ClassicNote on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is narrated by Chief Bromden (also known as Chief Broom), a mute Indian known for mopping the mental institution where he is confined. The black boys in white suits who work in the ward mock Chief Broom; they think that he is deaf and dumb and cannot hear them. Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) enters. Her lips and her fingernails are both a funny color of orange, and she carries a woven wicker bag filled with pills, needles, wire and forceps. She moves with precise, automatic gestures. Her face is smooth and calculated, but she has large breasts that seem out of place. She orders the black boys to shave Chief Bromden, who quickly disappears. As he hides, he thinks about his father and the Columbia River. One of the black boys finds him, and they start to shave him. He hallucinates that there is an Air Raid and that the fog machine starts again. In the first chapter, Kesey sets up the structure of the mental institution where the novel takes place. The authority figure is clearly Nurse Ratched, as yet known only as Big Nurse, a woman whose characteristics seem barely human. Kesey makes everything about Nurse Ratched mechanical and automated, such as her robotic movements and precise speech.
She is a symbol of bureaucracy and authority in general. However, even within this first chapter there are indications that behind this seemingly inhuman fa?ade there is some great instability. Chief Bromden seems to believe that Nurse Ratched is ready to snap at the black boys at any moment, and her large breasts, the one incongruous part of her appearance, show that she is incapable of fully separating herself from normal human characteristics. The ‘black boys,’ the workers at the institution, serve Nurse Ratched out of fear; however, their most prominent characteristic is a complete hatred for all around them. Unlike Nurse Ratched, they are sadistic, if only because Nurse Ratched is incapable of feeling any pleasure from the pain she inflicts. This makes them a more immediate danger to patients such as Chief Bromden, but also more vulnerable. They suffer from the same human failings that Nurse Ratched has suppressed. Although Chief Bromden is the narrator of the tale, his descriptions cannot be fully trusted. He is obviously unreliable, as shown when he hallucinates the Air Raid and the fog machine. The fog represents Bromden’s own mental clarity; it will recur whenever Chief Bromden becomes less stable and recede whenever he becomes more coherent. It is significant that Chief Bromden is silent, for he represents the more passive elements of society that submit to authority (Nurse Ratched).
The Essay on Nurse Ratched Chief Esteem Mcmurphy
... challenges what her job description asks of her. Nurse Ratched hand picks her staff (black boys). A patient by the name of Taber is ... normal. To be 'normal' is to be accepted by 'society'. Chief Bromden calls society the 'combine'. He has been institutionalised because he ... and confidence that would soon boost their self-esteem greatly. Chief Bromden's lack of self-esteem would lead to him wanting to ...
When the fog clears, Chief Bromden realizes that he hasn’t been taken to the ‘Shock Shop’ for electroshock treatment. An escort brings in another patient for admission. Nurse Ratched orders the new patient to get a shower. This patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, jokes about how every place he goes, whether the courthouse or the jail, he has to have a shower. He introduces himself as a ‘gambling fool’ and takes out a pack of cards. He tells them that he has come from the Pendleton. Cheswick, another patient, gathers McMurphy’s cards. McMurphy has red hair, and wears pants and a shirt from a work-farm, as well as a leather jacket. McMurphy brags that he’s a psychopath. Randall Patrick McMurphy is the protagonist of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and is the antithesis of everything that Nurse Ratched represents. He is exuberant, vital and vulgar. Everything in his personality suggests great energy and lack of control. If Nurse Ratched represents a bureaucratic and corporate mindset, McMurphy represents the counterculture, with his liberated mindset and vitality. Although McMurphy brags that he is a psychopath, this self-diagnosis already seems unlikely: he is clearly boisterous and entertaining, as he starts to con the other patients as soon as he enters, but the question of McMurphy’s sanity will be a major theme of the novel.
The Essay on Big Nurse Mcmurphy Patients Ratched
Randle McMurphy's Role As A Savior In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest Randle McMurphy's role as a savior in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest Thesis Statement: Through his laughter and struggle with the Big Nurse, Randle McMurphy shows the other characters in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest that they can think and act for themselves. I. Introduction A. Preview ...
The younger patients, known as Acutes because the doctors figure them still sick enough to be fixed, practice arm wrestling. Billy Bibbit tries to roll a cigarette, while Martini walks around. The Chronics are in the hospital for good, whether Walkers, like Chief Broom, for Vegetables. Some of the Chronics were once Acutes, but got fouled up by electroshock therapy. Ruckly and Ellis are Chronics who were once Acute, but suffered greatly from shock treatment. Now Ruckly can only say “ffff*censored* da wife” in a low, disturbing tone. Colonel Matterson is the oldest chronic, a World War I veteran, but Chief Broom has been there the longest. McMurphy goes around to the Acutes, asking which one is the craziest, the bull goose loony. Billy Bibbit, a young man who stutters, introduces McMurphy to Harding, the president of the patient’s council. Harding is a flat, nervous man, a college graduate. McMurphy tells Harding that there isn’t room enough for two bull goose loonies, and McMurphy will be it. They compete to show their lunacy by claiming to vote for Eisenhower. McMurphy introduces himself to everybody, even the Chronics, and asks Chief Bromden what his story is.
Harding tells McMurphy that Bromden is only half Indian, and that he’s deaf and dumb. Nurse Ratched summons McMurphy, and tells him that he must take his admission shower, for everybody must follow the rules. He says that’s what everyone tells him as soon as they figure he’s about to do the exact opposite. Having described the support staff of the hospital, Chief Bromden turns to the patients who inhabit the institution. Most of the patients are Acutes, meaning that they have the possibility for rehabilitation and release, but Bromden makes the important point that they also have the possibility of becoming worse because of their stay at the hospital, as demonstrated by Ruckly and Ellis. Among the patients, Billy Bibbit and Harding stand out as important characters, both of whom will play major roles in the novel. The role of Billy Bibbit in the narrative will become clear in subsequent chapters, but Kesey makes the point that Harding is significant because of his role as the leader of the patients. Harding leads the patient by the authority of his education, but McMurphy already begins to usurp his power through his charisma and ebullience. Kesey makes clear the lines of conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.
The Term Paper on Nurse Ratched Mcmurphy Chief Patients
... her. If, as Harding says, the patients are victims of a matriarchy, Nurse Ratched is certainly the head matriarch. But even McMurphy comes to ... to make the Chief's own hands larger. The title McMurphy claims, Bull Goose Looney, with its connotations of strength and ... hand rises, he at first claims McMurphy is pulling it with invisible strings, just as Nurse Ratched might have. Then he corrects ...
Nurse Ratched represents rules and order, while McMurphy represents anarchy and disobedience. Yet a more important characteristic that McMurphy demonstrates is showmanship. In this chapter he grasps for attention, behaving like a politician on a campaign stop. This characteristic will cause McMurphy to be an easy target for those in the institution, particularly Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched prepares hypodermic needles as a nurse asks her opinion of McMurphy. She claims McMurphy is a manipulator who will use everyone and everything to his own ends. She claims that sometimes a manipulator’s own ends are the actual disruption of the ward. The nurse, Miss Flinn, asks what his motive would be, but Nurse Ratched reminds her that his is an insane asylum. Chief Bromden notes how Nurse Ratched his complete control of the staff of the ward, which he calls the Combine. Even the doctors are obedient to her. She chooses the black boys for their hate. The black boys soon come closer to Nurse Ratched’s frequency and need no instructions. Each morning Nurse Ratched dispenses medications. Mr. Taber demands to know what is in his medication, but she refuses to say. Instead she says that there are means to take the medicine other than orally.
