The film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest portrays a mental hospital where the patients housed within are constrained by use of medication and a controlling nurse who reduces the patients' wills to that of children. The patients continually berate one another, which effectively draws each one to further seclusion within himself. In an institution where no one seems concerned with curing patients, Nurse Ratched seems content to break the will of each patient, making them docile. In this manner, the hospital's day-to-day routine stifles all free will instead of creating comfort. The arrival of a new patient, R.P. McMurphy, creates notice immediately in the ward, as he acts animated and alive. Due to McMurphy's behavior, the other patients start to gradually wake up to their surroundings and to the methods that are used to control them. However, as Nurse Ratched feels her control slipping, she makes continued attempts to grasp on tighter. She uses fear to control her patients into submission, even as McMurphy gains control over the ward by disrupting the rules. A battle for control begins between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, which ultimately results in McMurphy's triumph and the Nurse's downfall, while changing the patients caught in the middle for the better.
Nurse Ratched conducts a uniform therapy session at the mental hospital, where she dominates the participating patients into submissive children. She seems to get off on her authoritarian rule over the patients as she propels them to reproach one another. As McMurphy enters these sessions, he is shocked to see what appear to be relatively normal men reduced to puppets, with no control over their own strings. Some streak of his rebellious nature is sparked by what he sees around him; this is the same rebellion against authority that has landed McMurphy in trouble with the law repeatedly. At first, he seems amused to see the patients yelling at one another, but as he takes the entire situation in, his attitude changes to one of horror.
