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Set in an unnamed Oregon psych ward, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesley presents many characters who display apparent madness and irrational behavior. Although Chief Bromden is the story's narrator, he cannot be fully trusted because his reliability is in question. Throughout the novel, Bromden is prone to hallucinations. In the psych ward, Bromden is aware of his surroundings, but pretends to be deaf and mute for the majority of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden is scared, paranoid, and often bullied by the workers in the psych ward, but by the end of the novel, Bromden recovers enough personal strength and will to euthanize Randle McMurphy, another patient in the psych ward and escape from the hospital. Bromden’s …show more content…
apparent madness and mental instability is seen throughout the novel, but his delusion and eccentric behavior can be judged as reasonable. Throughout the novel, Bromden is liable to hallucinations, most of which involve the Combine. The Combine, an invention of Bromden’s paranoia, is a matrix which allows civil wars to erupt within the ward at the whim of a huge bureaucratic, unnamed “machine” government. The fog that descends in Bromden’s mind while he is hallucinating is a metaphor for Bromden's lack of mental clarity, thickening whenever he becomes less stable, receding as he gains confidence. “They start the fog machine again and it’s snowing down cold and white all over me like skim milk, so thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn’t have a hold on me. I can’t see six inches in front of me through the fog...” (Page 7). In this scene, Bromden is taken to be shaved. There is no expressed need for Bromden to be shaved; this comes off as an arbitrary exercise of control on behalf of Nurse Ratched, who rules their ward with an iron fist. When something is put on Bromden’s temples, it reminds him of electroshock therapy, and this terrifies him—signaling both the way that Ratched uses the threat of pain as a measure of control and foreboding electroshock therapy to come. The hallucinatory fog symbolizes the control of the Combine that plagues Bromden. Through the majority of the novel, Bromden chooses to pretend to be deaf and mute. It is significant that Bromden chooses to remain silent, representing the quiescent persons of society who relinquish their own voices when confronted with authority. Before the arrival of McMurphy, the Bromden describes himself hidden in a fog of fear and madness, withdrawn into his imagination, pretending to be deaf and mute.
After fifteen years inside the ward, he can no longer communicate externally using the language of reason; he has become socially dysfunctional. Bromden has seen too much: he has seen the government take away the land from his tribe; he has seen his father destroyed by that; and he has seen the horror of war. His vision turned inward, and it was through this insight that the reader had access through the Bromden’s narration. “I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” (8). At this point the reader has already gotten a glimpse of Bromden’s paranoia, from the novel’s opening lines, as well as a sense that he is not seeing things from an everyday perspective. In this passage Bromden asserts himself as the narrator of the novel. The last line of the quote is Bromden’s request that the reader keep an open mind. His hallucinations provide metaphorical insight into the hidden realities of the hospital and should not be overlooked simply because they did not actually …show more content…
happen. Another moment when the conventional notion of sanity is interrogated by the novel occurs when the Chief finally speaks for the first time in fifteen years. He tells McMurphy about the Combine and how it destroyed his father and displaced their tribe. He asks McMurphy, "I been talkin crazy, ain't I?” (209). McMurphy's response breaks down the distinction between "crazy" and "sense" between reason and unreason: “‘Yeah, Chief ...you been talkin' crazy.’ ‘It wasn't what I wanted to say. I can't say it all. It don't make sense’ ‘I didn't say it didn't make sense, Chief, I just said it was talkin' crazy.’” (210) To the Bromden, his belief in the reality of the Combine is not just a "crazy" conspiracy theory.