The black boys force him to take the medicine. Chief Bromden claims that the ward is a place to fix mistakes made in the neighborhoods, the schools and the churches. Kesey continues to portray Nurse Ratched as an unfeeling and bureaucratic woman. She is dispassionate and analytical, concerned primarily with the smooth functioning of the ward over any personal concerns. Her main insecurity involves the balance of power in the asylum. McMurphy is a threat to Nurse Ratched because he proves dangerous to the autocratic control she exerts over the others. The black boys, the nurses and even the doctors are completely submissive to Nurse Ratched’s authority. It is notable that Nurse Ratched’s control is based as much on intimidation and hatred as efficiency, as demonstrated in this chapter by her threat against Mr. Taber. Chief Bromden opens the critique of the mental institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to a larger societal critique. The social criticism of the events in the novel in general involves the idea that the institution is a microcosm for the rest of society, but Kesey also makes the explicit connection between the institution and other societal organizations.
The Essay on Nurse Ratched Mcmurphy Patients Room
... that Nurse Ratched manipulates against her. Nevertheless, Chief Bromden emphasizes that no matter what McMurphy gains, his struggles are inevitably in vain, for Nurse Ratched has ... this game of Monopoly demonstrates. Chapter Eleven: McMurphy keeps high-class manners around the nurses and black boys in spite of what they might ...
The mental institution is meant to repair damage done by churches, schools and families, but operates under the same conditions as these organizations and thus suffers the same problems. Nurse Ratched calls a meeting for the ward. She interrupts Pete Bancini, who complains that he is tired, and tells the black boys to quiet him. Nobody will look at Nurse Ratched except for McMurphy, who still has his cap and deck of cards. Nurse Ratched starts the meeting by examining Harding’s problems. She reiterates how Harding is concerned about his well-endowed young wife and the attention she receives, as well as his own feelings of inferiority. Nurse Ratched asks for comments, and McMurphy raises his hand. He introduces himself as a Korea veteran dishonorably discharged for insubordination and convicted for statutory rape. McMurphy argues with Dr. Spivey about who was the aggressor in that case, him or the young girl. Dr. Spivey questions whether McMurphy is merely a sane man feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of farm work. Nurse Ratched tells McMurphy the theory of the Therapeutic Community, how a person has to learn to get along in a group before he will be able to function in a normal society.
Bancini claims that he’s tired once again. He is a fifty year old man who has been a Chronic all of his life; his brain was damaged during childbirth. Nurse Ratched orders the black boys to take him for treatment after he starts ranting and raving. After the meeting, McMurphy asks if the meeting procedure is always like a ‘pecking party,’ but Harding defends Nurse Ratched. He claims that she is a strict middle-aged lady, but no monster. McMurphy tells Harding that Ratched has him by the balls. Harding claims that Nurse Ratched is a ‘veritable angel of mercy’ who is ‘unselfish as the wind’ but finally admits that McMurphy is right, but nobody has come out and say it before. Harding relates how Dr. Spivey is exactly like the patients, afraid of Nurse Ratched, and is also addicted to Demerol. Harding compares the patients to rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need a strong wolf like Nurse Ratched to teach them their place. McMurphy tells the men that they are not crazy at all. Harding relates the tools that Ratched uses to gain submission from the patients, including domination and even electroshock therapy (EST).
The Essay on Nurse Ratched Patients Mcmurphy Bromden
Chief Bromden, the half-Indian narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, has been a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital for fifteen years. During this time, he has pretended to be deaf and dumb. When he was a child, three government officials came to see his father about buying the tribe's land so they could build a hydroelectric dam. Bromden, ten years old at the time, was home alone. ...
McMurphy bets the patients that he can get Nurse Ratched to show some vulnerability within a week. The ward meetings demonstrate the intimidation and domination techniques that Nurse Ratched uses to exert her control over the asylum inmates. The meeting begins with Nurse Ratched selecting a patient and humiliating him by describing his personal and psychological problems, then with Nurse Ratched asking the other patients to comment on the problems she has described. The purpose of this is to pit the patients against one another, thus fostering a sense of discord among the patients so that they remain submissive to her. McMurphy accurately describes it as a pecking party, for the patients are to attack each other as a distraction from the control which she exerts over them. The other patients, in particular Harding, realize Nurse Ratched’s domination, but blindly accept this as either necessary or unstoppable. They even show that Nurse Ratched has control over the doctors and administrative staff of the hospital. She is part of a matriarchy, an observation by Harding that relates to his earlier explained sexual difficulties. However, they accept Nurse Ratched’s control because they believe it to be necessary.
This demonstrates the major problem that most of the patients face: they believe themselves to be weak and in need of an authority to control them, but in fact are capable of independent action. McMurphy remains the exception to this; he alone resists Nurse Ratched’s control. This independence marks him as possibly sane, and even Dr. Spivey believe that McMurphy may be feigning insanity to keep out of the work-farm. Kesey clearly portrays McMurphy as sane, if dangerous and anarchic. Bromden relates how Nurse Ratched can set the wall clock at whatever speed she chooses just by turning a dial in the door. She generally slows things down. The speakers on the ceiling are playing music loudly, so McMurphy complains to Harding, who explains that they hear music nearly all the time, and never the news because that might not be therapeutic. McMurphy goes into the Nurses’ Station to complain, and one of the nurses, Miss Pilbow, tells him to stay back, since she is a Catholic (she thinks that McMurphy is a sex maniac).
The Term Paper on Nurse Ratched Mcmurphy Inmates Chief
... Trying to evoke an apology from McMurphy and Chief Bromden for keeping another patient from having an enema, Nurse Ratched fails and angrily sends the two ... men to have electro-shock therapy. Although McMurphy ...
He is merely picking up a watering can that the nurse dropped. McMurphy realizes that Chief Bromden is not deaf, because he jumps whenever McMurphy claims that one of the black boys is coming for him. Chief Bromden’s suggestion that Nurse Ratched can control the clocks at the ward show that Chief Bromden is often unreliable as a narrator, but nevertheless remains consistent with Ratched’s domineering and controlling character. Harding continues to serve as an expository device; it is he who explains to McMurphy the reasons for many of the events at the institution, such as the music. Kesey develops another contrast between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in this chapter. His confrontation with Nurse Pilbow underscores that Ratched represents sexuality, as compared to the passionless and repressed Nurse Ratched. For the first time in a long while Chief Bromden goes to sleep without taking the little red capsule usually given to him. That night Chief Bromden sees the workers lifting up Blasctic, one of the Vegetables, onto a hook and slicing him open with a scalpel. No blood comes out, only glass, rust and ashes. Bromden thinks of waking up everyone, but thinks that the workers would do the same to him.
Public Relation looks at Blastic and laughs as other strange things occur. Mr. Turkle pulls Bromden out of the fog, telling him that he was having a bad dream. This chapter once again serves to show that Chief Bromden is an unreliable narrator. Although some of the details of his observation are true, others are pure fantasy; Bromden fears that the workers are using the Vegetables for ghastly experiments and will do the same to him. However, Kesey makes it indisputably clear that Bromden is having a hallucination in this chapter when Mr. Turkle, the night watchman, wakes him. The next morning, McMurphy is awake early, singing. Most of the people on the ward have not heard singing in years. Bromden wonders why the black boys let him make such news, but realizes that McMurphy is different. He may be as vulnerable, but the Combine didn’t get to him. McMurphy asks for toothpaste to brush his teeth, but the black boy tells him that it’s ward policy to have the toothpaste locked up, only to be used at a certain time. McMurphy mocks the black boys question “what would it be like if everybody was to brush their teeth whenever they felt like it?” Nurse Ratched arrives and the black boy tells him how Blastic died the night before and how McMurphy has been confrontational. Nurse Ratched hears McMurphy singing. He steps out of the shower in a towel and stands in front of her. She tells him he can’t run around here in a towel, and he prepares to drop it (he had shorts on the entire time).
