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Allusion
Explanation and Analysis—Crown of Thorns:
In Part Four, Nurse Ratched sends Bromden and McMurphy to receive electroshock therapy. McMurphy goes first, using verbal irony and an allusion to make light of the scary situation:
He don’t look a bit scared. He keeps grinning at me.
They put the graphite salve on his temples. “What is it?” he says. “Conductant,” the technician says. “Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”
They smear it on. He’s singing to them, makes their hands shake.
McMurphy, who is lying on a cross-shaped table to receive the treatment, is referring to the Christian story of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. Before Jesus was crucified, Roman soldiers supposedly dressed him in purple (a color associated with royalty) and placed a crown made out of thorns on his head. They mocked him for being "king of the Jews." The outfit was meant to parody a true royal outfit and to disempower Jesus and his followers by making clear that he would never be a "real" king. However, the parody backfired. Jesus is often depicted wearing a crown of thorns, and the crown itself has become a major symbol of Jesus's power and martyrdom.
McMurphy often uses humor, especially verbal irony, to stand up to power and cruelty, which is what he does in this scene. The hospital staff is about to pin McMurphy down and inflict brain damage on him. Though he doesn't show fear, McMurphy knows he has lost his power struggle with the hospital staff in almost every way that counts. He is utterly at their disposal, and practically no one cares what they do to him. By using faux-Christian language (i.e. "annointest") and asking if he is going to be given a crown of thorns, he absurdly suggests that he is as powerful, important, and righteous as Jesus. He does not actually believe any of this. However, his verbal irony lets the hospital staff know that they cannot take away his laughter or swaggering attitude.
Even though McMurphy does not believe he is Jesus, there is a way in which he does serve as a Christ-like figure to Bromden and the other men on the ward. McMurphy shows the men that they can take their dignity back, and that there is a world beyond the hospital that they might like to rejoin. Like Jesus, he ultimately dies so that his "followers" can live outside the oppressive regime of Nurse Ratched.
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