One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a classic book and movie that people love and adore. Between the funny patients and crazy ideas of McMurphy, how could you not love this book, but is it more of a story behind it? We all know that the story is about an Native American who witnesses a psych ward turned upside down by a new member, but what about the story under the surface. In Thomas Foster's book How To Read Literature Like A Professor he talks about repetition. We enjoy the familiar nature of the stories we read or movies we see. This gives us our eureka moment and allows us to tie it to other stories. McMurphy shows up and starts to change the rules of Nurse Ratched. He tells her this is no way for them to live, and tries to break them out, does this sound familiar? In the bible, the story of Moses tells how a man got word from God to get his people back from the Pharaoh Ramesses II; he goes through many trials to get his people, just like McMurphy goes through many trials with Nurse Ratched. The gate of the ward can be the symbol of the Red Sea, since the fishing trip was the first time of freedom.Even though the story gets a little different it still resembles the biblical one. Even though McMurphy wasn't the most angelic person, he gives us something to root for, which appeals to our emotions. It's human nature to want something good to happen to you. So for a lot of people they can relate to McMurphy and Moses. The fight to do something great and make a difference is in all of us. That's why story repetition is so prominent, it's a story that's a universal truth, however, repetition doesn't only relate to these two stories, you can tie any story together and get the same result. Lion King II with Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet tells the universal story of young love and family feuds, or you can even tie the first Lion King to Shakespeare's Hamlet and the human nature way of wanting revenge. Even though these stories are years apart they still relate in modern day. Years from now people will still sympathize with McMurphy's sacrifice to Nurse Ratched, and their blood will boil with the thought of feeling the defeat. You will feel the sadness as you realize McMurphy is slipping away from the world, as an elder loved one could. You can feel the anger when you see it was all a figment of the imagination, since no one got out. This anger is caused by the disruption of the repetition. At the end Moses got his people to the Promise Land, but McMurphy didn't. This disruption cause us to become angry because we were cheated out of an happily ever after. These surprises can sometimes respond negatively, or positively and become a story that is repeated itself. At the end of the day every story has a truth. No matter the story, you will always relate to it for the simple fact that we're all human.
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