The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard once wrote, “the tyrant dies and his rule
is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
Similarly, Jesus experienced the worst of human-inflicted death as he
died for the sins of others and became a martyr. In the same vein as Jesus, Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Randle Patrick McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, evolve into martyrs as they sacrifice their mortality and potential for
the benefits of others and society. Both
Gatsby and McMurphy forfeit their dreams.
Gatsby sacrifices his dream and self-made fortune; and McMurphy abandons
his freedom from the ward. The two
characters witness the inhumane realities of their corrupted societies, New
York and the Combine’s ward respectively, and like Jesus, both risk their lives
in order to effect hopeful, positive change.
Gatsby and McMurphy’s sacrifices serve as the necessary catalysts for
their corresponding followers to obtain the self-actualization and freedom that
their societies had previously repressed.
In turn, the followers hold the potential to sustain the change their
saviors’ sacrifices created.
Throughout the novels, amalgamations
of evidence bolster the claim that Jay Gatsby and R. P. McMurphy represent
Jesus. Both the characters’ interactions
with others parallel those between Jesus and his followers. Gatsby holds fantastic parties where “people
were not invited – they just went there…and somehow they ended up at [his]
door” (Fitzgerald 41). Through these
extravagant festivities, Gatsby forms a following of faithful members, similar
to Jesus. Gatsby caters to the masses
and materialistically manufactures a lively environment for the hardworking people
of New York, while concurrently attempting to manifest his lifelong dream of
being with Daisy Buchanan. At first,
Gatsby tightly gripped this idealistic, selfish version of life where he ended
up with his true love, Daisy. When Daisy
came to his estate for the first time, “he hadn't once ceased looking at [her], and…he
revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
from her well-loved eyes” (Fitzgerald 91).
To Gatsby, all of the materialistic wealth he accumulates in his life is
meaningless if it does not fill Daisy with joyous awe. Daisy is everything to Gatsby; however
eventually, Gatsby evolves into a Jesus-like martyr, as depicted by his
interactions with others.
Like Gatsby, McMurphy also interacts
with his surrounding community members in a fashion that mimics that of
Jesus. From the beginning of his time in
the ward, McMurphy treats others the way he wants to be treated, a concept that
Jesus strongly upheld. McMurphy
confidently becomes a member of the community when “he finishes shaking hands
with the last Acute,” and later goes “right over to the Chronics, like [they]
are no different” (Kesey 25). McMurphy
treats all of the patients equally and while doing so, becomes a leader by
inspiring the masses. He preaches for
the men in the ward to simply try and show sexually significant chutzpah. For instance, when McMurphy’s “whole body
shakes with the strain as he tries to lift [the control panel] he knows he
can’t lift,” he creates a wave of inspiration for the downtrodden patients, in
that they all, as a collective group of followers, begin to think, “by golly he
might do it (Kesey 110).” However,
McMurphy fails in his quest to lift the control panel; and while he ends his
attempts to accomplish the task, he continues his inspirational wave by
expressing, “But I tried though…Goddamit, I sure as hell did that much, now
didn’t I” (Kesey 111)? This inspiring
undulation continues in the novel, and is especially prevalent when McMurphy
takes “twelve of [the patients] towards the ocean” (Kesey 203). The twelve followers that accompany McMurphy
directly correspond to Jesus’ Twelve Apostles and clearly depict the symbolic
significance of McMurphy’s interactions with his community’s members.
The causes for Gatsby and McMurphy’s
meaningful interactions stem from the underlying theme that adorns both the
characters – the two exude a larger than life characteristic. This trait also presided in Jesus, for He was
larger than life, in that He was both man and God. Contrastingly, Gatsby is not blood related to
God, yet because of his grandiose demeanor, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway,
describes Gatsby as “a son of God – a phrase which, if it means anything, means
just that” (Fitzgerald 98). Nick was mesmerized
by Gatsby’s powerful presence even though he had only known his neighbor for a
few short months. However, in this brief
time period, Nick perceived that if Gatsby was to uphold his ideological title
as a “son of God” (Fitzgerald 98), “he must be about His Father’s business, the
service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 98). And in turn, for Gatsby to deal daily with an
intensity such as the one Nick perceives, Gatsby would need to don a
personality much more spectacular than many of those around him; and to Nick,
the novel’s slanted societal voice, this produced a God-like aura.