He tells her that someone stole his clothes. She screams at Mr. Washington, one of the black boys, ordering him to get McMurphy a new set of clothes. McMurphy serves to expose some of the inanity of ward policies in this chapter; he places the workings of the ward in terms of a person’s ability to make rational decisions by demonstrating the absurdity of not allowing patients to brush their teeth whenever they choose. As Chief Bromden indicates, McMurphy is different from the other characters, not taken in by the Combine. McMurphy’s antisocial history may play a large part in this; he has not had the experience of drudge work and responsibility to subdue him. This is a particular contrast to Hrading, whose sense of responsibility plays a large role in determining his difficulties. The confrontation between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy centers around sexual grounds; one of the major themes of the novel is the contrast between liberated and repressed sexuality. By appearing in front of Nurse Ratched wearing only a towel and threatening to lose even that covering, McMurphy confronts her with the sexuality she attempts to suppress. That McMurphy is wearing boxer shorts shows that he knows this is a particular vulnerability for Nurse Ratched.
Significantly, this is the first moment in which Nurse Ratched begins to show any sense of strain or tension. McMurphy thus begins his work to make Big Nurse unravel, as he had earlier bet the other patients he could do. McMurphy clowns around during breakfast, embarrassing Billy Bibbit by claiming that Billy is known as “Billy Club” Bibbit of the famous fourteen inches. McMurphy bets the other patients that he can fling a dab of butter in the center of the face of the clock. He appears to miss, but the butter slides down to the clock, hitting the face. McMurphy complains to Nurse Ratched about the music, but she tells him that he is being selfish, for there are older men who couldn’t hear the radio at all if it were lower, and the music is all that they have. He suggests that the patients be allowed to take their card games someplace else, such as the room where the tables are stored, but she tells him that they do not have adequate personnel for two day rooms. McMurphy has an interview with the doctor, and during the daily meeting the doctor tells the patients that he and McMurphy went to the same high school, and were reminiscing about the school’s carnivals.
He suggests a similar carnival for the ward. The patients reluctantly like the idea. Nurse Ratched tells the doctor that an idea like this should be discussed in a staff meeting first. Dr. Spivey also mentions how McMurphy was concerned that the older fellows couldn’t hear the radio. When Dr. Spivey mentioned that the younger men complained about the noise, McMurphy then suggested opening a second day room, a game room. Dr. Spivey believes that there is sufficient staff to cover two rooms. When they return to the normal business of the meeting, Nurse Ratched’s hands seem to shake. Chief Bromden thinks that she shows weakness or worry, but realizes that this makes no difference, for she has the Combine behind her. Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest can be construed as a parable pitting the counterculture (McMurphy) against the establishment (Ratched), to view the novel in these terms is too simplistic. If McMurphy is a challenge to the establishment, he nevertheless attempts to work within it. His request to have the music volume lowered is rational and diplomatic, while his counterproposal to open the tub room as a game room for the patients is also a viable option.
Nevertheless, Nurse Ratched is less interested in working with McMurphy than in demonstrating her dominance over him. She will not allow McMurphy these concessions, for to do so would empower him. Her interest is not in the patients, but rather in perpetuating her own sense of control, as shown by her apparent dislike of any idea that is not her own. It is only when McMurphy finds his proposals will be immediately dismissed that he manipulates the system by using Dr. Spivey, but even in this case he uses the established system, however instrumentally for his own ends, instead of challenging it. This method is particularly infuriating to Nurse Ratched and the impetus for the sudden crack in her steel fa?ade. McMurphy uses the system that Nurse Ratched manipulates against her. Nevertheless, Chief Bromden emphasizes that no matter what McMurphy gains, his struggles are inevitably in vain, for Nurse Ratched has the power of the Combine, thus society, behind her. McMurphy plays Monopoly with Harding, Martini, Scanlon and Cheswick. Martini hallucinates, thinking that he sees things on the board. Even when McMurphy cannot gamble, he finds some way to ‘bet’ with the other patients and gain money, as this game of Monopoly demonstrates.
McMurphy keeps high-class manners around the nurses and black boys in spite of what they might say to him, in spite of every trick they pull to get him to lose his temper. McMurphy begins to see how funny the rules are. McMurphy will be safe as long as he can laugh. Only once does he become angry: at one of the group meetings, he becomes angry at the other patients for acting too cagey and ‘chicken-*censored*.’ McMurphy had wanted to change the schedule around so that the men could watch the World Series during the day and do the cleaning work at night. McMurphy expects the nurses to oppose him, but does not expect the Acutes to not say a thing. McMurphy attempts to round up a vote for a schedule change, but they fail to see the use in doing anything. He confronts Harding, for he believes his failure to support McMurphy indicates that he is afraid of Nurse Ratched. Billy Bibbit claims that nothing they could do will be of any use in the long run. McMurphy claims that he’s going to break out of the institution by lifting up the control panel in the tub room and throwing it through the window. He tries to lift it, but it weighs far too much. Kesey moves the social criticism in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to a different level in this chapter by demonstrating that Nurse Ratched is not the only obstacle that McMurphy faces to effect social change.
The apathy of the other patients proves a burden to McMurphy, for they do not have the energy to support changes in ward policy that they actually do want. They take Billy Bibbit’s position that any action that they may take is useless. This chapter in particular suits a Marxist interpretation of the novel. If Nurse Ratched and the other administrative staff represent the ruling class in the institution, the patients are certainly the proletariat, an unformed mass that must be exhorted to collective action. McMurphy will serve as the driving force for creating this solidarity and will for action among the patients. The control panel in the tub room will prove significant later in the novel. Kesey includes this early mention of it as foreshadowing for later events; although McMurphy cannot lift it, there may be others who can. Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen: Public Relation shows a visiting doctor the institution, and has him examine Chief Bromden. Public Relation claims that there would have to be something wrong with a man who would want to run away from a place as nice as this. The fog gets worse for Chief Bromden, who thinks that McMurphy cannot understand that the fog does keep the patients safe.
One of the patients, Old Rawler, kills himself. Kesey presents these chapters in short succession. Two of these contain little more than a paragraph. This serves to show the disjointed nature of Chief Bromden’s observations. He presents only brief glimpses of events that occur in the institution, none of which contain any great significance. Even the suicide of Old Rawler is largely inconsequential in terms of the plot and atmosphere of the novel. The most important point that Chief Bromden makes is that the ‘insanity’ as represented by the fog is a comfort for the patients. It allows them to recede from the difficulties of reality that McMurphy wants them to face. Bromden relates how the fog machine operates. It is the same as the fog machines he saw during the war, which obscured the surroundings so that nobody could see anything in front of him. Bromden would get lost in the fog and always find himself at the same place. Chief Bromden waits for Nurse Ratched to fog them in again, for they are doing it more and more because McMurphy has nearly roused Cheswick and Harding to the point where they may actually stand up to the black boys. Nurse Ratched discusses with a doctor whether or not McMurphy should be on the ward, for he is upsetting the patients.
During the therapeutic meeting, they try to talk about how Billy Bibbit’s stutter came about. Billy tells about how he flunked out of college because he quit ROTC when he couldn’t answer to his own name, and recalls that the first word that he stuttered was ‘mama.’ Bromden watches Colonel Matterson ramble on about how “the flag is America” and “the cross is Mexico.” Billy continues to talk about his stuttering, telling about how he flubbed a proposal to a girl because he stuttered. Nurse Ratched tells him how his mother spoke about the girl to whom he proposed; this girl was quite beneath him. McMurphy brings up the World Series again, and Nurse Ratched reluctantly allows one more vote on the matter. McMurphy rouses all twenty Acutes to vote for him, but Nurse Ratched claims that this is insufficient, for none of the Chronics vote for him. McMurphy attempts to rouse at least one Chronic to vote for a schedule change, but none respond to anything he says. Finally McMurphy approaches Chief Bromden, who raises his hand. Unfortunately, Nurse Ratched claims that the vote was decided and the meeting is closed. An hour later, it is time for the Series; McMurphy stops work and turns on the television.
