I wanted to look into deeper meanings and symbolism of things throughout the film, so I could produce a film poster much more conceptual than many of the rather literal, existing posters.
Source
Fog
The fog that constantly surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward is, Chief claims, "made" by Nurse Ratched. Because we know that Chief is schizophrenic and sees things that are not literally there, we recognize that the fog may be medicinally induced and is a fog of the mind rather than a literal fog. It keeps the patients from rising up in rebellion against Nurse Ratched, but it also keeps them satisfied with their lives and prevents them from ever thinking about anything real. It both helps them to live this way and prevents them from ever trying to improve their life situation. As Chief says, the men hide behind the fog because it is comfortable.
McMurphy describes a "pecking party" as a situation in which chickens see blood on another chicken and start pecking at it like crazy until they’re all bloody, pecking at each other in a frenzy, and end up killing each other. McMurphy points out that Nurse Ratched’s Therapeutic Community meetings are pecking parties. Nurse Ratched strikes one of the men to reveal his weakness, and then all of the patients follow her lead, "pecking" at the man. This starts off a chain reaction that hurts all of the men, sets them all against each other (instead of against Nurse Ratched), and keeps them all feeling weak (and emasculated). Thus the "therapeutic" meeting aren’t a time when patients can provide each other with mutual and beneficial help, but where they end up hurting each other and making it all worse.
Harding explains to McMurphy that the world is divided into the weak and the strong. He, the doctor, and most of the patients are the weak – rabbits – and Nurse Ratched is the strong, a wolf. She hasn’t made them into rabbits – they’re inside because they can’t adjust to being a rabbit on the outside.
The world is divided into the inside of the insane asylum and Outside, the world as it exists outside of the walls of the insane asylum. Outside has a grip on everybody’s imagination – to some, it’s a scary place and to others, it’s a seductive place, but everybody divides the world into this dichotomy.
Chief notices that whenever the staff congregate together for a meeting, there’s a green light that pours out of the room they’re in. Afterwards, there’s a green seepage that covers everything, which he has to clean off. He says you wouldn’t believe the poisons that ooze out of staff members’ skins. Because we are aware that Chief is mentally ill, we realize that his observations are not literal truths even though he sees it as a literal truth. Instead, he is observing a sort of spiritual residue that infects the entire ward because of the poisonous attitudes of the nurses and orderlies towards the patients. This further reinforces the idea that the asylum is not a place of healing, but of harming the patients.
The Combine
This is Chief’s word to describe the machine-like nature of the asylum system. But it’s not just the asylum that’s governed by this machine – it’s the entire world. He can hear its hum in the walls. Often, Nurse Ratched represents the authority of the Combine; she is the public face of an inhumane system.
The Title
The Epigraph
Christian Symbolism
As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that McMurphy is to be regarded as a Christ-figure. There are foreshadowings of this early in the novel in the patient Ellis, who received EST and is now nailed to the wall with his arms stretched out, as if he were being crucified (this is how Bromden sees him). It is Ellis who says to Billy Bibbit, as the men are about to set out for the fishing trip, to be a “fisher of men” (p. 222), which is what Christ said to the fisherman Peter when he called Peter to be his disciple. The table which is used for the EST treatments is shaped like a cross, which suggests the crucifixion of Christ. McMurphy takes twelve people with him on the trip, just as Christ had twelve disciples, and he chooses to see out his mission to free the patients from their slavery to the hospital, even at the expense of his own safety. (For other examples of Christian symbolism, see the Analysis sections that follow the Plot Summaries.)
The title comes from a child’s rhyme, which also serves as the epigraph. The epigraph reads "One flew east, one flew west, / One flew over the cuckoo’s nest." Since the title is only the second half of the epigraph, "one flew over the cuckoo’s nest" must be the portion of the rhyme that Kesey felt was most important. Flying over the cuckoo’s nest is probably a way of expressing that someone is crazy (think back to elementary school when you’d call people "cuckoo" as an insult). The character that goes crazy in the end of the book isn’t the narrator, Chief – by the closing of the novel he’s remarkably sane. McMurphy, the guy who enters the ward seeming pretty sane, although mischievous, ends up being lobotomized. As a result, McMurphy is probably the character that "flew over the cuckoo’s nest."
The Epigraph
Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
…one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
– Children’s folk rhyme.
The epigraph refers to a children’s rhyme about birds. The verses are taken from a longer children’s counting rhyme, part of which goes like this:
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
O-U-T spells OUT,
Goose swoops down and plucks you out.
One way to think the meaning of the epigraph is that there are two distinct groups presented: the geese that fly east and those that fly west. These groups are going in opposite directions, kind of like the patients versus Nurse Ratched and her hospital staff minions. The goose that flies over the cuckoo’s nest would be McMurphy, because he’s the one that ends up crazy (or cuckoo) in the end because of his lobotomy. Notice how one goose also escapes and is plucked from the "cuckoo’s nest" or the asylum. That one goose would be Chief. But Chief didn’t find out how to escape alone; McMurphy played the savior, teaching Chief how to escape from the ward.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
– Children’s folk rhyme.
The epigraph refers to a children’s rhyme about birds. The verses are taken from a longer children’s counting rhyme, part of which goes like this:
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
O-U-T spells OUT,
Goose swoops down and plucks you out.
One way to think the meaning of the epigraph is that there are two distinct groups presented: the geese that fly east and those that fly west. These groups are going in opposite directions, kind of like the patients versus Nurse Ratched and her hospital staff minions. The goose that flies over the cuckoo’s nest would be McMurphy, because he’s the one that ends up crazy (or cuckoo) in the end because of his lobotomy. Notice how one goose also escapes and is plucked from the "cuckoo’s nest" or the asylum. That one goose would be Chief. But Chief didn’t find out how to escape alone; McMurphy played the savior, teaching Chief how to escape from the ward.
As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that McMurphy is to be regarded as a Christ-figure. There are foreshadowings of this early in the novel in the patient Ellis, who received EST and is now nailed to the wall with his arms stretched out, as if he were being crucified (this is how Bromden sees him). It is Ellis who says to Billy Bibbit, as the men are about to set out for the fishing trip, to be a “fisher of men” (p. 222), which is what Christ said to the fisherman Peter when he called Peter to be his disciple. The table which is used for the EST treatments is shaped like a cross, which suggests the crucifixion of Christ. McMurphy takes twelve people with him on the trip, just as Christ had twelve disciples, and he chooses to see out his mission to free the patients from their slavery to the hospital, even at the expense of his own safety. (For other examples of Christian symbolism, see the Analysis sections that follow the Plot Summaries.)