5 quotes each

Chief Bromden

Quote #1: “They don’t bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I’m nearby because they think I’m deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much. If my being half Indian ever helped me in any way in this dirty life, it helped me being cagey, helped me all these years.”(Kesey, pg 7)

Quote #2:“You’re always … winning things!”(Kesey, pg 149)

Quote #3: “I stand, stood up slowly, feeling numb between the shoulders. The white pillows on the floor of the Seclusion Room were soaked from me peeing on them while I was out. I couldn’t remember all of it yet, but I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and tried to clear my head. I worked at it. I’d never worked at coming out of it before.”(Kesey, pg 159)

Quote #4: “There had been times when I’d wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks after a shock treatment, living in that foggy, jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that gray zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying, where you know you’re not unconscious any more but don’t know yet what day it is or who you are or what’sthe use of coming back at all—for two   weeks. If you don’t have a reason to wake up you can loaf around in that gray zone for a long, fuzzy time, or if you want to bad enough I found you can come fighting right out of it. This time I came fighting out of it in less than a day, less time than ever.

And when the fog was finally swept from my head it seemed like I’d just come up after a long, deep dive, breaking the surface after being under water a hundred years. It was the last treatment they gave me.”(Kesey, pg 160)

Quote #5: “I can’t see six inches in front of me through the fog and the only thing I can hear over the wail I’m making is the Big Nurse whoop and charge up the hall while she crashes patients outta her way with that wicker bag. I hear her coming but I still can’t hush my hollering. I holler till she gets there.”(Kesey, pg 9)

Chief Bromden has a lot less material to quote in the beginning of the book, as he doesn’t have a word of dialogue until over halfway into the book. However, you can see in these quotes how Chief slowly rises out of his “fog” and finds his own voice, becoming a real presence on the ward.

Bromden is a Cherokee Indian who pretends to be deaf and mute in order to attract less attention and therefore abuse on the ward, and McMurphy, the protagonist of Cuckoo’s nest, directly influences his development. Bromden is the son of Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, or The-Pine-That-Stands-Tallest-on-the Mountain. After his father sold native American grounds to the government, his health deteriorates as he becomes an alcoholic. Bromden also spent time in the military, in which they use fog machines to combat the enemy. Bromden sees the fog in the ward, “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.”. This, as well as the combine, are one of the reasons Bromden becomes so secluded, until the arrival of McMurphy on the ward. McMurphy manages to change Bromden and help him become more social as well as an overall better person.

Nurse Ratched

Quote #1: “First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives—gambling with human lives—as if you thought yourself to be a God!”(Kesey, pg 175)

Quote #2: “No. He isn’t extraordinary. He is simply a man and no more, and is subject to all the fears and all the cowardice and all the timidity that any other man is subject to. Given a few more days, I have a very strong feeling that he will prove this, to us as well as the rest of the patients. If we keep him on the ward I am certain his brashness will subside, his self-made rebellion will dwindle to nothing, and”—she smiles, knowing something nobody else does—“that our redheaded hero will cut himself down to something the patients will all recognize and lose respect for: a braggart and a blowhard of the type who may climb up on a soapbox and shout for a following, the way we’ve all seen Mr. Cheswick do, then back down the moment there is any real danger to him personally.”(Kesey, pg 89)

Quote #3“You’re committed, you realize. You are ... under the jurisdiction of me ... the staff.” She’s holding up a fist, all [128] those red-orange fingernails burning into her palm. “Under jurisdiction and control—”(Kesey, pg 83)

Quote #4: “We have weeks,” she says. She stands up, looking more pleased with herself than I’ve seen her look since McMurphy came to trouble her a week ago. “We have weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in this hospital is entirely up to us. Now, if there is nothing else ...”(Kesey, pg 89)

Quote #5: “But she didn’t lose control. That doll’s face and that doll’s smile were ‘ forged in confidence.”(Kesey, pg 90)

Nurse Ratched’s quotes show here loss of power during the period of time when McMurphy came to the ward. Nurse Ratched is constantly demeaning the men either through humiliation or actual physical punishment, usually administered by the black boys or through harsher means such as ESP or lobotomies.

Nurse Ratched is the main antagonist in this story, a “ball cutter” who berates the ward patients, however, over time she loses her grip on power as McMurphy gains more and more. McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are always playing a game, a game where Nurse Ratched can seemingly not lose. However, as the game escalates, it turns into a war that determines the fate of the patients on the ward. McMurphy ends up winning this war by sacrificing himself. After McMurphy dies, Nurse Ratched has no control over the word. Many of the patients leave, and Chief Bromden, who is committed to the ward, escapes: “I felt like I was flying. Free. Nobody bothers coming after an AWOL, I knew, and Scanlon could handle any questions about the dead man—no need to be running like this. But I didn’t stop. I ran for miles before I stopped and walked up the embankment onto the highway.”