During McMurphy’s time in the ward,
he also boasts a larger than life demeanor as he gains patients’ respect and
their loyal fellowship. This larger than
life characteristic exudes such a palpable strength and vivacity that after
McMurphy’s electroshock therapy induced brain death, his following of patients
refuse to believe his state of mind and health.
The patients, drowning in denial, sputter shocked, questioning
statements, saying, “But they can’t do that look. There’s nothin’ in the face. Just like one of those store dummies…” and
“they can do tattoos. But the arms,
huh? The arms? They couldn’t do those. His arms were big” (Kesey 269)! However, that face and those arms do in fact
belong to McMurphy, even though the patients refuse to accept that truth. This disbelief originates from McMurphy’s
Jesus-like persona. McMurphy is such an
inspirational tour de force during his time in the ward, the patients that
religiously follow him, cannot understand how the Combine perfectly
manufactured an exact replica of the man they praise. Thus, the patients, who sequentially
characterize the honest representation of society, craft a Jesus-like aura for
McMurphy as they begin to cope with his fallen, martyred body.
For Jesus to command a great crowd
of followers, His interactions had to guide the people’s moral compasses and He
had to actualize an extraordinary presence.
Nonetheless, in order for Jesus’ reign as a morally influential icon to
officially initiate, He needed to first evolve into a martyr.
When Jesus was crucified, he not
only died for the sins of others, but also became a martyr for
Christianity. Parallel to Jesus, Gatsby
dies for the sins of the people he loved so that they could have the potential
to lead the lives they craved. This
evolution into martyrdom climaxes when Nick asks Gatsby, “Was Daisy driving”
(Fitzgerald 143)? Gatsby selflessly
answers, “Yes…but of course I’ll say I was” (Fitzgerald 143). In this moment, Gatsby takes responsibility
for a crime he did not commit, Myrtle’s murder, and pays for this feigned,
sinful confession with a sensory death – for in the coming days, Wilson will
vengefully shoot him. Gatsby’s death
scene is crafted in such a way, that it drifts like its own setting’s “movement
of water” (Fitzgerald 162), mimicking a “fresh flow from one end urg[ing] its
way toward the drain at the other” (Fitzgerald 162). Nick describes the scene with a delicate
reverence, like the followers described Jesus’ death. Nick sculpts a “a new world” (Fitzgerald 161)
depicting the calm “touch of a cluster of leaves” (Fitzgerald 162) and
meditative, “little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves” (Fitzgerald
162). He also balances this reverence
with a personal glimpse into the inside of what he perceives to be Gatsby’s
soul, supposing, “it was true, he must have felt that he had lost the old warm
world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald
161). However, when Nick concludes his
account of the martyr’s death, he powerfully declares, “the holocaust was over”
(Fitzgerald 162). Nick’s proclamation
illustrates a classic example of Fitzgerald’s habit of crafting oxymoronic
phrases, as a holocaust is often defined as death by fire, meanwhile Gatsby was
murdered in a pool of water. Thus, Nick
contrasts the description of Gatsby’s death with the actual account of his
hero’s murder in order to reinforce the sheer magnitude of the plot twist. Additionally, Nick’s oxymoronic undertone
structurally alludes to the societal potential for change, in that an oxymoron,
by its definition, is composed by skewed changes of corresponding definitional
comparisons in conjunction with each other.
Therefore, Nick’s climactic declaration emphasizes Gatsby’s sacrifice,
alludes to Jesus’ sacrifice, and illustrates the severity of Gatsby’s fatal
transformation into martyrdom.
