Chief Bromden, a long-term patient in Nurse Ratched’s psychiatric ward and he narrates the novel. The story begins on how he awakens to a typical day on the ward, feeling paranoid about the certain nighttime activities of the ward’s three black aides. The aides make fun of him for being a pushover, they make him sweep the hallways for them, even though he is over six feet tall. The black aides have nicknamed him Chief Broom. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb; he overhears all the secrets on the ward and is barely noticed by anyone. When Nurse Ratched enters the ward it’s like a gust of cold air. Nurse Ratched gets angry with the aides quite frequently. She demands the aides to shave Bromden, and he screams and hallucinate that he is being …show more content…
Nurse Ratched begins to post newspaper articles about wrecked boats and rough weather on the bulletin board next to the sign up list. Bromden wants to sign up but is afraid to blow his deaf-and-dumb cover, because he would have to act deaf if he wanted to hear it all. He remembers when he was 10 years old, three people came to his home and talked to his father about buying the tribe’s land. When Bromden spoke up they acted like he had not said a word. Geever, who is an aide, wakes Bromden and McMurphy in the middle of the night while scrapeing off the wads of gum under Bromden’s bed. Geever tells McMurphy that he has been trying to find out where Bromden could get gum from. When he leaves McMurphy gives Bromden some Juicy Fruit, and Bromden thanks …show more content…
George has a huge phobia of cleanliness and begs the aides not to spray him. McMurphy and Bromden get into a fight with the aides to defend George, and the Nurse Ratched sends them to Disturbed Ward. The pleasent Japanese nurse explains to them that army nurses have a bad habit of running the place like an army hospital. Nurse Ratched informs McMurphy that he can avoid getting electroshock therapy by admitting he was wrong. He refuses and tells her “those Chinese Commies could have learned a few things from you, lady.” McMurphy and Bromden are sent for electroshock treatment, but McMurphy appers unafraid. He climbs onto the table and says aloud if he will get a “crown of thorns.” Bromden, however, is afraid and struggles the entire time. During and after the treatment, Bromden experiences images and memories from his childhood. When he awakes he resists the fog and works to clear his head. For the first time he managed to do after receiving electorshock therapy. He knows that this time he is not subjected to any more treatments. McMurphy, unfortunely, receives three more treatments that week. He shows no pain but Bromden can tell that the treatments are hurting him. Nurse Ratched noticies McMurphy is growing as a figure in the eyes of the other men because he is out of sight, so she brings him back from Disturbed
...and they have no choice, but to follow it or else they can be put into the “Combine” as Bromden sees it. Near the end of the novel “she turned and walked into the Nurses’ Station and closed the door behind her”. When the nurse “walked” away, it shows how she no longer cares and Bromden will then start having a sense of feeling that he should do something because she just let Billy kill himself. The moment when Nurse Ratched “close[s] the door” is a sign for Bromden to gather his courage and help everyone to get out of this ward.
Chief Bromden, who is presumably deaf and dumb, narrates the story in third person. Mr. McMurphy enters the ward all smiles and hearty laughter as his own personal medicine. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a story about patients in a psychiatric hospital, who are under the power of Nurse Ratched. Mrs. Ratched has control over all the patients except for Mr. McMurphy, who uses laughter to fight her power. According to Chief Bromden, McMurphy "...knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (212). Laughter is McMurphy's medicine and tool to get him and the rest of the patients through their endless days at the hospital. The author's theme throughout the novel is that laughter is the best medicine, and he shows this through McMurphy's static character. The story is made up of series of conflicts between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy becomes a hero, changing the lives of many of the inmates. In the end, though, he pays for his actions by suffering a lobotomy, which turned him into a vegetable. The story ends when Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow and escapes to freedom.
