“Bromden’s point-of-view is necessary to make the characters big enough to be equal to their job” (Kesey). The reliability of the narrator, Chief Bromden, in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been debated between different parties since the novel was published in 1962. It is unknown to most people whether to believe that everything Bromden states in his account is the truth or mere figments of his imagination. The author, Ken Kesey, purposely wrote Bromden as the narrator for a specific purpose. He did not want the narrator of this novel to be similar to any conventional novel written before its time. There are many arguments on both sides, but Bromden’s narration both highlights and detracts from his reliability at the same time. …show more content…
Because Chief Bromden is believed to be deaf by the mental ward associates, he goes along with the façade and plays the “deaf and dumb” card to gain information. For example, he is assigned to clean the room during staff meetings and is able to learn about Nurse Ratched’s strategy for dealing with the shenanigans put in place by McMurphy. He is able to learn that Nurse Ratched has planned a strategy to not send McMurphy to Disturbed and initiate what he expects her to do. The eavesdropping Bromden performs allows for foreshadowing of events that are to come in the rest of the novel. His mental viewpoint becomes fascinated with what is considered different or out of place in the ward. This allows him to give vivid and meticulous details of the actions of the various patients, especially McMurphy. Bromden’s insight into what takes place behind closed doors and his detailed account of those events add to his reliability as the narrator of the story. His descriptions reveal how he thinks throughout the novel and show how his mind process changes from the beginning to the …show more content…
His schizophrenic condition that put him into the mental institution causes for instability on whether he is suffering from paranoia or not during his narration of McMurphy’s story. On the other hand, he is able to pull of the “deaf and dumb” frontage to the ward employees and gain insight into what others would not be able to obtain information on. His insider point of view gives the reader a multitude of details concerning both events posed in the ward and his own thought process. Chief Bromden’s mental condition also allows for the depiction on the difference between reality and fantasy, allowing the reader to tell what actually happened and what did not. His unusual thinking makes the reader know what the actual truth is. The reader is able to question Bromden’s reliability, as well as trusting his account. Chief Bromden’s mental illness may draw away the reader’s trust in his point of view, but it also adds a sense of affirmation to the events presented from the detailed descriptions and difference in sense of
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a novel containing the theme of emotions being played with in order to confine and change people. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about a mental institution where a Nurse named Miss Ratched has total control over its patients. She uses her knowledge of the patients to strike fear in their minds. Chief Bromden a chronic who suffers from schizophrenia and pretends to be deaf and mute narrates the novel. From his perspective we see the rise and fall of a newly admitted patient, RP McMurphy. McMurphy used his knowledge and courage to bring changes in the ward. During his time period in the ward he sought to end the reign of the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, also to bring the patients back on their feet. McMurphy issue with the ward and the patients on the ward can be better understood when you look at this novel through a psychoanalytic lens. By applying Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence to McMurphy’s views, it is can be seen that his ideas can bring change in the patients and they can use their
...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.
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
He values this trait in others too, and when the Chief sees just how deceiving McMurphy can be, he is dumbfounded. Just as quick as he trusted McMurphy in the first place, Bromden lost his trust once he saw the con man for what he really is. This can be applied to everyday life as well, because there are so many scams out in the world that people are afraid to trust others. Once Chief Bromden sees what McMurphy is capable of, the Chief understands why the Big Nurse is so skeptical of him. McMurphy always acts according to his ethics, which consist of maintaining having the upper hand in all situations. The narrator provides indirect characterization for McMurphy. By describing his actions and how the man thinks, the reader can interpret McMurphy’s behavior to discover some of his traits. Since McMurphy plays with the thinking of others, I can infer that he is sly and calculating. Additionally, since McMurphy looked reluctant to bet, I can infer that the man is skilled in acting, because he obviously knew the outcome of the bet but pretended
This essay will be exploring the text One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey and the film Dead poet’s society written by Tom Schulman. The essay will show how the authors use over exaggerated wildcard characters such as McMurphy and Keating. The use of different settings such as an insane asylum and an all-boys institution. And Lastly the use of fore shading to show how the authors can use different texts to present similar ideas in different ways.
