SparkNotes: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Quiz

1. On what work is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest based?

(A) Ken Kesey’s novel Sometimes a Great Notion

(B) Ken Kesey’ novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

(C) Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas’s original screenplay

(D) Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben’s original screenplay

2. What elements make Nurse Ratched’s authority over the men evident when she appears at the beginning of the film?

(A) She wears a uniform and carries a large set of keys

(B) She looks like Dracula in a black cape and hat

(C) She refuses to unlock Bancini from his night restraints

(D) She links arms with Dr. Spivey as they enter the ward

3. What does the Chief pretend to be?

(A) A mountain

(B) A broom

(C) Deaf and mute

(D) Deaf and blind

4. Why does McMurphy request that Nurse Ratched change the men’s schedule?

(A) So they can go on a deep-sea fishing trip

(B) So they can listen to their choice of music in the ward

(C) So they can listen to the Super Bowl on the radio

(D) So they can watch the World Series on television

5. How does McMurphy escape from the institution to take the men on a fishing trip?

(A) He disguises himself as Dr. Spivey

(B) He sneaks the keys out of Attendant Washington’s pocket

(C) He climbs over the fence on the Chief’s back

(D) He throws a marble washstand through the window

6. Why does Nurse Ratched send Cheswick, the Chief, and McMurphy for electroshock therapy?

(A) They destroyed the faucets in the tub room

(B) They sneaked out of the hospital to watch sports in a bar downtown

(C) They set Taber’s leg on fire with a burning cigarette

(D) They questioned her authority and attacked the orderlies

7. What does McMurphy do when he returns to the ward after electroshock treatments?

(A) He flirts with Nurse Ratched and flashes his dirty playing cards at her

(B) He tells everyone that the Chief has experienced a miracle

(C) He walks like a zombie to tease the men into thinking his brain is fried

(D) He is unable to speak because of the scars on his head

8. Why does McMurphy bribe the night orderly?

(A) So he can use the telephone in the nurse’s station

(B) So he can sneak women into the ward for a party

(C) So he can read his case file in the nurse’s station

(D) So he can play poker with the men in the tub room

9. The film draw numerous parallels between McMurphy and which biblical character?

(A) Jesus

(B) Solomon

(C) Moses

(D) Sampson

10. When does Nurse Ratched think she has beaten McMurphy?

(A) When she rigs the vote over changing television-watching schedules

(B) When she denies him his street clothes

(C) When she confiscates his cigarettes

(D) When she takes away his dirty playing cards

11. In which episode does McMurphy win a battle with Nurse Ratched?

(A) When he sneaks off to watch the World Series in a bar

(B) When he pretends to watch the World Series on a blank TV screen

(C) When he encourages the “voluntary” patients to go to town to watch the game

(D) When he asks to transfer back to prison so he can watch the game

12. Why is the Chief so important in the film?

(A) He is the narrator, and we see everything through his eyes

(B) He has hallucinations about an evil Combine that manufactures men

(C) His smothers McMurphy with a pillow to free his spirit

(D) He undergoes electroshock therapy in McMurphy’s place in order to spare him

13. Why does Nurse Ratched drive Billy Bibbit to commit suicide?

(A) Because he stutters

(B) Because he wants to sign himself out of the institution

(C) Because he wants to marry a prostitute

(D) Because he follows McMurphy in rebelling against her influence

14. Which of the following actresses portrays Nurse Ratched?

(A) Louise Fletcher

(B) Faye Dunaway

(C) Anne Bancroft

(D) Ellen Burstyn

15. What does One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ultimately hope to depict?

(A) The triumph of the human spirit

(B) The despair and desperation of the human spirit

(C) The insanity of the average man

(D) The inevitability of death

16. As a director, Milos Forman infused the film with the style of

(A) Popular director Alfred Hitchcock

(B) Paranoid science fiction from the 1950s

(C) Image distortion characteristic of film noir

(D) Realism, sometimes called cinéma vérité

17. What experiences with repressive authority did Forman have in his own life?

(A) Both his parents died in Nazi death camps during World War II, and he fought communism in the Vietnam War

(B) Both his parents died in Nazi death camps during World War II, and the Soviets invaded his homeland of Czechoslovakia in 1968

(C) The Soviets invaded his homeland of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and he was a student demonstrator at Kent State University in 1970

(D) He was a communist sympathizer who fought against Franco in Spain

18. At what point in the film do we understand that McMurphy has sacrificed his freedom?

(A) When a long take shows him in the moment of revelation before the open window

(B) When the camera cuts back and forth rapidly between him and the doctors

(C) When we see him teaching the men to fish in natural light

(D) When a close-up of Nurse Ratched’s face shows her true affection for him

19. Why is the Chief’s speech about his father important?

(A) It indicates that his father was a small man just like the Chief

(B) It compares McMurphy to an alcoholic

(C) It warns McMurphy what society can do to a man

(D) It indicates that the Chief fears and despises his father just as he fears and despises McMurphy

20. What does Nurse Ratched want the men to do immediately after Billy Bibbit commits suicide?

(A) Take their medication

(B) Calm down and go on with their routine

(C) Watch a World Series game

(D) Go to their beds in the dormitory

21. Which of the following is the first climax of McMurphy’s confrontational relationship with Nurse Ratched?

(A) When he teaches the Chief to play basketball

(B) When he teaches the men to fish

(C) When he breaks the glass of the nurse’s station to get Cheswick’s cigarettes

(D) When he returns to the ward with lobotomy scars on both sides of his head

22. How does the Chief free McMurphy?

(A) By throwing the marble faucet fixture through the window for him to escape alone

(B) By unlocking the window with Turkle’s keys so they can escape together to Canada

(C) By cutting his throat with a broken glass to release his spirit

(D) By smothering him with a pillow to release his spirit

23. What was Ken Kesey’s reaction to the film?

(A) He refused to watch it

(B) He loved the adaptation

(C) He praised the film but criticized specific elements

(D) He died before the film was released

24. Which actor portrays McMurphy?

(A) Ken Kesey

(B) Peter Fonda

(C) Jack Nicholson

(D) Danny DeVito

25. Where was the film shot?

(A) A real mental institution in Salem, Oregon

(B) The mental institution in northern California where the author worked as a student

(C) The psychology department where the author participated in experiments with LSD

(D) A United Artists lot with a surrealistic set design from the Broadway play