Comparably, McMurphy sacrifices his
own mortality, as he becomes a martyr. He too undergoes a tremendously sensory death,
one that originates with his electroshock therapy. While the ward’s nurses, doctors and staff
prep McMurphy for his beginning of the end, McMurphy bravely and symbolically
pronounces, “Anointest my head with conductant.
Do I get a crown of thorns” (Kesey 237)?
This pronunciation directly corresponds to the Crown of Thorns that
Jesus wore as he was crucified; however, it furthermore reinforces McMurphy’s
mortal sacrifice. McMurphy’s satirical
final words bolster the claim that he is willing to go down with the ship in
order to effect hopeful, positive change.
Additionally, the mere structure of his final words ending with a
question, imply McMurphy’s overarching mission of hope. And accordingly, McMurphy’s pleading for a
crown of thorns allegorically ties him to the most prominent, historical
martyr, Jesus, while additionally foreshadowing McMurphy’s rule through his
martyrdom. The symbolic connection
implies a potential change, while moreover fortifies McMurphy’s progression
into becoming a martyr.
Through the sacrifice of their
mortalities, Jay Gatsby and R. P. McMurphy consequently forgo their
dreams. Gatsby sacrifices his fortune in
that he died and had no heir; but he also sacrifices his dream by not
permanently solidifying his love with Daisy – or rather she, a “meretricious
beauty,” did not solidify her love with him.
For during Gatsby’s moment of truth, Daisy painfully utters, “Even alone
I can’t say I never loved Tom…it wouldn’t be true” (Fitzgerald 133). Gatsby never achieves his dream of procuring
Daisy’s complete devotion – for he is no time traveller and cannot perform
miracles as merely a symbolic version of Jesus.
Daisy had fallen in love with Gatsby a long time ago, but while in
limbo, with Gatsby at war, she also had fallen in love with another man, Tom
Buchanan. This feminine impurity devours
Gatsby and his once palpable dream.
Furthermore, the destruction of the dream’s congruity provides a new
chapter in Gatsby’s life – a period plagued by death and yet blessed with
change. And so, as Gatsby dies, his
sacrifice prompts his own evolution into martyrdom, which in turn creates a
domino affect of change for his society.
In McMurphy’s society, the Combine’s
ward, his mortal sacrifice issues a command that subsequently costs him his
very own dreams. However, McMurphy’s
dreams revolve around a different focus than Gatsby’s dream. McMurphy’s visionary cravings consist of his
future potential to physically effect change.
When McMurphy sacrifices his freedom from the ward by “smash[ing]
through the glass door” and “screaming when he grabbed for [Nurse Ratched] and
ripped her uniform all the way down the front” (Kesey 267), he commits his
ultimate physical action, which costs him his freedom from the ward and ability
to invigorate his own sexual desire.
This last hurrah destroys McMurphy’s dreams, for the actions cause
McMurphy to be issued electroshock therapy.
Nonetheless, as McMurphy is mortally punished for his actions, like
Gatsby, he transforms into a sacrificial martyr. Thus, ultimately McMurphy and Gatsby’s deaths
develop them into martyrs and provide the potential for their corresponding
followers to actualize their own personal freedoms in all realms of life.
Through these sacrificially
conceived freedoms, the followers hold the potential to combat the inhumanities
in their corrupted societies. Before
Gatsby and McMurphy evolve into martyrs, exploitation wrecks havoc upon their
follower’s lives. The economically
average characters in The Great Gatsby
strenuously live in a world where laws upholding the Prohibition are broken and
Meyer Wolfsheim, “the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919”
(Fitzgerald 73) continues to thrive in corruption because “[the police] can not
get him” (Fitzgerald 73). However,
because Gatsby had been involved with Wolfsheim, once Gatsby is murdered, many
of the tainted truths concerning the corrupted, societal incongruities begin to
bubble up to the surface of the setting.
For although Gatsby represented Jesus, Jay himself had not been a
perfect character. Gatsby had “been in
several things…in the drug business and then…in the oil business” (Fitzgerald
90); and once he dies, his martyrdom elucidates the thickness of the cruelties
in New York City that are often associated with the attempts to grasp the
fulfillment of a dream. Following that
elucidation, the characters that closely followed Gatsby hold the potential to
distance themselves from the manipulative atrocities and later effect hopeful,
positive change.
