries to offer far more expensive services than the men first requested. He is attempting to intimidate the doctor into admitting that he is a liar. McMurphy responds by posturing as an even more dangerous patient than he really is. He claims that he has killed a man with his bare hands. When the attendant calls his bluff and accuses him of "throwing the bull" (i.e. being all talk and no action), McMurphy shows him his cut-up hands. He lets the man think that the injury came from an act of extreme violence. Bromden and the rest of the men know that McMurphy injured his hands trying to lift the control panel, not killing someone. They are all in on the joke McMurphy is playing on the gas station attendant.
The dramatic irony in this moment is funny. McMurphy plays it not only to intimidate the gas station attendant but also to amuse the other patients. Rarely do they get to have the upper hand in a power exchange. He shows them how even when they are being treated as less-than, they can use humor and inside knowledge to empower themselves. The flip side of this inside joke is that McMurphy shows his nature to the other patients. He is apt to bluff to get his way. As Nurse Ratched eventually points out to the rest of the patients, McMurphy bluffs all the time to win money off the rest of them. McMurphy eventually loses some of the men's trust because of his bluffing, but eventually he goes down in everyone's book as the martyr who taught them how to get power within a system that tries to keep them down.
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Part Four
Explanation and Analysis—Crown of Thorns:
In Part Four, Nurse Ratched sends Bromden and McMurphy to receive electroshock therapy. McMurphy goes first, using verbal irony and an allusion to make light of the scary situation:
He don’t look a bit scared. He keeps grinning at me.
They put the graphite salve on his temples. “What is it?” he says. “Conductant,” the technician says. “Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”
They smear it on. He’s singing to them, makes their hands shake.
McMurphy, who is lying on a cross-shaped table to receive the treatment, is referring to the Christian story of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. Before Jesus was crucified, Roman soldiers supposedly dressed him in purple (a color associated with royalty) and placed a crown made out of thorns on his head. They mocked him for being "king of the Jews." The outfit was meant to parody a true royal outfit and to disempower Jesus and his followers by making clear that he would never be a "real" king. However, the parody backfired. Jesus is often depicted wearing a crown of thorns, and the crown itself has become a major symbol of Jesus's power and martyrdom.
McMurphy often uses humor, especially verbal irony, to stand up to power and cruelty, which is what he does in this scene. The hospital staff is about to pin McMurphy down and inflict brain damage on him. Though he doesn't show fear, McMurphy knows he has lost his power struggle with the hospital staff in almost every way that counts. He is utterly at their disposal, and practically no one cares what they do to him. By using faux-Christian language (i.e. "annointest") and asking if he is going to be given a crown of thorns, he absurdly suggests that he is as powerful, important, and righteous as Jesus. He does not actually believe any of this. However, his verbal irony lets the hospital staff know that they cannot take away his laughter or swaggering attitude.
Even though McMurphy does not believe he is Jesus, there is a way in which he does serve as a Christ-like figure to Bromden and the other men on the ward. McMurphy shows the men that they can take their dignity back, and that there is a world beyond the hospital that they might like to rejoin. Like Jesus, he ultimately dies so that his "followers" can live outside the oppressive regime of Nurse Ratched.
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