ething in the end truly noble. Gatsby fights for his one true love, while McMurphy fights to help the patients at the ward. Each character uses questionable methods to fight their individual battles, and both characters meet the ultimate failure, death.
             McMurphy is first characterized singing lines from "The Roving Gambler" and "The Wagoner's Lad." Both popular folk songs draw opposition between society and the wanderer in terms of love. "She took me to her parlor, and coo-oo-ooled me with her fan...whispered low in her mamma's ear, I luh-uhvv that gamblin' man." The uncertainty of living a life that is decided by a roll of the dice or a well-dealt hand of cards is generally a very masculine idea, which makes McMurphy a perfect opposition for the Nurse's emasculating treatment of her patients. He also sings "Oh, your parents don't like me, they say I'm too po-o-or; they say I'm not worthy to enter your door-Hard livin's my pleasure, my money's my o-o-wn, an' them that don't like me they can leave me alone." The lad who originally sang the song was voicing his opposition to society's values. This ballad of McMurphy's is "self characterization-foot-loose virility, uncompromised independence, gambler's whim, acceptance of harsh physical effort, and resistance to society worked out within the easily understood boundaries of folk art"(Sherwood 3).
             Folk art often depicts Cowboys and McMurphy is depicted in such a way:
             He walked with long steps, too long, and he had his thumbs hooked in his pockets again. The iron in his boot heels cracked lightning out of the tile. He was the logger again, the swaggering gambler...the cowboy out of the TV set walking down the middle of the street to meet a dare." (Kesey 45)
             Chief Bromden, the narrator of the story, offers this description. Bromden is Native American, which s...