Although he admits it does not make sense, to him, the Combine is what he fears for the majority of the novel. It is not until the final scenes of the novel that Bromden overcomes his fear of the Combine. In the final segment of the novel, McMurphy had been lobotomized, and the men can’t recognize him because this isn’t McMurphy— this is the shell of the person he once was. Ratched, effectively, had him killed. Bromden knows that she did this so he would be a half-living example of what happens when you go against her, and McMurphy would never want that, so Bromden smothers McMurphy, and euthanizes him. Bromden's suffocation of McMurphy is therefore an act of mercy. Bromden then throws the control panel out the window and escapes from the hospital. The throwing the control panel out the window shows the progress of the men in the book. The control panel—a symbol of the mechanized ward and the machine-like Combine—was once impossible to lift, but Bromden who gained his internal strength back was able to lift it and throw it out the window. His final line of the novel completes his journey in the psych ward: “I been away a long time.’ (311). His final line is true both literally and figuratively: he’s been away from home because he has been in a psych ward for over fifteen years, and that whole time he has been mentally absent. This last line to the novel shows the transition from
the scared, cowardly person he was in the beginning of the novel, to the strong clear-headed person who escaped the hospital. At the end of the novel, the fog in Bromden’s mind had cleared, and he had changed as a person. Although throughout the novel, Bromden is an unreliable narrator, his unreliability is essential to the development to plot, characters, and themes throughout the novel. Bromden’s point of view gives the reader an insight to the psych ward from an unstable mind, which shows how the behaviors of Bromden as well as the other characters could be considered reasonable.
The novel that Kesey wrote is focused on how Bromden’s past memories should not let him down, but to gather his strength and let go of the past to start anew. Kesey builds up the encouragement through the help on McMurphy in order for Bromden to face reality with the hallucinations, to Nurse Ratched’s authorities, and the use of symbolism.
Gautama Buddha once said, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” One’s self esteem is reflected by their actions throughout their lives. Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, depicts how a new patient, R.P. McMurphy, is trying to free himself and his fellow patients from the manipulation of Nurse Ratched. Alongside McMurphy is Chief Bromden, a massive Native American, checking into the ward for being “deaf and dumb.” Chief Bromden is well known for having a low self esteem. Because of observing McMurphy’s reckless actions and carefree personality, Bromden slowly releases himself from his negativity. Bromden’s growth is portrayed to some extent in Milos Forman’s movie adaptation of the movie; however, Forman’s presentation was lacking in detail as opposed to the novel. Because of Forman’s abridging of the film, the viewer’s knowledge of Bromden’s change is limited.
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.”
After he escapes the ward, Bromden returns back to his own home. With McMurphy’s help and friendship, Bromden is able to adapt McMurphy’s words and is able to start a new life as a real individual. Not only is he able to escape and return to home with his family, he also overcomes his own psychosis. Similar to Susanna Kaysen, Bromden becomes an individual who helps out other patients at the ward accomplishing their goal. Bromden surpasses the final stage of Maslow’s hierarchy needs, which is self-actualization. He realizes his personal potential, self-fulfillment, leading him to grow up as a responsible adult through his
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a catatonic half-Indian man whom everybody thinks is deaf and dumb. He often suffers from hallucinations in which he feels that the room is filled with fog. The institution is dominated by Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse), a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed 'gambling fool' who has just come from a work farm at Pendleton. He introduces himself to the other men on the ward, including Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year old man who stutters and appears very young. Nurse Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
[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.
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.
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 choice that a novelist makes in deciding the point of view for a novel is hardly a minor one. Few authors make the decision to use first person narration by secondary character as Ken Kesey does in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. By choosing Bromden as narrator instead of the central character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, Kesey gives us narration that is objective, that is to say from the outside of the central character, and also narration that is subjective and understandably unreliable. The paranoia and dementia that fill Bromden's narration set a tone for the struggle for liberation that is the theme of the story. It is also this choice of narrator that leads the reader to wonder at the conclusion whether the story was actually that of McMurphy or Bromden. Kesey's choice of narrative technique makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a successful novel.
In the novel, Kesey suggests that a healthy expression of sexuality is a key component of sanity and that repression of sexuality leads directly to insanity. For example; by treating him like an infant and not allowing him to develop sexually, Billy Bibbet's mother causes him to lose his sanity. Missing from the halls of the mental hospital are healthy, natural expression of sexuality between two people. Perverted sexual expressions are said to take place in the ward; for example; Bromden describes the aides as "black boys in white suites committing sex acts in the hall" (p.9). The aides engage in illicit "sex acts" that nobody witnesses, and on several occasions it is suggested that they rape the patients, such as Taber. Nurse Ratched implicitly permits this to happen, symbolized by the jar of Vaseline she leaves the aides. This shows how she condones the sexual violation of the patients, because she gains control from their oppression. McMurphy's sanity is symbolized by his bold and open insertion of sexuality which gives him great confidence and individuality. This stands in contrast to what Kesey implies, ironically and tragically, represents the institution.
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
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
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.