Before
McMurphy’s sacrifice and transformation into martyrdom, his society, the
Combine’s ward, like Gatsby’s New York, was also stained with an excess of
inhumanities. McMurphy witnessed that
the manners by which the ward functioned only exacerbated the conditions of the
patients. This enraged McMurphy; and in
his fury, he grilled the patients, probing “What do you think you are, for
Chrissake, crazy or somethin’?
Well…you’re no crazier than the average asshole out walkin’ around on
the streets and that’s it” (Kesey 61).
To McMurphy, these patients, the followers who became inspirationally
attached to him, are simply people who could not cope and are beaten down by
the traumatic experiences that the ward and its perpetrators create. Thus, once McMurphy sacrificially dissolves
the societal system that chained his followers, the followers themselves embody
the potential to continue to effect the change that McMurphy had created. Some of McMurphy’s followers free themselves
from the ward, and others realize that they not only have the power but also
have the potential to do the same. In
general, because of McMurphy’s aggressive martyrdom, the followers become
cognizant of the reality that they too can walk the streets and improve the
state of those streets while simultaneously bettering themselves. The followers embrace their sexually
significant chutzpah and recall McMurphy’s inspirational “sound of a
cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance” (Kesey 267) – the sound
of animalistic freedom from sacrifice. Overall, both Gatsby and McMurphy’s followers
harness a potential to effect change – a potential that their savior’s
sacrifices created.
The
good that comes from Jay Gatsby’s sacrifice contrasts that with which R. P. McMurphy’s
derives. Gatsby’s martyrdom and its
subsequent, societal change directly affect only two characters, Daisy Buchanan
and Nick Carraway. From those two
figures, the potential change expands its territory in a similar fashion to the
“little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves” (Fitzgerald 162) that
had initiated the whole series of effects.
Those effects culminate in the sacrifice’s conception of potential
change. Gatsby’s sacrifice frees Daisy –
for Gatsby takes the fall for Daisy’s murder of Myrtle, a crime, he did not
commit. Daisy, in turn, distances
herself from the specific incident and the entire societal setting of New York
– for “she and Tom had gone away” (Fitzgerald 164) heading west, and thus
commencing and increasing Daisy’s potential to effect change. Additionally, “Daisy hadn’t sent a message or
a flower” (Fitzgerald 174), an action that primarily reeks of disrespect, but
underlying scents of an indomitable necessity to prolong the change that
Gatsby’s sacrificial death had started.
Daisy’s refusal to confront the past subliminally forces her to
redistribute her energies towards the future.
This redistribution attributes its origins to Gatsby’s sacrifice; and,
it correspondingly contains an insurmountable potential to continue the
hopeful, positive change that was conceived during Gatsby’s fatal evolution
into martyrdom.
Nick
Carraway, the narrator of The Great
Gatsby, also continues the change that Gatsby’s sacrifice generated. The effect that causes Nick to holster his
own weapon of change hides in his final recapitulation of what brought him and
his savior to their present states. For
as Nick “sat there brooding on the old, unknown world” (Fitzgerald 180) he
thinks of “Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end
of Daisy’s dock” (Fitzgerald 180). He
realizes that Gatsby’s “dream must have seemed so close that [Gatsby] could
hardly fail to grasp it” (Fitzgerald 180).
But Nick additionally comes to the conclusion that Gatsby “did not know
that [the dream] was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity”
(Fitzgerald 180). Therefore, by learning
from his martyred idol’s mistakes and distorted accomplishments, Nick holds the
potential to manifest his own positive destiny and continue to intensify the
already ongoing, positive change. From
his newly enlightened position, in an idealized, futuristic setting, Nick props
himself with the capacity to make the lives of others more just and to continue
the rippling of change that originated with Gatsby’s death. Overall, Gatsby’s sacrifice provides the
potential for his two most prominent followers, to reap and subsequently bestow
gifts of positive change unto all
that interact with them.