Nurse Ratched becomes angry and turns off the television from the controls in the Nurses’ Station, but McMurphy remains there. Finally Nurse Ratched approaches him and scolds him for not obeying her. Mr. Harding sits down beside McMurphy, and Cheswick, Scanlon, Billy Bibbit and the other Acutes join him. Chief Bromden himself joins them by the television. Kesey uses Chief Bromden primarily as a narrator who describes external conditions, and rarely gives insight into Chief Bromden’s own psychology. However, in this chapter Kesey gives some indication of the origin of Chief Bromden’s psychological problems. Bromden relates the imaginary ‘fog machine’ of the mental institution to the fog that surrounded him during wartime. This indicates that Chief Bromden likely suffers from shell-shock caused by his war experience, and it is this shell-shock which prompted him to lose his grip on sanity. Kesey also gives a similar psychological deconstruction of Billy Bibbit. The origin of Billy Bibbit’s problems lead to a strict Freudian interpretation. He is the product of a domineering mother who controls his every action, including deciding which woman is appropriate for him to marry.
That the first word Billy Bibbit stuttered was ‘mama’ is a clear indication that she is the source of his problems. His mother’s apparent collaboration with Nurse Ratched is further evidence that Billy’s mother is the cause of most of his difficulties. McMurphy assumes the role of a revolutionary in this chapter. When he rebels against Nurse Ratched by breaking from the established schedule to watch the World Series, McMurphy finally abandons the rules and regulations of the ward. This rebellion occurs, however, only after it is apparent that McMurphy cannot take part in the supposedly democratic system that Nurse Ratched controls. This is an important point, for it demonstrates that McMurphy is not a random anarchist bent on breaking down any system of governance, but rather a man driven to rebellion by an unfair system around him. Despite Nurse Ratched’s claim that the vote is democratic, her vote includes the Chronics, who have no ability to make a rational choice required of voting. This ensures that Nurse Ratched can maintain the status quo, despite the obvious support for McMurphy. When McMurphy breaks from his schedule to watch the World Series, he makes a definitive break from the ‘government’ of Nurse Ratched.
It is a revolutionary measure on the scale of the institution. The vote for the World Series is a turning point for Chief Bromden, for it is the first point during which he reasserts himself as a functioning person. He does this through his vote for McMurphy, the first definitive, responsive action that Chief Bromden takes during the novel, and continues this pattern when he joins McMurphy and the other Acutes in their protest against Nurse Ratched. This underscores a major theme of the novel, the importance of rational choice. It is the ability to choose that determines one’s status as a rational human being. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in a very significant sense centers around the conflict between McMurphy, who represents this capability for choice, and Nurse Ratched, who does not allow persons to determine decisions for themselves. Everyone watches Nurse Ratched, who is in the Nurses’ Station. There is no more fog in the place. A black boy prods Chief Bromden to continue with his duties, but Bromden doesn’t move until physically prodded to clean the staff room. Chief Bromden goes to the staff room; Nurse Ratched is there for a meeting. One doctor discusses the ‘revolution’ minutes before, and says that McMurphy is no ordinary man that they are dealing with.
Another doctor suggests that McMurphy may be simply a shrewd con man and not mentally ill, but another one says that McMurphy is sick, definitively a Potential Assaultive. The doctor worries that McMurphy may attack him during Individual Therapy. One of the doctors, Gideon, finally decides that they are not dealing with an ordinary man, but Nurse Ratched tells him that he is very, very wrong. She says that McMurphy is not extraordinary, but simply a man and no more subject to all the fears and cowardice and timidity that any other man is subject to, and can be controlled by them. One doctor worries that this could take weeks, but she reminds them that they have weeks, for McMurphy is committed and his time in the hospital is entirely up to them. The fog that Chief Bromden claims to see is a symbol of his incoherence and inability to assert himself, thus when Bromden makes the decision to join the other men in protest of Nurse Ratched, the fog disappears. This decision comes at a cost, however; by making choices Chief Bromden becomes vulnerable, as he realizes. He loses the safety of the fog for the privileges of human choice. Chief Bromden’s choice to present himself once again as deaf and dumb is a tactical move that serves both himself and, for the narrative purposes of the story, Kesey.
Bromden uses the perception that he is deaf and dumb as a tactic to deflect harassment by the black boys, but this perception also allows Chief Bromden access to situations such as the staff meeting that would normally remain secretive. Kesey grants Bromden access to the staff meeting to gives greater insight into both Nurse Ratched and the perceptions of McMurphy. The staff meeting is ironic, for it shows the outright absurdity of the diagnoses of McMurphy. The various doctors use tortured doublespeak that is even internally contradictory, such as “definitely a Potential Assaultive.” They assert the possibility that McMurphy may be sane, perhaps the most accurate diagnosis of him, but conclude this based on the wrong evidence instead of on the correct appraisal that his ability to choose shows his sanity. The discussion of whether McMurphy is or is not ordinary is also ironic, for Nurse Ratched reaches the conclusion that he is ordinary for the wrong reasons. She believes that he is ordinary in the context of the ward because he is insane, but instead McMurphy is ordinary precisely because he is sane. Kesey indicates that there is something special about the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched when she insists that McMurphy stay in her department.
She intends to break McMurphy down by any means possible, no matter how long it may take. This particular obsession with McMurphy shows that he affects Nurse Ratched at some significant level. Kesey constructs One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a struggle between a number of conflicting values that McMurphy and Nurse Ratched represent, such as freedom, sexuality, rational choice for the former and authoritarianism, repression and determinism for the latter. Nurse Ratched’s willing perpetuation of the struggle indicates that she is herself aware of one of at least one of these conflicts. The patients love that McMurphy “got the nurse’s goat the way he said he would.” McMurphy becomes more bold and aggressive, even asking Nurse Ratched the measurements on those breasts she does her best to conceal. However, Nurse Ratched does not lose control again. Bromden thinks that McMurphy may be strong enough to not be defeated by the Combine. Chief Bromden awakes one night to find the ward clean and silent. He gets up and walks over to the window and looks outside. For the first time he realizes how the hospital is out in the country. He watches a dog sniffing around outside until Geever, one of the black boys, and the Catholic nurse put Chief Bromden back in bed.
Chief Bromden thinks about how this nurse goes home and tries to scrub her birthmark away and feels guilty about how a good Catholic girl has these stains. Kesey deals with the theme of sexuality versus repression once again in this chapter, as demonstrated by McMurphy’s question to Nurse Ratched about her breasts and the observations about the Catholic nurse. The observations about the Catholic nurse demonstrate the detrimental effects of such repression; unlike the tightly corseted Nurse Ratched, this nurse demonstrates an intense feeling of guilt about her sexuality. Kesey describes this almost entirely in metaphorical terms of “stains,” with obvious sexual connotations. These various episodes indicate that the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched may exist primarily on sexual grounds of repression versus sensuality. Although McMurphy becomes more bold and seemingly authoritative in this chapter, Nurse Ratched remains calm and reassured, for she knows that she has control over the situation in the long term. She can determine what happens to McMurphy and whether or not he is ever released from the asylum, and thus can tolerate any short-term challenges to her power.
Kesey demonstrates the change in Chief Bromden in this chapter, when the character awakes and watches the dog outside the window. This shows that Chief Bromden is now more aware of the outside world. He can conceive of existence outside of the institution, as he could not before. McMurphy is the primary cause of this change. In the group meetings the other patients bring up longstanding gripes that they had not mentioned for so long. They complain about how the dorms are locked on the weekends, how they are not allowed to go to OT or PT alone, and how they do not have the right to have their own cigarettes. McMurphy notes that Nurse Ratched acts as if she still holds all of the cards up her sleeve. Then, when the patients make their weekly trip to the pool, McMurphy learns that she in fact does. While in the pool McMurphy discusses with a lifeguard how the hospital is better than a jail, but the lifeguard tells him that, at least in jail a person has a definite release date. The lifeguard, who is a patient, tells McMurphy that he was picked up for drunk and disorderly conduct and has been in the institution for nearly nine years. The next day McMurphy surprises everyone by behaving well.
