McMurphy's Story (A senior paper reflecting the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and its film adaptation

Kevin O'Brien

VI Period 2

2/1/11

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

                  R.P. McMurphy is one of the two protagonists in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was adapted to a motion picture. Though he doesn't appear crazy as he seems, he turns out to be sly and dangerous. As soon as he is instituted in a mental ward, he opens new doors to the other patients and changes their lives for the common good. He is the spark in the war of control between him and Nurse Ratched, the head nurse and the main antagonist of the story. In both the book and movie, McMurphy's presence around the other patients and the staff build the advantage he needs to win the fight. He made an even bigger impact of change on the deaf narrator, Chief Bromden. He may have met his demise in the end of it all, but that doesn't question the victory he has achieved in this war.

            Life in the main setting of the story, a small mental ward, is normal to everyone else. Nurse Ratched holds regular routines for her patients, the acutes argue with one another, the chronics sit and vegetate for a long time, and there's no sign of happiness whatsoever. As soon as McMurphy was transferred into the establishment, he gains attention from almost every patient in the ward. He gives the ward completely new options of having fun. To start, he begins his own card table and gets his new followers playing Blackjack, when they were so used to playing Pinochle. McMurphy gets people motivated and work together when he starts a basketball team against the ward members. On an unexpected fishing trip, without the guidance or permission of anyone in authority, the patients learn from their new Christ-like character how to enjoy their freedom outside the institution, no strings attached. Before escaping the hospital, McMurphy decides to throw a party late at night to celebrate his finest hour. He lets his friends drink and be merry while all the staff members are home, and while the night orderly, Mr. Turkle, drinks himself to sleep. McMurphy's arrival turned the calm relaxing mental home into a nonstop funhouse.

            Although everyone is impressed with the changes that McMurphy has to offer, Nurse Ratched will stop at nothing to gain order in her ward. Her unfair techniques as a “rigged game”, such as denying any of McMurphy's requests, keep him from gaining control of the ward. But that doesn't stand in the way of his bet: to drive her crazy to the point where she “won't know when to [crap] herself or wind her wristwatch.” At one of the group's therapy sessions, McMurphy places a vote to see a game during the World Series, which Miss Ratched denies. He decides to look at a blank television, pretending to watch the game as everyone else joins him. This upsets Ratched that she has to send him to Head Dr. Spivey. As she tries to settle down a tempered Cheswick, McMurphy helps his friend reach is demands by breaking into the nurse's desk and take out cigarettes for him, which forces the nurse to send him and Cheswick to the disturbed ward. McMurphy's last stand happens after Billy Bibbit is found dead in the doctor's office. He blames her for Billy's death, and for that, he strangles her throat, damaging her vocal chords, only to be sent for a lobotomy. It may not be in the book or the movie that McMurphy won the fight in reality, but he still won the bet to loosen the nurse's ratchets.

            In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy came to the patients as the Jesus Christ of the story. After so many weeks or months in the ward he changed the behaviors of the patients forever. He helped Charlie Cheswick get what he wants with the courage he always lacked. Cheswick used to act like a child, playing gimp, and cried whenever he was upset or afraid of something like speaking in front of a circle. Knowing McMurphy for a while, he suddenly asks Miss Ratched questions he would never ask. He asked if the group could do another vote for going to the baseball game, and he asked for his cigarettes, which later sparks his temper tantrum. Another poor soul that McMurphy helps is Billy Bibbit, a young shy patient with an extreme speech deficiency. He holds the terrifying memory when he first tempted suicide over a girl he asked to marry but said no. Like the other acutes, he is a voluntary patient and he can leave when he wants to. The only problem for him is that he doesn't have the urge to step outside the ward. To help drop Billy's fear of women, McMurphy lets him sleep with Candy the night he was supposed to escape, by doing so, Billy is unashamed of what he did. Unfortunately after being brought down by Ratched's threat of calling his mother he boils and succeeds his second attempt at suicide. McMurphy's impact on the few patients he interacted with show the others that they are brave enough to walk out of the hospital, and not be “crazier than any [jerk] on the street.”

