Biblical References In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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“Now he’s nailed against the wall… in the same shape, arms out, palms cupped, with the same horror on his face” (Kesey 14). After the Big Nurse overloaded Ellis with electro-shock therapy, she nailed him to the wall in the shape of a cross. This is just one of the many examples in the novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, which is similar to an event that happened in Biblical times. Although most people consider the novel to be a comical book, many of the characters in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest relate in many ways to people from the New Testament of the Bible.
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel about patients in an insane asylum. The main character, McMurphy, comes into the ward as a new patient and immediately lets everyone know that he is the “Bull Goose Looney” (which is his phrase for the leader of the patients on the ward). The other men are intrigued and somewhat hold back from him at first. The narrator, Chief Bromden, is half-Indian. He pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to beat the horrible system in which the patients are forced to follow daily. As the story progresses, McMurphy rebels against the Big Nurse, and encourages the other patients to stand up for themselves. The Big Nurse says that he is hurting the therapy that she gives the patients, when ironically he is probably the most therapeutic person to ever come to the ward.
Many compare McMurphy to Jesus Christ because he has many of the same characteristics. When he came onto the ward, the other patients did not immediately accept him. They were all wondering who he was and why he always had such a positive attitude. This is similar to Jesus’ childhood, because people were somewhat afraid of the things that he said and the potential power he could hold. McMurphy began to preach to the other patients, helping to show them the ways that the Big Nurse and the black boys were mistreating them. When he get...