That afternoon, in the group meeting Cheswick complains about how he wants something done about the cigarettes, and whines that they are treating him like a child. Two black boys drag him away to the Disturbed Ward. McMurphy does not say a thing during the meeting; he has given in because it is the smart thing to do. The next time that the inmates go to the pool, Cheswick immediately dives in the pool after telling McMurphy that he wishes something had been done. He gets his fingers stuck in the grate at the bottom of the pool and drowns. Kesey indicates in this chapter the effect that McMurphy has had on the other men in the institution. Because of McMurphy, these men begin to reassert their rights against Nurse Ratched. However, there is a critical difference between Cheswick’s complaints and McMurphy’s conscious rebellion, for Cheswick cannot modulate his complaints. He refuses cease his complaints even when it places him in danger. Although Kesey leaves the actual chronology of the events unclear, he indicates that the black boys took Cheswick to Disturbed to administer shock treatment. This in turn may have rendered Cheswick incoherent, with the subsequent effect that he makes the foolish error of getting his hands stuck in the grate in the swimming pool.
Kesey also allows the strong possibility that Cheswick’s action is suicidal, for his death occurs almost immediately after he jumps in the pool. Cheswick’s death demonstrates the more disturbing consequences of the clarity McMurphy instills in the other patients. The patients regain the ability to assert themselves and make choices, but they also must face the effects of these decisions. McMurphy shows himself to be a pragmatist in this chapter when he concedes to Nurse Ratched and follows her orders. McMurphy’s rebelled against Nurse Ratched partially because he did not foresee that she could control his dismissal from the institution. This power, as earlier established, gave Nurse Ratched the confidence that she could ‘break’ McMurphy, and McMurphy’s change in behavior in this chapter demonstrates that her confidence is well-founded. Sefelt, an epileptic, has a seizure during lunch because he refused to take his medication. Sefelt has been giving his medication to Frederickson. McMurphy asks Frederickson why Sefelt refuses to take his medicine, Dilantin, and he answers that Dilantin makes one’s gums rot. Sefelt must make a choice between having his gums rot or having seizures.
A black boy removes two of Sefelt’s teeth, as Scanlon mentions that you’re “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” In this chapter, Kesey emphasizes the difficulty of the choices that the patients must make. Sefelt chooses not to take his medicine because it causes his gums to rot. However, because Sefelt refuses to take his medicine he has seizures, which cause him to lose his teeth. Sefelt’s choice is thus essentially between bad teeth or bad gums. This illustrates the fatalist attitude of the novel, as exemplified by Scanlon’s glib “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” observation. The clean, calculated movement returns to the ward, as Nurse Ratched reassumes her complete control over the function and operation of the institution. This paragraph-long chapter marks the change in the ward after McMurphy gives up his struggle against Nurse Ratched. She once again reasserts her control over the rest of the patients, for McMurphy knows that to oppose her is to ensure that he will never leave the ward. Chief Bromden goes with the Acutes to the library. One of the black boys brings Harding’s wife into the library.
She is as tall as he is and carries a black purse; her fingernails are blood red. Harding introduces McMurphy to his “counterpart and Nemesis.” Harding tells his wife, Vera, how McMurphy stood up to Nurse Ratched. She scolds her husband for making a mousy squeak when he laughs. This comment makes Harding nervous and jumpy. Vera then asks for a cigarette, and Harding tells her how the cigarettes have been rationed. This causes a fight between Harding and his wife when she asks whether he ever does have enough. He asks her whether she is speaking symbolically. McMurphy offers her a cigarette, and she leans forward to take it so that everyone can see down her blouse. Vera complains that Harding’s friends, “hoity-toity boys with the nice long hair combed so perfectly and the limp little wrists,” keep visiting the house to see him. She suddenly decides to leave. Harding asks McMurphy what he thinks of her, and he replies that she has breasts as big as Nurse Ratched’s. McMurphy gets angry when Harding asks for a more serious answer, telling him that he has worries of his own and he doesn’t want to deal with Harding’s. Later McMurphy admits that he has been suffering from bad dreams the past week.
The confrontation between Harding and his wife centers almost entirely around their sexual problems. Vera Harding serves as an interesting juxtaposition with Nurse Ratched; while Big Nurse is repressed and cold, Vera Harding is imposing in her sexuality. Her blood red fingernails are a complement and contrast to Nurse Ratched’s icy orange polish. Vera Harding intimidates her husband with her sexuality, as when she leans over to get a cigarette so that the other patients can see down her blouse and complains about her husband’s inadequacies, which he perceives to be a sexual metaphor. Vera additionally questions her husband’s sexuality, as when she mentions the boys with “limp wrists” who visit their home. This seems to support the idea that Harding is a closeted homosexual, but Vera may be using this idea as a tactic to humiliate her husband by playing on his sexual anxieties. McMurphy demonstrates some strain in this chapter; he seems to weary of acting as the leader and authority figure for the men on the ward when he refuses to give his appraisal of the problems between Harding and his wife. McMurphy is under some psychological strain, likely caused by worry that he will never be able to leave the institution.
Several weeks after the patients voted on the World Series, the patients are taken to another building to get chest X-rays for TB. McMurphy sees a room that is unmarked, and asks Harding that is going on in there. He tells him that the room is the Shock Shop. Although Harding says that they are witnessing the sunset of EST, Nurse Ratched is one of the few remaining advocates of it. Harding claims that EST isn’t always used for punitive means, but rather is for a patient’s own good. Harding relates the history of EST, how it came about when two psychiatrists were visiting a slaughterhouse and watched how a blow to the head would induce an epileptic convulsion in a cow, and concluded that if a seizure could be induced in non-epileptics, great benefits might result. Harding claims that the process is painless, but the jolt sets off a wild carnival of images. Harding also mentions lobotomy, which he calls “frontal lobe castration.” He says that if Ratched “can’t cut below the belt she’ll do it above the eyes.” McMurphy says that if Nurse Ratched is truly the patients’ problem, the solution is to throw her down and solve her sex worries.
The other patients propose that McMurphy do the job. He asks the other patients why they didn’t tell him that Nurse Ratched controls whether or not he can leave. Harding says that he forgot that McMurphy was committed. Harding tells him that most of the patients are not committed, only Scanlon and some of the Chronics. McMurphy asks why Billy is here if he’s not committed, for he should be ought in a convertible, “bird-dogging girls.” Billy claims that he is too weak to leave, and likes it there, then begins to cry as the scars on his wrist open and begin to bleed. Kesey describes the processes of electroshock therapy and lobotomies in great detail in this chapter, thus foreshadowing their future use in the story. He makes the important point that it is Nurse Ratched who uses these methods and that it is not always for punitive means; nevertheless, this does allow the possibility that these methods can be used as punishment. Kesey also employs lobotomies as a metaphor for sexual crippling, as when Harding calls it “frontal lobe castration.” The conversation between McMurphy and Harding once again defines the opposition between McMurphy and Ratched on sexual terms.
Nurse Ratched can use lobotomies as the equivalent of castration, while Harding suggests sex as the cure for Nurse Ratched’s repression and control. This emphasizes the role of McMurphy as a sexual liberator. Kesey once again engages in Freudian theories concerning Billy Bibbit, whose mother seems to control his actions, rendering him weak and, at least symbolically, impotent. Kesey even makes the link between Mrs. Bibbit and Nurse Ratched when Billy claims that the two women are close friends. Nurse Ratched thus serves as a symbolic mother-figure in the novel able to manipulate Billy Bibbit’s weaknesses and insecurities. This particular vulnerability will become important in future chapters. The theme of personal choice reappears in this chapter, as McMurphy realizes that most of the patients have made the choice to remain in the institution. Only he and a small number are actually committed; the others remain under Nurse Ratched’s control out of fear or habit. This differentiates McMurphy from the other patients; he is sane because he has the ability to make rational choices, while the other patients are marked as insane by their refusal to make this choice.