McMurphy’s
sacrificial death, comparable to that of Gatsby, crafts the potential for
positive change. However, the effects of
McMurphy’s martyrdom, unparalleled to those of Gatsby’s martyrdom, directly
influence more than two of his followers.
McMurphy’s sacrifice and the subsequent ripples of change that swell
from that sacrifice directly act as the symbolic muscle behind the changes that
his pack of numerous followers makes.
This ability to potentially effect positive change, influences all of
the patients that followed McMurphy. For
after McMurphy’s ultimate physical action, the sexualizing of Nurse Ratched and
finalization of his fate, “everything was changing. Sefelt and Fredrickson signed out together
Against Medical Advice, and two days later another three Acutes left, and six
more transferred to another ward” (Kesey 268).
McMurphy’s martyrdom changed the lives of the patients that followed him
to a similar degree as to how Jesus’ martyrdom shaped the futures for his
Apostles. McMurphy’s sacrifice provided
the men with the powerfully masculine zest their souls craved. It taught the patients to rebel against the
corrupted, societal advice and let their lives speak for themselves. However, most importantly, McMurphy’s sacrifice
bestowed upon the patients the gifts to continue effecting more hopeful,
positive change to a brave new world outside the ward’s walls.
Although
all of McMurphy’s followers are affected by his sacrifice, McMurphy’s sacrifice
most strongly affects the narrator of the story, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden delicately paints the portrait
of McMurphy as a Jesus-like martyr.
Bromden serves as the voice by which the symbolic, personal
interpretations of events delineate the correlation between McMurphy and
Jesus. Altogether, McMurphy’s death
provides the vehement catalyst for Bromden to release himself from the ward’s
chains and successively revive his own mental health and the state of society –
for while Bromden had drearily drifted through the halls of the ward, the outer
Combine-ruled world had drowned in hideous homogeneity. Bromden faces this truth when he returns from
the fishing trip with eleven of McMurphy’s other followers. He witnesses that “five thousand kids lived
in those five thousand houses…the houses looked so much alike that, time and
time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses…nobody ever
noticed” (Kesey 204). Bromden
comprehends that his entire society has self-corrupted and that his physical
placement in the ward is aiding no one.
He finally receives “the full force of the dangers [the patients and he]
let [themselves] in for when [they] let McMurphy lure [them] out of the fog”
(Kesey 130) – dangers that could only create pits of desperation due to the
potential for change that McMurphy’s sacrifice created. And so, with the power procured by McMurphy’s
martyrdom, Chief frees himself from the ward’s constraints. In fact, in the novel’s entirety, Chief
Bromden narrates from a fixated point of view in the future of the story’s
timeline. Thus, Bromden’s remembrance of
when he “took a deep breath,” “bent over,” “took the levers” of the control
panel, “heaved [his] legs under” himself and “then spun and let the momentum
carry the panel through the screen and window with a ripping crash” (Kesey
271), in turn freeing himself from the ward, emphasizes the magnitude of the
multifaceted complexities, influence, and power behind McMurphy’s sacrifice and
its initiation of change. And in spite
of the fact that McMurphy dies, the change that is conceived through McMurphy’s
martyrdom lives on.
Ultimately, both Jay Gatsby of The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Randle Patrick McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken
Kesey evolve into martyrs as they die from sensory deaths. The two characters’ personas symbolize Jesus
through their interactions with others and their larger than life
characteristics. Gatsby and McMurphy’s
dreams deteriorate while they concomitantly sacrifice their lives in order to
effect hopeful, positive change.
Sequentially, this catalytic change elucidates and subsequently
restrains Gatsby and McMurphy’s corrupted societies’ flaws. Therefore, the change expands outwards from
the saviors’ followers to other members of the novels’ previously corrupted
settings. The progression of hopeful,
positive change, coupled with the undertone of sacrificial death, bolster the
charismatic throne for the deceased martyrs to conceive their revolutionary
rules.
- J. A. Kind
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