White characters such as Nurse Ratched and McMurphy show surprise that he is able to speak and understand them while the black boys claim that Indians can't read or write. Bromden justifies that he is victim to racial inequality when people look "at me [him] like I'm [he’s] some kind of bug" (26) or when people "see right through me [him] like I [he] wasn't there." Throughout Bromden's childhood, he realized that the white people thought he was deaf and mute and that even if he spoke, no one could hear him. In order to survive through the dangers of the social hierarchy he existed in through the ward, he feigns deafness. Bromden points out that, "it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all." (178) Bromden, has also been constantly abused by the staff and other patients at the ward who call him Chief Broom, a derogation of his name as Chief and a mockery of his floor mopping “duties” in the ward that the black boys force upon him. Bromden's circumstances is illustrative of his race and of his entire tribe. The social criticism that Kesey portrays, emerges piecemeal through Bromden’s constant flashbacks and hallucinations of his village. Kesey compares Native Indian cohesion with the new estrangement accompanying the loss of Indian cultures and the adjustment of a white lifestyle to show the social unity once created by Indian traditions. By the end of
The novel is narrated by the main character, Chief Bromden, who reveals the two faces of Nurse Ratched, in the opening pages of the novel. He continues sweeping the floor while the nurse assaults three black aides for gossiping in the hallway. Chief chooses to describe the nurse abstractly: “her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger...by the time the patients get there...all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual” (5). Nurse Ratched runs the psychiatric ward with precision and harsh discipline. When Randle McMurphy arrives to escape time in jail, he immediately sizes the Big Nurse up as manipulative, controlling, and power-hungry. The portrayal that he expresses to the patient's leaves a lasting impact on them: “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (57). McMurphy finds it appalling that the patients are too blindsided to see Nurse Ratched’s conniving scheme, which is to take charge of the patients’ lives. The only person who understands Nurse Ratched’s game is McMurphy, and this motivates him to rebel against the
Nurse Ratched is a former army nurse who works in the ward, she has manipulates the men in many ways. One way is having the patients “spy on each other” making them write things down, they think she would want to hear, or know. Bromden described Nurse Ratched as having the ability to “set the wall clock to whatever speed she wants”, a metaphor for her control, showing how the patients lose track of time. Nurse Ratched acts authority on the ward shows controls how superior over the person who would normally be her Superior, such as, Dr. Spivey.
-Character Development- All of the characters experience significant development throughout the story. This starts when McMurphy first enters the hospital and teaches the patients to not be afraid of expressing their feelings. For example, he wanted to watch the world series in the television, but the television hours were at a different time than the world series. He got some patients to vote for the time to be changed by questioning why they were afraid to vote for the change. “You afraid if you raise your hand that the old buzzard'll cut it off”(pg 117). with the aid of McMurphy, chief Bromden goes from withdrawn with flashbacks on his time in the war to actually participating in activities instead of hiding away. “I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me. McMurphy was teaching me”(pg 223). Lastly, McMurphy's efforts to rebel against the system and Big Nurse's rules do not go to waste. Chief Bromden runs away from The asylum, and is finally free at the end of the novel (pg 310-311). He was free of the asylum and its' rules. Harding also speaks up to Big Nurse when she tells him that McMurphy will be back after his electroshock treatment. At the beginning of the novel, he wouldn't have dared to say anything to her because he would have been too afraid, but he tells he that he thinks she is “so full of bullshit”(pg 307).
When first seeing Nurse Ratched in the novel, Chief Bromden describes her power and her influence on the ward, stating, “she wields a sure power that extends in all directions” (Kesey 30). She has manipulated the system to place herself in the highest position and to insure she will not be receiving uprise from them. Over the years, many doctors with plans and ideas have come and go-- retreating from her “dry-ice eyes, day in, day out” (Kesey 31). Finally, after years of strong-minded doctors, Nurse Ratched finds the perfect, push-over doctor, and she keeps him; she does not know that this weak doctor will
McMurphy’s resistance against Nurse Ratched begins to awaken Bromden’s own ability to resist the grip of the nurse. Bromden slowly starts to see that he is an individual that possesses his own free will; in turn the fog begins to fade. Through Clarisse’s love of nature she begins to open Montag up to a world outside conformity. She see’s that Montag is not like everyone else and that he has the potential to become a free thinking individual. Clarisse is able to force Montag to confront his deeper issues with reality eventually making him realize his own potential.
