Courage

The book version and the movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are both great stories. However, reading one and then watching the other, or vice versa, will cause great dissatisfaction. The points that they put across are just too different. In the book version, McMuphy is fighting against the Combine, aka society, by trying to get the patients to have the courage to see that they are perfectly capable of living a normal life no matter how society judges them. There is also Chief's narration. This gives us details on many of the patients and the Combine itself and a close up look on how McMuphy is affecting the patients by showing us how Chief is changed. All this is lost in the movie, changing the point from a man fighting against society to a man trying to teach others how to have fun. When McMurphy first arrives at the Combine, he sees that it is all strictly run by Big Nurse. The scheduled is followed to the minute and is never changed. In the movie the patients aren't scared of Big Nurse, but they all obediently follow her orders, even if it goes against what they want of believe. McMurphy changes this by giving those patients the courage to stand up for what they want. It first starts with McMurphy pretending to see the baseball game and then escalates from there to the party at two. McMuphy showed them that they were allowed to have fun. One of the few similarities shared between the book and them movie is that McMuphy is trying to give the patients the courage to do something important.