Snippet Lesson Plan for
“One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest”
Subject: Language Arts/ Literature; Theme.
Grades: 10 and up.
Length and Location: Scene 14, twenty minutes.
Learner Outcomes/Objectives: Students will learn how to draw an idea, a theme, from a scene in a novel that has been adapted to film; they will be able to make comparisons of theme presentation between written and visual media
Rationale: Students reading Ken Kesey’s novel will enjoy seeing the film’s presentation of this important scene and can make note of the how the changes from the novel’s presentation may shift the idea, the theme, intended in the scene. Students who are not reading the novel will learn how individuals can redefine themselves and become free from the social judgments that define them.
Description: In this classic scene from “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Randall Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, takes fellow inmates of the mental institution on an unauthorized fishing trip. Although in the novel by Ken Kesey, McMurphy manipulates the situation by organizing the outing and making a tidy profit for himself, in this film he simply absconds with a bus full of inmates, picks up his girlfriend and hijacks a fishing boat. The joyful energy spent catching the fish shows on the faces of the inmates; they are happy, successful men rather than the troubled spirits they were at the hospital. Whether or not students read the book or see the entire movie, the snippetillustrates one of the film’s ideas: crazy is as crazy does.
Possible Problems with the Snippet: There is a moment of near-nudity when the inmates create a problem and McMurphy rushes to the rescue.There is a two second glimpse of his girlfriend behind him scrambling for her clothing.
Using the Snippet in Class:
Preparation
1. Review the snippet and prepare your class by delivering an introduction determined by whether or not your students are reading the book or just watching the snippet. Many teachers choose to show the film in its entirety after getting the proper parental permission since it is considered a classis adaptation to a commonly taught novel.
2. Define the term ‘theme” for your students and be sure they know that a theme is an idea. Tell them what an idea in not:
- It is not an opinion, such as fishing is fun;
- It is not a suggestion, such as let’s go fishing;
- It is not a fact, such as many of the world’s cultures survive because of fishing.
An idea is a pre-fact, a theory or a hypothesis that may one day, through the gathering of evidence, etc, become fact.
Ask them to come up with ideas of their own. This is difficult. You may want to suggest a few. God is an idea. “What goes around, comes around,” is an idea. Chocolate cures cancer is an idea. Ample investigation will need to be done to prove any one of these postulates as fact, even though many people will be of the opinion that any one of them is certain truth.
3. Introduce students to the idea presented in the snippet so that they can watch for evidence leading to the conclusion from which the idea is drawn: Insanity is a social construct. Society determines what is crazy and what is not crazy and this determination is created through observable behavior. In other words, crazy is as crazy does.Your students may have many ways of wording this idea, but in the snippet they will see how the men from the asylum stop being lunatics when they stop behaving as lunatics and are then not seen as lunatics.Insanity is determined by observers. In the film as a whole, this is the central thought; McMurphy was never insane, he pretended to be insane to get out of jailhouse work. Then, in the institution he was seen as insane because of his refusal to conform to the rules.
4. As a means of showing how this idea may affect their own lives, albeit it not in terms of lunatics in an asylum, but in terms of students in the institution of school, students can engage in a bit of role playing. Ask them to assume the physical appearance of an honors student. Tell them that a UCLA scholarship official is here to grant full paid tuition to someone who looks the part of a scholar. Next tell them that a casting director is here to select students to act bored or angry or disinterested. Kids will sit up straight, lean forward and look awake when affecting the role of good students and slump or pretend to doze when affecting the role of those less than stellar students.As the teacher, you can mention how their body language affects the way you view them in terms of potential academic performance.
5. Show the snippet.
Concluding Assessments: Select one of the following prompts depending upon whether or not your students are reading the novel, and ask students to cite specific moments or images in the snippet to support the point they are making in their essay. Use the standard rubric students have become accustomed to in your writing assignments.
- Compare and contrast the fishing scene from the novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, to the fishing scene in the film adaptation.
- Illustrate through specific examples comprised of moments in the snippet, howbody language and facial expression can change the image of an individual in a given situation. Notice the looks on the faces of the men when they are introduced to the dock worker and when they return to port with their catch.
- Illustrate the snippet’s central idea, best illustrated when McMurphy tells the men they are not lunatics now, they are fisherman, through direct reference to specific images and then illuminate how this idea can be seen in common experience in high school culture today.
Why Not use the Whole Movie: “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest" is rated R and may be a problem in some schools or school districts although it has been used in classrooms across the country for decades.