Katrina Freund
CN part 4 essay 1
5th hour Points of view
11/20/05
He's big, strong, and broad shouldered with steel-toed boots, a southern drawl, and a countryman's swagger. He is the epitome of a cowboy, and once he is done with his vodka shot and his card game he is sure as shootin' going to sleep with that pretty lady in the corner of the saloon. Hopefully she will not get too attached though, as this gambling man is nothing if not a free spirit. Randal Patrick McMurphy, of the book One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, will be gone by the time the sun comes up, on to the next bar, the next game, and the next girl. He will wander aimlessly, unaware of a bunch of emasculated patients living in a mental hospital waiting for him to turn their lives around. He is, as Viktor Frankl would say, a man with a calling and a meaning that he is completely unconscious of.
Before he enters the ward McMurphy lacks purpose in his life, he has no attachments and no responsibilities. Mack works when he has to, he joins the army for a brief period but is discharged, he drinks, has lots of sex, and he fights. He fights in streets, in bars, in a work camp, in prison. (42) Unfortunately he has no specific reason to fight; he is a rebel without a cause. Perhaps all the time he is moving place-to-place McMurphy is subconsciously looking for that cause.
Once McMurphy reaches the ward he seems unable to avoid his fate, and his greater purpose. McMurphy starts to piece together his function within the ward the instant he enters. He realizes that something is horribly wrong and he tries to fix it. He tries to make the men laugh, and he stands up for them. He is the cowboy at the high noon showdown fighting for right. His life no longer lacks meaning, responsibility, or attachments and every which way he turns that meaning stares him in the face. He tries for a while to escape it, but he cannot because he has to " fulfill his life's potential meaning" as Frankl put it. In the end this need to fulfill is the only thing driving him, and with his death he succeeds.
McMurphy is a cowboy, but even a cowboy needs meaning according to Viktor Frankl, and R. P. McMurphy finds his. Frankl says "A man needs the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him'' but that " People lack the awareness of this meaning worth living for" and McMurphy exemplifies this. At first he is lost, floating from town to town without anything to tie him down or to give him meaning. This non-direction cannot last however and McMurphy finds his ties, his responsibilities, his meaning, and his awareness in a mental institution in the countryside proving Frankl's point with eloquence as he sacrifices him self to his meaning and his cause. Ohhh that damned McMurphy. (P.208)