The main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is brought to a state mental institution from a state prison to be studied to see if he has a mental illness. McMurphy has a history of serving time in prison for assault, and seems to take no responsibility for his actions. McMurphy is very outgoing, loud, rugged, a leader, and a rebel. McMurphy also seems to get pleasure out of fighting the system. McMurphy relishes in challenging the authority of Nurse Ratchett who seems to have a strong hold over the other patients in the ward. He enters into a power struggle with Nurse Ratchett when he finds out that he cannot leave the hospital until the staff, which primarily means her, considers him cured.
Nurse Ratched gains much of her power through the manipulation of the patients on the
The Aides in Kesey's novel, who are also called "black boys," negatively portray blacks as inferior to white people in society. The aides had a poor, rough childhood growing up as seen by their lack of education as seen in the quote "`Why, who you s'pose signed chief Bromden up for this foolishness? Inniuns ain't able to write'" (191). Their aides' hatred of the patients stems from their rough childhood. They are also cast as irresponsible and unable to carry out simple jobs. This is evident in the quote "`I'll take him. He's always untying his sheet and roaming around.'" (147), when Turkle, the night-shift aide, lies to the nurse in charge at night by saying that Bromden untied his sheets, when Turkle Irresponsibly untied Bromden's sheets for him.
The men, after McMurphy’s death, hold onto his story and pass it on. He is a man, a myth, and a legend that forever remains in the hospital. Leaving an everlasting sting on the nurse and how she reigns over the hospital. McMurphy’s death also affected Bromden, giving him enough strength to set off into the world, breaking loose from the Nurse’s control and living life as McMurphy would have wanted him to. “I feel good, seeing McMurphy get that black boys goat like not many men could. Papa used to be able to do that” (Kesey 94) This is Bromden speaking of McMurphy making fun of the staff’s blind rule-following tendencies. This also, strongly shows how much Bromden, and the other men, think of McMurphy as a father figure. He is a man in their lives that gives them confidence and comfort. The men in the ward & especially Billy Bibbit and Bromden, like authority and power; for example, the Big Nurse, Billy’s mom, and Bromden’s dad. They like to follow a structure and have a power to look up to; McMurphy is a different kind of power that’s freeing to be lead by. When they see their leader ‘fight the power’ they see this as an invitation to follow suit and question their old ways of the ward, therefore not conforming. So, when the men in the ward make McMurphy like their strong father figure, that becomes their normal. This also speaks to Kesey’s underline analogy,
If the patients saw that Ms. Ratched could get angry, and that she was hiding her personality, they would realize that they are not rabbits after all, and that she is not a “good strong wolf”, as they previously believed. When patient R.P McMurphy, the hospital patient that tries to remove all of Ms. Ratched’s power, arrives on the hospital ward, he makes no effort to hide his personality, and the patients begin to recognize how Ms. Ratched hides her personality, in the novel, Chief Bromden says, “He stands looking at us, back in his boots, and he laughs and laughs. In the novel, Ms. Ratched just removed the tub room, which was used as a game room, from the patients, this angered McMurphy, so he decided to do something subtle to get revenge on Ms. Ratched. In the novel, it says, “The Big Nurse’s eyes swelled out as he got close. . .
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
[9] The hospital ward is likened to that of a democratic community by those in power. [10] Both terms of castration are used in description of the Nurse's desire to emasculate and thus gain power over the men. [11] He has a stutter as a result of his persecution from society. [12] A metaphorical representation of society as a machine, from the narrative voice Bromden.