The other patients calm Billy as the patients return to the ward. Chief Bromden walks beside McMurphy, and can tell that he is afflicted with some great worry. McMurphy asks Sam, one of the black boys, if he can stop by the canteen to get cigarettes. At the canteen, McMurphy buys several cartons. During the meeting that afternoon, Nurse Ratched brings up their behavior several weeks ago. She claims that she waited to long to deal with it to give the men a chance to apologize. She claims that her discipline is entirely for their own good, and tells them that she is taking away tub room privileges. McMurphy doesn’t say a thing. He stands up and walks with his normal swagger to the Nurses’ Station and punches the glass to get his cigarettes. He sarcastically says that the glass was so clean that he completely forgot it was there. Nurse Ratched reasserts her control over the institution in this chapter, behaving as a mother figure who dominates the men in the chapter. She speaks to them in utterly condescending terms, even referring to them as “boys” and treating them as children who cannot accept any sense of responsibility. Having treated these men with such great disrespect, McMurphy responds with a similar impudence.
When he breaks the glass, this is the first completely aggressive action that he takes against Nurse Ratched. This brings the confrontation between the two characters to the fore, as McMurphy takes a stand for the rights of the patients while risking the possibility that he may never be released from the institution. McMurphy had things his way for a while after that incident. Nurse Ratched is in no hurry to retaliate, because she knows she can prolong the fight as long as she wishes. McMurphy gets together a basketball team and talks the doctor into letting him bring a ball back from the gym to get the team used to handling it. McMurphy requests an Accompanied Pass; he wants to be accompanied by “a switch from Portland named Candy Starr.” When this request is turned down, McMurphy breaks the glass again. The other Acutes begin to follow McMurphy’s lead in behaving aggressively. Martini even accidentally bounces the basketball into the window, breaking it a third time. McMurphy then decides that fishing is the thing to do. He requests a pass after telling the doctor he had some friends at the Siuslaw Bay at Florence who could take several patients deep-sea fishing.
He would be accompanied by “two sweet old aunts from a little place outside of Oregon City.” McMurphy begins recruiting patients to go, but Nurse Ratched puts up clippings about wrecked boats and sudden storms on the coast. Chief Bromden wants to go, but does not have the money and doesn’t want Nurse Ratched to think that he can hear others. Chief Bromden remembers that he didn’t start acting deaf; it was others who started acting as if he were too dumb to hear or see anything. Chief Bromden reminisces about his childhood, when men in Stetson hats who visit the Indian reservation where he lived. These men insulted the Indians in front of Bromden, but when he attempts to speak up they ignore him. These men discuss how the chief married a woman from town and took her name, Bromden. One night McMurphy finds Chief Bromden awake and talks to him. He wonders where he gets his chewing gum, for Chief Bromden never visits the canteen, but realizes he chews already used gum. McMurphy gives Chief Bromden a new pack of Juicy Fruit, and tries to actually speak the words thank you. McMurphy tells Chief Bromden how he once had a job picking beans. Since he was the only kid, McMurphy never said a word, but he listened intently and, on the last day, revealed all that he heard and created a disturbance.
McMurphy wonders if Chief Bromden is doing the same thing, but he admits to McMurphy that he couldn’t tell anyone off like McMurphy, because he isn’t as big or as tough. Chief Bromden claims that his father was a full Chief, Tee Ah Millatoona (The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain), but his mother was twice his size. Chief Bromden says that the Combine worked on his father for years, but his father fought it until his mother made him too little to fight anymore. Chief Bromden wants to touch McMurphy, not because he’s “one of those queers,” but because of who he is. McMurphy offers to let Chief Bromden go on the fishing trip for free, then wonders if Chief Bromden could lift the control panel in the tub room, and suggests that he break out of the institution. McMurphy becomes more bold in this chapter, erroneously believing that Nurse Ratched’s failure to retaliate against him indicates that he has won, but Nurse Ratched refuses to respond to McMurphy’s aggressive stance, confident that she will inevitably break him. McMurphy’s behavior seems in fact a tactical error, for his aggression does not promote self-sufficiency among the patients but instead insubordination.
Nurse Ratched essentially gives McMurphy this latitude to allow him to make a grievous error. Still, the conflict between the two characters remains on a muted level, as shown by Nurse Ratched’s subtle undermining of the fishing trip by putting up clippings of news stories. Chief Bromden’s stories about his childhood demonstrate that he, like Harding and Billy Bibbit, suffers to some degree from a domineering female figure. Like Billy Bibbit, Chief Bromden is intimidated by his mother, whom he describes as “twice as tall” as his father, who was himself a large man. Chief Bromden indicates that his mother dominated both him and his father, contributing to the problems that both faced. It is from his father that Chief Bromden developed the idea of the Combine. The story that Chief Bromden tells McMurphy contributes a great deal to a psychological analysis of the character. He appears to be deaf and dumb primarily because he has been intimidated by others around him, whether callous inspectors or his domineering mother. Yet Chief Bromden reasserts himself once McMurphy shows him some degree of kindness and respect. Chief Bromden is perhaps the best example that Kesey gives of the beneficial effect that McMurphy has on the patients in the institution.
Kesey foreshadows later even when McMurphy discusses the control panel in the tub room. He gives Chief Bromden the idea that he might be able to lift the control panel and throw it through the window, allowing an escape. The one question that remains is what will motivate Chief Bromden to undertake this action. Chief Bromden eagerly awaits the deep-sea fishing trip. He sees that McMurphy signed his name on the list; the black boys wonder who signed Chief Bromden’s name, for they believe that Indians aren’t able to read or write. McMurphy wakes up the others on the ward, trying to gather one more person to go on the trip. George Sorenson, a big, toothless old Swede with a compulsion about sanitation, agrees to go. He was once a fisherman. Nurse Ratched arrives and attempts to scare the patients once more about the dangers on the ocean. Still, George remains resolved to go, and McMurphy even makes him ‘captain.’ Only one of the two whores arrives, Candy, and does so late. She tells McMurphy that Sandra, the other one, went and got married. Nurse Ratched does not allow the men to leave, because they need another chaperone for so many patients. Dr. Spivey agrees to accompany them.
When the men stop for gas, the service-station man asks if they are from the asylum. The doctor tells him that they are a work crew, not inmates. The service-station man behaves rudely to the men, but McMurphy tells them that they are in fact criminally-insane inmates and are entitled to a government-sponsored discount. Harding realizes that mental illness has the aspect of power: the more insane a man is, the more powerful he can become. McMurphy is able to laugh at incidents like these, even if the other patients are not. When they reach the docks, McMurphy argues with the captain who was supposed to take them out. He demands a signed waiver clearing him with the proper authorities. While McMurphy argues with the captain, a couple of men at the dock yell disparaging comments at Candy, asking whether she is one of the insane, or instead part of the cure for the insane men. McMurphy exits from the captain’s office and tells the men to get on the boat and shove off. They take the boat while the captain is still on the phone. Candy and Billy Bibbit fish together, and she nearly gets hurt, but everyone can laugh at the situation thanks to McMurphy. Dr. Spivey hooks the largest fish, but it takes several men to pull him in.
When the men return to shore, the police wait for them. The doctor claims that they are a legal, government-sponsored expedition, and notes that there weren’t enough life-jackets on the boat. The captain thus decides not to press charges. The men who made disparaging comments to Candy say nothing when they return from fishing, for they sense a change; these are not the same bunch of “weak-knees from a nuthouse” as before. On the ride back to the institution, Candy falls asleep against Billy’s chest. He later asks her for a date. McMurphy plans to sneak Candy into the ward on Saturday night so she can meet with Billy. McMurphy seems exhausted on the trip back to the institution. He points out the house where he lived as a youth. He shows them a dress in the branch of a tree. The first girl that dragged McMurphy to bed wore that dress; he was about ten at the time. The conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy recedes during this chapter to a different conflict between the institution patients and the rest of society. Although Nurse Ratched does continue to oppose the trip, none of her tactics are particularly novel; her tactics in the first part of this chapter conform to her established character but reveal nothing new.
