Symbols have been used within the film to represent abstract ideas. The camera focuses upon keys and their metallic jingling echoes as an overriding symbol of authority. Nurse Ratched wears keys on a loop over her arm as a decorative bracelet of power. The nurse leads the males in stretches before group therapy and her keys are the only source of sound as she lifts and drops her hands. The orderlies have their keys clipped to their belts that control and discipline the males and only use their keys to lock and release interchangeably through the days and nights. However, in the case of McMurphy, the keys are a symbol of access, freedom and escape.
He repeatedly gets access to the unauthorized keys and tries to use the keys to break out of the hospital to seek independence. He also steals the bus and drives the men away for a fishing trip since the keys were in the ignition. On the night of the party, he breaks into the nurse office yet the office is an exclusive space to which men do not have access. He gets Turkle drunk to enable him to get the keys from his pocket while he rests and uses them to open the ward’s window which according to him signifies a portal to freedom. McMurphy only surrenders and admits failure to escape the institution’s control after realizing that Washington was going to beat him senselessly.
Cigarettes represent liberty and property, and the men use the cigarettes as an alternative currency that gives them the power to place bets and take risks. Since the men have to abide by the orders of the hospital, cigarettes are one of the few possessions that they are allowed and therefore significantly crucial to them. In a chaotic group therapy session, Cheswick feels undermined since nurse Ratched had taken away his cigarettes and despite being offered cigarettes by other men, he dissents that they are not his cigarettes. The men want things to belong to them and the cigarettes symbolize the desire for property and ownership. The men direct their anger at the institution for depriving them of cigarettes to challenge nurse Ratched. Fog continually surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward and is claimed to be originating from Nurse Ratched. The chief is schizophrenic and therefore sees unreal things; consequently, the fog could be induced by medication. The smog not only prevents the patients from rebellion against nurse Ratched but also prevents them from thinking about real things. The fog also prevents the men from any attempts to improve their lives. According to the Chief, the men hide behind the fog since it is comfortable.
Harding explains to Murphy about the world’s division into the weak and strong. According to Harding, the doctor and many of the patients are weak (rabbits), and Nurse Ratched is the only strong one (wolf), and she is not responsible for turning them into rabbits, but they are in the institution since they could not adjust to being rabbits in the outside world.
McMurphy hints that nurse Ratched therapeutic community meetings are pecking parties by describing a pecking party as a situation in which chicken see blood on another chicken and start tapping at each other wildly until they end up killing each other. Nurse Ratched makes one of the men reveal his weakness and the others follow his lead. This sparks a chain reaction that sets the men against each other instead of against nurse Ratched revealing that therapeutic meetings provides time for men to hurt each other.
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