            Chief Bromden is the second main protagonist in the story, and he serves as the main narrator in the book. With a body big and strong, he appears deaf and dumb to everyone in the ward, but he starts talking to McMurphy once he offers him Juicy Fruit. In the beginning, Chief was always inactive and never wanted attention from anyone. His new friend gets him involved with the other patients in many situations, like being the last vote in the ongoing poll for the baseball game, as well as playing basketball on McMurphy's team. He even planed on escaping with McMurphy to Canada. After finding out that his savior for a friend is now a mindless vegetable after his lobotomy, Chief could not escape without him, nor could he let anyone know what happened to him. He sacrifices McMurphy's life and grants both their freedom both spiritually and physically by smashing the window with the fountain. McMurphy helped Chief see confidence in him and helped him escape for the sake of his future.

            R.P. McMurphy had entered the ward as a prisoner, as well a sign of hope to the patients. He left as a free-minded spirit and a hero to a society unsociable. In a few weeks, he outsmarted a wicked dictator and her organized routines by turning her patients into his disciples. Because of McMurphy, patients now play blackjack, Nurse Ratched is nice to her patients and she talks to them without her bewitching looks, and a docile half-Indian now runs amok in the real world, hoping to find a place where he can live in peace. Unable to seek freedom as a human, or a tool by God, he is able to win the war through death and through the legacy he left in the ward.

Family (A paper for Sociology)

Kevin O'Brien

Soc. 101 HCC JTK

8/6/12

A family is a group of people who consider themselves related by blood, marriage, or adoption. They exchange love and support for one another, even at times when they argue or disagree. I have both a nuclear and extended family. My nuclear family is the family I share my house with whereas my extended family contains my relatives and even an adopted grandparent. Based on the notes from class, I have a clear understanding of family.

The family I was born into is a nuclear family. It is a family that consists of a husband, a wife, and their children. This is also my family of orientation, a family in which I grow up with. My nuclear family includes my mother, Ellen, my father, James, and my older sister, Lauren. Mom and Dad have been married to each other for 31 years. This is a form of relationship called monogamy. Monogamy is when a person and another person are married only to each other. We all occupy the same housing unit referred to as a household. It is mostly Mom and Dad who make the decisions for what happens in this household, but in addition of my sister and I, we make plans such as what to eat for supper, what to do during the holidays, and we plan on places to visit. We have managed to keep ourselves together for 22 years and I am thankful to have a family I belong in.

In addition to the family I was born in, I have an extended family as well. The extended family is a set of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins from both my mother and father’s side of the family. Our extended families will normally get together for parties, holidays, and special occasions, but I am most likely to spend an afternoon with them. My father was born with the Irish O’Brien name in a family of ten. It included himself, his mother, his father, three brothers, and four sisters. When the eight children grew up and started having families of their own, the family grew bigger. I have a very large amount of cousins from Dad’s side of the family, one of which is my current classmate, Clark Law. We have older cousins who have married and started having their offspring, our second cousins on Dad’s side of the family. Mom’s side is rather smaller than Dad’s side. She was born as Ellen Marie Block and grew up in a Hungarian family of four, including her father, mother, and her older brother Paul. He ended up marrying his wife, Linda, and they had two daughters, Jeannine and Karen. The two sisters married their husbands and had their children, my second cousins on Mom’s side. Considering that an extended family is larger than a nuclear family, I’d never thought it would be as big as I had originally thought.

