Mcmurphy Hero's Journey

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey portrays a group of complex characters who try to change the norms of a mental hospital. The character McMurphy emerges as the hero of the story because, according to Campbell, he is giving his life to something greater than himself and is trying to fix something lacking in the normal experiences permitted to the members of this society. The other character, Chief Bromden, falls into the mentor archetype due to his overall personality and how he aided McMurphy in certain instances.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy closely follows Joseph Campbell’s hero journey arc and challenges the power of Nurse Ratched while standing up for the patients, making him the hero of the …show more content…
At the beginning of the hero’s journey, there is a “call to adventure,” which is where McMurphy realizes that Nurse Ratched is the enemy or nemesis of the ward and that she is limiting what the patients feel and think about themselves. As Oliverio states, “Mac can also be seen as a sort of circumstantial hero who had the least intention of becoming a hero, before being committed to that ward. Nevertheless, when he enters the ward, he automatically “occupies” the then vacant position of leader of that community." When McMurphy arrives on this ward, he sees those issues and decides that he is the one to fix them. McMurphy also falls into the idea of “refusal of the call”. This means that the hero of a story turns away from this call to adventure, whether it be from fear or other outside sources. In McMurphy’s case, it is the idea that he will never be able to leave the ward because Nurse Ratched is the one who decides when he is fit to leave the institution. For this part of Joseph Campbell’s hero arc, Tanner mentions, “After a conversation with the lifeguard at the pool, McMurphy realizes for the first time the full implications of that threat and becomes fully conscious of his …show more content…
This is not only due to his actions, but also to his overall physical traits. The description of a mentor, as Jung defined it, is someone who has “wisdom, calmness, and experience," but they also have the weaknesses of “caution, reluctance to act, and being hardened by past experiences." We see this caution and reluctance to act as Ouimet states, “McMurphy doesn’t understand his inability to defend or speak up for himself." In this part of the book, McMurphy hasn’t seen the real face of Nurse Ratched. Which is why Bromden doesn’t defend himself. Also, Bromden gets his experience because he has been on the ward since World War II: “Chief, a hulking giant who survived not only the horrors of World War II but also the asylum's 200 or more electroshock therapy treatments." One of the key roles of the mentor archetype is to teach others what they should do when the mentor leaves. In the case of Bromden, it is to help aid the new patients that are going to enter the ward. The way in which he does this is by killing McMurphy. The reason he kills McMurphy is that “the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system” (Kesey 322). Although Bromden is not a mentor to McMurphy, he is a mentor to Scanlon and Martini because he gives them an example of what they should do if Nurse Ratched tries to affect the legacy of

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