Upon leaving the institution, McMurphy and the other patients face the suspicion and mockery of those who view them as completely insane. McMurphy proudly faces these objections through confrontation, celebrating their insanity as a means of intimidation. Kesey conceives of this chapter in terms of religious imagery. McMurphy leaves the hospital with twelve followers, an allusion to the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, their task is deep-sea fishing, another Christian religious symbol; the fish is a prominent symbol of Christ. This positions R.P. McMurphy as a Christ figure in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and thus foreshadows future events. If McMurphy is a Christ figure, then he will face an impending crucifixion. This chapter also sets up further plot developments, such as the developing intimacy between Candy Starr and Billy Bibbit. The fishing trip is a transformative event for the patients. To continue the religious allegory, it is a conversion for the men on the fishing trip, who return from their journey at sea changed men, now worthy of respect; the hecklers at the docks no longer mock the patients when they return from the fishing expedition. This transformation is in part due to the patients’ removal from Nurse Ratched’s control.
Freed from her domineering policies, these men can achieve a sense of self-worth that she denies them. Nurse Ratched plans her next maneuver for the day after the fishing trip, just as McMurphy begins hustling for more changes in rules and such improvements as subscriptions to Playboy to replace the McCall’s magazine that Public Relation orders. She pastes up statements of the patients’ financial doings over the past several months; these indicate that McMurphy has made money from the rest of the patients. McMurphy does not appear ashamed, however, and brags that he might be able to retire to Florida with the money he has made. The patients do wonder what scam McMurphy is trying to pull. Nurse Ratched has a meeting without McMurphy in which she indicates that McMurphy is trying to manipulate them. She tells them that McMurphy is no martyr or saint, but rather a con artist. She questions the profit that McMurphy made on the fishing trip. Harding agrees that Nurse Ratched is correct, but asks why they should deny it, for they should give credit to McMurphy for his capitalist talent. McMurphy makes no pretense about his motives. Billy is the only one who openly defends McMurphy, but after the meeting McMurphy asks Billy for money for Candy’s visit.
Chief Bromden still believes that McMurphy is a “giant come out of the sky to save us from the Combine,” but even he begins to question McMurphy. McMurphy has Chief Bromden move the control panel in the tub room to win the bet he had with the other patients, and gives Chief Bromden part of the profits. When Chief Bromden refuses to take the money, McMurphy confronts him about the cold treatment the patients are giving him. Chief Bromden tells him that the other patients are suspicious about how McMurphy is always winning things. Nurse Ratched orders a cautionary cleansing for the patients in which the men must line up nude against the tile of the shower room and be cleaned by the black boys. The black boys torment George Sorenson because he refuses soap and then refuses to bend over for a different cleaning treatment, but McMurphy defends Sorenson. Washington, one of the black boys, punches McMurphy, then McMurphy fights with all of the black boys. Chief Bromden picks one of the black boys off of McMurphy as they fight, and the two eventually are victorious The smallest black boy gets help from the Disturbed Ward, and they take McMurphy and Bromden away. Having achieved the transformation of the men on the ward in the previous chapter, McMurphy asserts himself as the controlling force on the ward.
The men are full converts to McMurphy’s ethos, following his lead in behavior. However, Nurse Ratched undermines this by dividing the men from one another; she exposes McMurphy for his self-interested actions and manipulation. Her criticism of McMurphy bolsters the religious allusions of the previous chapter: she claims that McMurphy is not a ‘martyr’ or a ‘saint’ but rather a manipulative con man. The irony of this situation is that she herself is manipulating the patients, while McMurphy has remained honest about his intentions and his entrepreneurial spirit. When Nurse Ratched orders the cleaning of the men on the ward, this demonstrates the lack of respect she has for the patients. The procedure is invasive and demeaning. It is a literal intrusion into the men’s bodies, analogous to a de-sexualized form of rape. If the men experienced a transformation from meek and easily dominated to more confident and respectable, McMurphy experiences an equally momentous shift in this chapter. McMurphy assumes the role of selfless martyr in this chapter when he defends George Sorenson against the invasive cleaning procedures of the black boys. This is the first action that McMurphy undertakes that is not motivated by self-interest; he can gain nothing from defending Sorenson, unlike his other actions, which either benefited him monetarily or, in the case of his threats against Nurse Ratched, by building his reputation.
There is a high-pitched machine-room clatter on the Disturbed Ward, as well as the singed smell of men going berserk. A tall bony man tells a black boy “I wash my hands of the whole deal.” A nurse treats McMurphy’s and Bromden’s wounds, and tells them that not every ward is like Nurse Ratched’s. The nurse claims that Nurse Ratched tries to run it like an Army hospital, and she feels that all single nurses should be fired after they reach thirty-five. The nurse admits that she sometimes wishes she could keep the men there instead of sending them back to Nurse Ratched. A different nurse gives them pills that knock them out. The next morning Nurse Ratched asks McMurphy if he is ashamed of what he did, and if he is he will not receive shock treatment. McMurphy refuses, and says that the “Chinese Commies” could have learned a few things from her. As the doctors put graphite salve on McMurphy’s temples, he asks if he gets a crown of thorns. As Chief Bromden receives shock treatment, he thinks about his parents. Afterwards Chief Bromden clears his head and regains lucidity quickly; this time he knows that he has Nurse Ratched beat. Christian symbolism dominates this chapter, which fully realizes the comparison between McMurphy and Jesus Christ.
The comment “I wash my hands of the whole deal” is a direct allusion to Pontius Pilate, who made a similar comment upon ordering the crucifixion of Christ. McMurphy himself even realizes this comparison when he asks whether or not he gets a ‘crown of thorns,’ another reference to the crucifixion. The nurse with whom McMurphy speaks also gives a greater indication of Nurse Ratched’s character. Kesey indulges in some degree of misogyny in this analysis of Nurse Ratched; a significant motivation for her behavior is the fact that she is a bitter, old spinster and has taken out her frustrations on the men on the ward. This returns to the contrast between the sexuality of McMurphy and the repression of Nurse Ratched; Kesey implies that, if Nurse Ratched were sexually satisfied, in fact satisfied at all with her personal life, she would allow greater freedom on her ward. Nurse Ratched does gain a victory over McMurphy in this chapter, but whatever victory she has will be short-lived. The shock treatment does not significantly affect Chief Bromden; he quickly regains a sense of lucidity afterward and returns to coherence. More importantly, the nurse who treats McMurphy’s wounds makes the important point that other nurses are opposed to Nurse Ratched’s behavior.