R.P. McMurphy

Quote #1: “Ya know, Chief, I was just rememberin’ a time down in the Willamette Valley—I was pickin’ beans outside of Eugene and considering myself damn lucky to get the job. It was in the early thirties so there wasn’t many kids able to get jobs. I got the job by proving to the bean boss I could pick just as fast and clean as any of the adults. Anyway, I was the only kid in the rows. Nobody else around me but grown-ups. And after I tried a time or two to talk to them I saw they weren’t for listening to me—scrawny little patchquilt redhead anyhow. So I hushed. I was so peeved at them not listening to me I kept hushed the livelong four weeks I picked that field, workin’ right along side of them, listening to them prattle on about this uncle or that cousin. Or if somebody didn’t show up for work, gossip about him. Four weeks and not a peep out of me. Till I think by God they forgot I could talk, the mossbacked old bastards. I bided my time. Then, on the last day, I opened up and went to telling them what a petty bunch of farts they were. I told each one just how his buddy had drug him over the coals when he was absent. Hooee, did they listen then! They finally got to arguing with each other and created such a shitstorm I lost my quarter-cent-a-pound bonus I had comin’ for not missin’ a day because I already had a bad reputation around town and the bean boss claimed the disturbance was likely my fault even if he couldn’t [186] prove it. I cussed him out too. My shootin’ off my mouth that time probably cost me twenty dollars or so. Well worth it, too.”(Kesey, pg 122)

Quote #2: “McMurry, Randle Patrick. Committed by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction. Fordiagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest—for Rape.”(Kesey, pg 28)

Quote #3: Nothing is left on the screen but a little eye of light beading right down on McMurphy sitting there. That eye don’t faze him a bit. To tell the truth, he don’t even let on he knows the picture is turned off; he puts his cigarette between his teeth and pushes his cap forward in his red hair till he has to lean back to see out from under the brim. And sits that way, with his hands crossed behind his head and his feet stuck out in a chair, a smoking cigarette sticking out from under his hatbrim—watching the TV screen.(Kesey, pg 83)

Quote #4: He stops at the door and looks back at everybody standing around.“But I tried, though,” he says. “Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?”(Kesey, pg 72)

Quote #5: No, that nurse ain’t some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a

ball-cutter. I’ve seen a thousand of ‘em, old and young, men and women. Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes—people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst. You ever been kneed in the nuts in a brawl, buddy? Stops you cold, don’t it? There’s nothing worse. It makes you sick, it saps every bit of strength you got. If you’re up against a guy who wants to win by making you weaker instead of making himself stronger, then watch for his knee, he’s gonna go for your vitals. And that’s what that old buzzard is doing, going for your vitals.”(Kesey, pg 36)

McMurphy’s actions speak louder than his words. These quotes show how McMurphy does things for the good of the patients on the ward, while at the same time making a little money for himself.

McMurphy is the protagonist of this story, and he is portrayed as a savior of the ward. There are many allegories that point to McMurphy symbolizing Jesus, who sacrifices himself to save the people. McMurphy battles with Nurse Ratched to help and eventually save the patients of the ward. In the end, McMurphy is lobotomized; “The ward door opened, and the black boys wheeled in this Gurney with a chart at the bottom that said in heavy black letters, MCMURPHY, RANDLE P. POST-OPERATIVE.” And below this was written in ink, LOBOTOMY.” however, because of his sacrifice, Nurse Ratched lost her control over the ward and the patients were saved.

Staff

Quote #1 (catholic nurse): “Stay back! Patients aren’t allowed to enter the—Oh, stay back, I’m a Catholic!”(Kesey, pg 48)

Quote #2 (jap nurse): She nodded and looked at her feet. “It’s not all like her ward,” she said. “A lot of it is, but not all. Army nurses, trying to run an Army hospital. They are a little sick themselves. I sometimes think all single nurses should be fired after they reach thirty-five.”(Kesey, pg 154)

Quote #3 (Robert): “Frankly, Alvin,” he says to the third boy, “I’m disappointed in you. Even if one hadn’t read his history all one should need to do is pay attention to his behavior on the ward to realize how absurd the suggestion is. This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive. I think that is what Miss Ratched was suspecting when she called this meeting. Don’t you recognize the arch type of psychopath? I’ve never heard of a clearer case. This man is a Napoleon, a Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun.”(Kesey, pg 87)

Quote #4(Doctor Spivey): “The doctor fishes his glasses from his coat pocket by pulling on the string, works them on his nose in front of his eyes. They’re tipped a little to the right, but he leans his head to the left and brings them level. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, just as tickled by this new man’s brassy way of talking right up as the rest of us, but, just like the rest of us, he’s careful not to let himself come right out and laugh. “(Kesey, pg 29)

Quote #5: “Her three daytime black boys she acquires after more years of testing and rejecting thousands. They come at her in a long black row of sulky, big-nosed masks, hating her and her chalk doll whiteness from the first look they get. She appraises them and their hate for a month or so, then lets them go because they don’t hate enough. When she finally gets the three she wants—gets them one at a time over a number of years, weaving them into her plan and her network—she’s damn positive they hate enough to be capable.”(Kesey, pg 20)

Some of the staff is on the patients’ side, and some are on the Nurse’s side. These quotes help differentiate the two, as well as look into their different personalities and backgrounds.