Some people are what you may call "normal", some are depressed, some are mentally ill, and some are just plain old crazy. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey, the author shows how people can act so differently and have different ways of dealing with their problems. The story is narrated by Chief Bromden who is thought to be deaf and dumb. He tells of a man by the name of R. P. McMurphy, who was a con man, and was convicted of statutory rape. He told the officials that, "she was 18 and very willing if you know what I mean."( ) He was sent to a work farm, where he would spend some time, working off his crime. Since he was so lazy, he faked being insane and was transferred to a mental ward, somewhere near Portland, Oregon. On his arrival he finds some of the other members of the asylum to be almost "normal" and so he tries to make changes to the ward; even though the changes he is trying to make are all at his own expense. As time goes on he gets some of the other inmates to realize that they aren't so crazy and this gets under the skin of the head nurse. Nurse Ratched (the head nurse) and McMurphy have battle upon battle against each other to show who is the stronger of the two. He does many things to get the other guys to leave the ward. First he sets up a fishing trip for some of them, then sets up a basketball team, along with many smaller problems and distractions. Finally Nurse Ratched gives him all he can handle and he attacks her.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
Throughout the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief Bromden is stuck in the “fog” living in his past memories. Bromden views Nurse Ratched as the time keeper, able to speed up or slow down the clock in turn making time unbearable at times. The only escape he has is the “fog” where time does not exist (Kesey 75). These hallucinations of the fog have Bromden believe that the other patients are lost in the fog as well. These thoughts are delusional of Bromden; however, metaphorically they hold true. Nurse Ratched maintains a status quo that tends to dilute the patients senses and her routine makes the time seem to go by too fast or too slow. These situations are the reason Bromden uses the fog to escape; it provides him a haven and often times a happy place where he reminisces of the times he spent with his father. Although the fog helps Bromden escape it also sometimes brings back memories of the war and the sounds he heard when he was under attack. There’s a similarity between the enemies of war and Nurse Ratched in which he feels he can’t be harmed when he’s hiding in the fog.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. John Clark Pratt. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1996. Print. Viking Critical Library.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey begins with a short introduction by the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden is a half Indian Chronic at the ward. Chronics are patients that have been in the ward for so long that people assume that they will never check out. During the time that Bromden was there, he acted as a dumb deaf mute without being caught by anyone. Though his condition does not seem as bad as some of the other Chronics—some were vegetables—it was evident that Bromden had problems with hallucinations and delusions from the final line of the first chapter, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”
Chief Bromden begins to develop a sense of existence. Before, Chief Bromden is described as a patient who is deaf. Because everyone assumes that Chief Bromden can not hear, Chief is able to listen to all the information that is kept from other patients inside the ward: “they don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb… I’m cagey enough to fool them that much” (3). Due to his “impaired hearing”, no individual at the ward approaches Chief because
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.
An exceptionally tall, Native American, Chief Bromden, trapped in the Oregon psychiatric ward, suffers from the psychological condition of paranoid schizophrenia. This fictional character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest struggles with extreme mental illness, but he also falls victim to the choking grasp of society, which worsens Bromden’s condition. Paranoid schizophrenia is a rare mental illness that leads to heavy delusions and hallucinations among other, less serious, symptoms. Through the love and compassion that Bromden’s inmate, Randle Patrick McMurphy, gives Chief Bromden, he is able to briefly overcome paranoid schizophrenia and escape the dehumanizing psychiatric ward that he is held prisoner in.
According to psychologist, Sigmund Freud, there are three main parts that make up a human’s personality: the id, ego, and superego. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the narrator of the story, Chief Bromden, represents each of these traits. In the beginning, Bromden only thinks of himself as any other crazy man, who no one pays attention to, but throughout the story Bromden develops mentally through all three stages of Freud’s personality analysis, maybe not in Freud’s preferred order, but he still represents them all.
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