I would like to recognize a family member who wasn’t born from our blood, but rather welcomed into our nuclear family. I speak of my adopted grandfather, John Mavro, who is Greek and is 95 years old. He served in the Second World War and operated in a telephone brigade for his town firehouse. John had a wife named Betty who passed away not long after the death of their six-year-old son. Meanwhile, my grandfather from Dad’s side of the family, William O’Brien Sr., died in 1996. Dad met John while working as caterers for an old church hall in Bridgeport. They were well acquainted with each other, but it wasn’t long until Dad welcomed John into the family as an adopted grandfather. We would visit John once every few weeks to keep a strong connection with him, especially on holidays such as Christmas and Father’s Day. John does have blood relatives not far from where he lives in Wallingford, Connecticut. Just recently on August 4^th, 2012, a fire destroyed John’s building at his retirement home. He is currently at his nephew’s house where he’s recuperating. We are keeping him in our thoughts and in our prayers because he’s still family to us.

In conclusion, I fully understand what family is to me. My nuclear family is a family I live with, and we decisions for ourselves. An extended family is a family of people I can go to if I were to spend some time with them. My adopted grandfather is still a member of the family even if he isn’t blood related. I now understand the meaning of family and how I’m related to my own family. 

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism (a paper for Sociology)

Kevin O'Brien

Soc. 101 HCC JTK

7/18/12

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

There are two kinds of studies that people in a culture tend to follow. One study is rather harsh, while the other study lets people, in a culture, look deeper into the context before they adapt. These studies are simply known as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Ethnocentrism is the tendency for an individual to use his/her culture as the best culture among the rest. That individual may tend to judge what people in other cultures may think or do. Another way to think about this term is to look at the definition as discussed in class, “Ethnocentrism is the belief that my culture is the standard by other cultures.” Unlike ethnocentrism, cultural relativism is the practice where the individual looks upon a culture on its own terms. Cultural relativism is the belief that any culture needs to be analyzed based upon its own history and values. Instead of judging a culture in an unfair amount of five seconds, the individual takes time to observe a culture and decide if that culture is best for him/her.

Waris Dirie, best known for her portrayal in the James Bond film The Living Daylights, is a native of her country Somalia. As a little girl, she was a victim of having her genitals mutilated in her country. The governments of Europe are ethnocentric to say this practice is a practice in which they believe is right for their women’s’ health. They believe that it keeps the female “sexually clean” so they are able to marry. Dirie started a campaign in 1996 to put an end to female genital mutilation. It is necessary for other countries to analyze the fallouts of female genital mutilation, in which the cultural relativism takes place. According to Dirie, women are at the risk of being mutilated “every 17 seconds.” Women who are mutilated suffer horribly while urinating and menstruation. A European refugee directive said that women at the risk of mutilation could be considered for refugee status. Dirie’s experience of this torture is an example of an ethnocentric practice that is being culturally analyzed.

I’ve had situations where I have dealt with someone who was ethnocentric or culturally relativistic. I have a friend named Oscar who works for his school’s radio station at Southern Connecticut State University. He took me over to his station on my day off to watch him do a show. After he finished, a snobby radio disc jockey came up to my friend and criticized the music he played. Oscar was playing songs that ranged from punk to metal. This other radio host was rather into the classic rock genre, saying that it’s the best genre of music than anything else. Now I do enjoy classic rock myself, but I am open to some variety. This kid was being really biased and my friend and I were not very happy of how ethnocentric he was being to us.

My campus held a dance in memory of a student who recently passed away, Stirling Danskin. He was into house music and techno music. Before that night, I didn’t like house nor did I like techno because it just seemed repetitive to me. I was working at the venue that held the dance so I was there for the entire night. This is the night were I was culturally enlightened. I observed how most of the people who attended the dance were dancing and having a good time. I could tell they were good friends of Stirling. The cultural factor behind this music is that people were rather enjoying this music. They didn’t care if the music sounded like it was taking songs online and mixing them together. I found myself dancing to this music by the end of the night. I may not enjoy house or techno as a superior favorite, but I wasn’t one to judge the quality of the music that was entertaining to the ears. This example of cultural relativism helped me branch out in my interests of music. For all I know, I could have been somebody like the biased DJ at Southern and walk out of the venue.