The staff are just as trapped in the ward as the patient’s are, and, like the patients, fear the almighty Nurse Ratched. Doctor Spivey, as well as the jap nurse are both on the patients side, and they genuinely care about the condition of their patients, from organizing events to (temporarily) taking over the ward from Nurse Ratched. However, the black boys as well as the Catholic nurse are on Nurse Ratched’s side, less because of her amazing personality and generosity and more because of fear. The black boys constantly torment the patients, and the Catholic nurse believes them to be demons in disguise. The ward staff is very similar to the patients and is essential to the story.

Patients

Quote #1(Harding): “Our dear Miss Ratched? Our sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy, Mother Ratched, a ball cutter? Why, friend, that’s most unlikely.…you are right,” Harding says, “about all of it.” He looks up at the other patients who are watching him. “No one’s ever dared come out and say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as you do about her and the whole business—feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.”(Kesey, pg 37)

Quote #2(Harding): “Mr. McMurphy ... my friend ... I’m not a chicken, I’m a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, we’re not in here because we are rabbits—we’d be rabbits wherever we were—we’re all in here because we can’t adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.”(Kesey, pg 38)

Quote #3(Cheswick): “I want something done! Hear me? I want something done! Something! Something! Some—”(Kesey, pg 97)

Quote #4(DisturbedPatient): “A tall bony old guy, dangling from a wire screwed in between his shoulder blades, met McMurphy and me at the door when the aides brought us in. He looked us over with yellow, scaled eyes and shook his head. “I wash my hands of the whole deal,” he told one of the colored aides, and the wire drug him off down the hall.”(Kesey, pg 153)

Quote #5(BillyBibbit): “If we had the g-guts! I could go outside to-today, if I had the guts. My m-m-mother is a good friend of M-Miss Ratched, and I could get an AMA signed this afternoon, if I had the guts!”(Kesey, pg 110)

The patients are the foundation of Cuckoo’s Nest. These quotes show some of the more minor character’s personalities, insights, and mental problems.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focuses mostly on the war between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, however, the patients make up the troops that support and are benefited by McMurphy. The most active patients in the book are mainly the acutes. Cheswick supports McMurphy no matter what he does, Harding is the voice of reason and intelligence, and Billy Bibbit looks up to McMurphy as his hero. “McMurphy was a giant come out of the sky to save us from the Combine that was networking the land with copper wire and crystal, how he was too big to be bothered with something as measly as money” is how the patients thought of him as, a god-like figure that would save them all. After many causalties, including McMurphy and Billy Bibbit, the patients were eventually all saved by the combined efforts of the residents of the ward.

Motifs

Religion

“I wash my hands of the whole affair” (Kesey, pg 153)

“Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”(Kesey, pg 156)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest reflects the parables of Jesus. McMurphy as Jesus, savior of the patients of the ward, bringing his disciples on a boat, and sacrificing himself to save the patients. His disciples are the Acutes, Billy Bibbit as Judas, who betrayed Jesus as Billy Bibbit betrayed McMurphy, then committed suicide. Ellis, who is chained to the wall, is a symbol of crucifixion. Candy, who is a prostitute, is Mary Magdalen. Nurse Ratched, the antagonist of the story, is all of Jesus’s non-believers combined.

Racism

““You goddamned coon,” McMurphy said, somehow sounding more tired than mad.”(Kesey, pg 151)

“Look, look how overdone little Hiawatha is here. Ho. Burnt to a fair turn, he is.” He laughs and dabs at his head”(Kesey, pg 119)

Racism is very obvious and apparent in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, however, it is less Kesey being racist than Kesey pointing out how prominent racism was in society at that time. McMurphy constantly refers to the black boys as coons or the n-word, and no matter how horrible the black boys are, his language is offensive and wildly racist. Bromden also has many flashbacks of government officials mocking his tribe. In this book, racism is used to show the faults in society, not to offend.

Sexism

The patients in the ward, all men, are always cowering under the rule of the oppressive Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched, the antagonist in the book, is the opposite of a stereotypical woman. She is often depicted completely overpowering the masculinity of the patients (ball-cutter), which McMurphy despises. On the other hand, the Japanese nurse is the picture of feminism. Small, polite, and timid, she winces when patching up McMurphy’s wounds and sympathizes with the patients. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest focuses mainly on the men getting their masculinity back from a strong female. A strong female character is good, however, making her the antagonist who eventually is defeated as well as sexually harassed is over the line.

1 paragraph for each character

3 motifs, 1 paragraph each