Daniel pukaluk

Daniel Pukaluk Period 9-10 4-14-11 Perspective Writing Shift The perspective shift in the movie does alter the movie’s plot. The movie is set in McMurphy’s perspective, while in the novel, the narrator is Chief. When the reader is reading the book, they get a picture the thoughts that are running through Chief’s head. Since the audience of the movie doesn’t know what Chief is saying, they really believe that Chief is deaf and dumb, just like everyone in the ward’s been saying. One example from the movie that the reader can see that Chief is “ dumb” and deaf is the basketball game. McMurphy is trying to teach Chief to play basketball and while McMurphy is speaking to him, the audience can assume that he really is deaf because Chief doesn’t move and just continues to look at him as if McMurphy was crazy. And during the game, Chief is walking up and down the court while everyone is running. This just helps the audience of the movie to prove that Chief is in-fact dumb because he is oblivious to everything that is happening around him. Any decently intelligent person that is in a basketball game would at least try to do whatever the other players are doing. But Chief decides to do his own thing and just walk and at times; skip up and down the court. While reading the book though, the reader notices that Chief is not deaf and dumb because he tells the reader everything that he hears. He knows exactly what’s going on around him but he just continues to act deaf and dumb because he has a slight social problem. He always wants to be in the background. The perspective shift that occurs in the movie makes it difficult for the audience to determine whether or not Chief is deaf and dumb or if he’s just acting. The perspective shift also causes a shift in the opinions of characters between McMurphy and Chief. In the novel, the reader gets a bias opinion about the other ward members that are mentioned in the novel because of Chief Perspective. The reader only knows about Chief’s opinions, unless others share, because we are in Chief’s head and we know everything that he is thinking. This causes the novel to be potentially swayed or favored toward a specific character because Chief may not like some of the other character so he could purposely not think about them. Because some of the situations could have been swayed toward a character, the situation could have been more or less interesting that the way that Chief explains it. In the movie though, since the perspective is shifted towards McMurphy, the situation could be favored towards a different character. Also, in McMurphy’s perspective, he could have made a situation more dramatic than it should have been just to make a scene more interesting. One example from the book that could prove this is the scene where Cheswick punches one of the aids. The way that Chief explains it, Cheswick was wailing his arms around like a crazy man but in the movie this scene never even happened. This could mean that Chief just wanted to make a specific scene more dramatic than it could have been. The perspective shift causes favorable conditions on events that happened in both the movie and the novel. They could have been made more or less interesting depending on the perspective of the story.