One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Nurse Ratched enacts a new plan to discredit McMurphy. First, she posts a statement showing the financial transactions of each patient, which reveals that McMurphy’s holdings increased while everyone else’s decreased. Later, during a group meeting that she allows McMurphy to miss for a phone call, she offers the men a chance to discuss McMurphy “in the absence of his dominating presence” (227). At first, they discuss the good things McMurphy did for the ward. After a while, they begin to wonder about him. At one point, she interjects to suggest that McMurphy is “crazy like a fox” and that he “isn’t one to run a risk without a reason” (228). Pointing to his earnings from gambling and the fishing trip, she invites the patients to recognize his selfish motives. She then switches to another subject.

Later that day, several patients return to the topic of McMurphy’s motives. Harding defends McMurphy as a capitalistic con man who is not ashamed of himself or his motives. Billy points out that not everything McMurphy did, such as teaching him to dance, made him money. That night, Billy’s view shifts when McMurphy asks him to send some money to Candy before her upcoming visit, including funds for her to buy alcohol.