1. How do you think Nurse Ratched’s strategy of silence at the staff meetings establishes her power and control over the others? 2. Who do you think is smarter—Ratched or McMurphy? Explain. 3. Based on what you have read about shock therapy and by Harding’s description of the treatment, do you think that it is a justifiable therapy for the mentally ill? 4. Why do you think McMurphy organized the fishing trip? Also, how would you describe McMurphy’s mood as he passes through the town where he lived in his youth? What does this suggest about him?

1. Nurse Ratched wields silence as a weapon. Others want her approval, and when she says nothing, she is hard to read. It keeps her subordinates on their toes, never knowing exactly where they stand with her.
2. Wow, what a question! "Smart" is such a nuanced word. Both Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are calculating, shrewd, insightful, and quick-witted. McMurphy is street smart and good at deceit. He's faking mental illness to get into the hospital, which he thinks will be more comfortable than prison. In the novel, McMurphy and Nurse Ratched parry mentally. McMurphy appears to "outsmart" Nurse Ratched several times, especially at the end when he sneaks the patients out for a fishing trip. But Ratched has the last laugh, because McMurphy doesn't realize until it's too late that being committed to the hospital is different than serving a prison sentence in one crucial respect: the hospital has no set release date. So ultimately, Nurse Ratched triumphs in the power struggle. Does this make her smarter than McMurphy?
3. No, shock treatment does not seem to me to be justifiable therapy for the mentally ill. Rather than curing patients's illness or improving their brain, shock therapy does the opposite. It deadens part of the brain, possibly damaging it, so that the patient is quieter and easier to control. The threat of shock therapy prevents patients from acting out for fear of being shocked, but then they are repressing their illness instead of dealing with it and trying to improve it.
4. I think McMurphy organizes the fishing trip for a couple of reasons. First, he sincerely wants his fellow patients to get outside of the hospital, to see what they're missing, loosen up, and have genuine fun. Second, he wants to give a symbolic middle finger to Nurse Ratched by pulling off as outrageous a stunt as possible.
As McMurphy passes through the town of his youth, he is jovially telling childhood stories and pointing out landmarks, such as his old house. However, as passing car lights illuminate McMurphy's face in the windshield, the narrator notices,

an expression that was allowed only because he figured it’d be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn’t enough time left for something he had to do . . .

I think McMurphy is wistful and anxious. He realizes, perhaps, that his childhood innocence is gone, time is ticking, and there is no guarantee of tomorrow. His battles with Nurse Ratched, who symbolizes the establishment, seem to be wearing him down—a foreshadowing of the ending to come.
https://www.somersetacademy.com/ourpages/auto/2015/9/29/56608819/cuckoos%20nest.pdf