Although Nurse Ratched maintains a tight grip on her particular ward, she is vulnerable within the very institutional structure she uses against her patients. McMurphy receives three more treatments that week, even though Chief Bromden tries to talk McMurphy into complying with Nurse Ratched to get out of it. McMurphy jokes that she’s merely “charging his battery” and the first woman who takes him on afterward will “light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars.” Chief Bromden leaves Disturbed at the end of the week. Harding congratulates Chief Bromden when he returns. There are rumors that McMurphy is not responding at all to the EST. Nurse Ratched realizes that McMurphy is becoming legendary while he is out of the ward, so she plans to bring him back to the ward. The men believe that the best thing for McMurphy would be escape from the ward on Saturday night. During a meeting Nurse Ratched suggests ‘an operation,’ and McMurphy jokes that she’s considering castration. Chief Bromden describes how Billy Bibbit, although he looks young, is actually over thirty. Chief Bromden thinks about how Billy’s mother visited, and when Billy asserted his age she asked “do I look like the mother of a thirty-one year old?” At midnight, Mr. Turkle comes in for his shift, and McMurphy bribes him by offering Candy’s services to him. Candy arrives with Sandy, the whore who had got married. Candy gives Mr. Turkle wine. McMurphy attempts to pick the lock to the drug room, while the other men look through the files in the Nurses’ Station. Harding gets pills for Sefelt and gives them to them as he imitates a religious ceremony, sprinkling them over Sefelt and Sandy. Harding claims that they are “doomed henceforth,” for Ratched will tranquilize them out of existence. Harding’s speech makes the men realize the seriousness of what they are doing. Mr. Turkle unlocks the seclusion room for Billy and Candy. Harding has a plan to tie up Turkle and make it look like McMurphy had tied him up and taken his keys. This plan, according to Harding, would keep the other men out of trouble, keep Turkle his job, and get McMurphy off the ward. McMurphy asks why Harding does not leave, and he responds that he is not ready. He claims that he is guilty, and indulged in certain practices society considers shameful. McMurphy and Sandy snuggle in each others’ shoulders, getting comfortable as McMurphy postpones his departure for another hour or so. The black boys find him this way when they arrive at six-thirty that morning. Paralleling the Christian mythology for which the novel has been an allegory, McMurphy becomes a martyr when he refuses to accommodate Nurse Ratched’s demands for an apology. McMurphy gains power and authority through receiving the electroshock treatment, just as crucifixion and resurrection demonstrated the divinity of Jesus in Christian teachings. Kesey, however, combines religious symbolism with the sexual themes that informed the first part of the novel; McMurphy claims that the EST increases his sexual potency when he comments that his next conquest will “light up like a pinball machine.” Kesey also illustrates this theme through McMurphy’s comment about how Nurse Ratched is suggesting castration instead of a lobotomy. The religious parallels and increasingly martyrdom are the only reason why Nurse Ratched returns McMurphy to the ward. His reputation can only grow while McMurphy is away; by returning him to the ward she can reinforce the idea is not the godlike martyr that Kesey constructs him to be. McMurphy’s supposed final night in the institution continues the pattern of religious imagery, as Harding imitates a religious ritual when he sprinkles the pills on Sefelt. Kesey further gives psychological analyses of the more significant inmates. Harding admits to McMurphy that he has committed practices that society finds unacceptable, a coded final admission that he is a homosexual, while Chief Bromden details more of Billy Bibbit’s past. Mrs. Bibbit has rendered her son a thirty year old child; she will not allow him to age precisely because it would reflect that she has aged as well. Billy Bibbit is thus a perpetual child, dominated by his mother’s oppressive behavior. When McMurphy arranges for the meeting between Candy and Billy, this emphasizes the theme of McMurphy as a sexual liberator. McMurphy’s delay in leaving the ward is an ambiguous event, for although he ostensibly makes a small error by falling asleep, the event seems too convenient. There is a strong possibility that McMurphy never intended to leave the ward and that his action is a form of self-sacrifice. This would fulfill the religious connotations earlier established, for McMurphy will fully realize his status as a martyr for the men in the institution. Chief Bromden realizes that what happened that night was inevitable, even if Mr. Turkle had got McMurphy and the two girls off the ward as planned. The black boys herd everybody into the day room, Chronics and Acutes alike. Everyone is still in pajamas. Mr. Turkle resigns and leaves with Sandy. Harding tells McMurphy to run away with them, but McMurphy refuses. The black boys take roll call in reverse alphabetical order to throw people off. Finally they call Billy Bibbit’s name, but he is not there. Nurse Ratched does a room check to find him, and reaches the Seclusion Room. She finds Billy in bed with Candy. She scolds Billy for being with “a woman like this. A Cheap! Low! Painted” and Harding suggests “Jezebel” or “Courtesan” or “Salome.” The other patients laugh at Harding’s comment. Nurse Ratched asks Billy what his mother will think about this incident. She claims that Mrs. Bibbit has always been proud of her son’s discretion and will be terribly disturbed; Mrs. Bibbit may even become sick from the news. Billy begins stuttering again, and shakes, pleading with Nurse Ratched not to tell his mother. Nurse Ratched attempts to reassure him that nobody will harm him, but she will explain to his mother. She leads Billy into the doctor’s office, then leaves him there alone as she calls the doctor. When the doctor arrives, he finds that Billy has cut his throat. Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy, telling him that he is playing with human lives, as if he thought himself to be a God. McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched, ripping her uniform all the way down the front to expose her breasts as he tries to strangle her. The black boys pull him off Nurse Ratched before he can kill her. Afterwards, several patients sign out of the hospital, and Dr. Spivey resigns. Nurse Ratched stays in Medical for a week, while a Japanese nurse runs the ward. When Nurse Ratched returns, Harding asks about McMurphy. She cannot speak, so she writes on a notepad that he will be back. Harding says that she is “full of so much bull*censored*.” Nurse Ratched finds it difficult to get the ward back into shape. Harding signs out, and George transfers to a different ward. Martini, Scanlon and Chief Bromden are the only members of the group who remain. After three weeks, McMurphy returns; the black boys wheel him in on a Gurney. He has had a lobotomy, and now is a Vegetable. Martini and Scanlon cannot recognize McMurphy. That night, Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow, putting the comatose McMurphy out of his misery. Scanlon tells chief Bromden he has to leave. Chief Bromden then lifts the control panel in the tub room and throws it through the window. Chief Bromden runs away and catches a ride with a Mexican guy going north. He may go to Canada, but will stop along the Columbia to check out Portland and The Dalles. He has been gone a long time. The final chapter of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest culminates in a pyrrhic victory for Nurse Ratched but an ultimate triumph for the martyred McMurphy. The confrontation between the two character aligns on sexual lines, as set up by the confrontation between Nurse Ratched and Billy Bibbit that immediately precedes it. Nurse Ratched uses repressive sexuality as a weapon against Billy Bibbit, instilling in him a sense of shame that stems from both religious sexual guilt and Freudian ideas of a domineering mother. Harding even makes a religious allusion to Jezebel that underscores the religious idea of sexuality as sinful. Yet it is when Nurse Ratched uses Billy Bibbit’s mother to instill a sense of shame that she drives him to suicide, showing with unerring finality the cause of Billy’s problems. Kesey engages in a sense of bleak irony when Nurse Ratched chastises McMurphy for playing God and causing the deaths of Cheswick and Billy Bibbit, for it is her policies that drove them to their respective deaths. All of her criticisms of McMurphy can be better applied to Nurse Ratched, who has placed herself as a vengeful god over the ward. McMurphy’s attack on Nurse Ratched results a literal exposing of the Big Nurse. Once again the sexual connotations are strong, for when he attacks her he exposes her breasts, the one sign of her femininity. This also relates back to Harding’s earlier suggestion that sex is the cure for Nurse Ratched; this chapter shows that, if it is not the cure, it is certainly a potent weapon against her. The result of this fight, however, is the final dehumanization of Nurse Ratched. When she returns to the ward, she is unable to speak and thus has lost a major sign of humanity. This neatly parallels Chief Bromden, who in the course of the novel regains his voice and his humanity. McMurphy ostensibly loses his battle against Nurse Ratched when she orders a lobotomy for him, but the victory is hollow; she loses control of the ward as the other patients free themselves of her grip and voluntarily leave the hospital. This also fits in well with the Christian symbolism of the novel; although McMurphy dies for his cause, his disciples leave the hospital to live according to his teachings. They gain the strength and the freedom to make independent choices that McMurphy proposed. Chief Bromden best exemplifies this. Through the course of the novel he has regained his voice, and he makes the final step toward self-realization at the novel’s end. By moving the control panel, Chief Bromden fulfills McMurphy’s wishes and reasserts himself as a member of society.
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