Cuckoo's Nest Final!

Chief Broom

I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you

think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen. (Kesey, p.9)

Before noontime they’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t got it turned up full; it’s not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but for the time being I’m interested in this new man—I want to see how he takes to the Group Meeting coming up. (Kesey, p.27)

But this one night, a few nights after the big meeting, I woke up and the dorm was clean and

silent; except for the soft breathing of the men and the stuff rattling around loose under the brittle

ribs of the two old Vegetables, it was dead quiet. A window was up, and the air in the dorm was

clear and had a taste to it made me feel kind of giddy and drunk, gave me this sudden yen to get up out of bed and do something.  (Kesey, p. 91)

I clenched my teeth, wondering what to do now. It’d been a long time since I’d let anyone hear me do any more than grunt or bellow. I heard him shut the bedstand, and it echoed like a boiler door. I heard him say, “Here,” and something lit on my bed. Little. Just the size of a lizard or a snake … “Juicy Fruit is the best I can do for you at the moment, Chief. Package I won off Scanlon

pitchin’ pennies.” And he got back in bed. And before I realized what I was doing, I told him Thank you.  (Kesey, p.122)

I remember I was taking huge strides as I ran, seeming to step and float a long ways before my next foot struck the earth. 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. (Kesey, p.178)

These quotes show Chief Bromden’s change over the time that he is in the war. In the beginning, he is the deaf mute no one pays attention to and just silently watches, but with help from McMurphy, he becomes an active participant in his rebellion and eventually escapes.

Chief Bromden is a character that changes so much over the course of the novel. He is a towering half American Indian that pretends to be deaf and mute while he is in the mental hospital. He stays quiet because he is afraid of the Combine and thinks that that way they will not bother him. Bromden is the patient who has been in the ward the longest, and has received over 200 EST sessions and has only survived because he has kept quiet. He does what the nurse and the black boys tell him to do and stays out of trouble, conforming perfectly with what is expected of him. After McMurphy arrives on the ward, Bromden begins to change at an incredible rate. He starts out telling himself, “One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have,” but he escapes the fog with McMurphy’s help and begins to open up. One night he even tells McMurphy, “Thank you,” and begins to speak again, leading to Bromden escaping the warp after he kills McMurphy’s body. Kesey uses Bromden as a symbol of the greatest change as the person who was totally under the Combine’s control and then leaves it forever.

McMurphy

“Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don’t look so crazy to me.” He’s trying to get

them to loosen up, the way you see an auctioneer spinning jokes to loosen up the crowd before the bidding starts. “Which one of you claims to be the craziest? Which one is the biggest loony? Who runs these card games? It’s my first day, and what I like to do is make a good impression straight off on the right man if he can prove to me he is the right man. Who’s the bull goose loony here?” (Kesey, p.15)

“Just that. A bee in her butt, a burr in her bloomers. Get her goat. Bug her till she comes apart at

those neat little seams, and shows, just one time, she ain’t so unbeatable as you think. One week. I’ll let you be the judge whether I win or not.” (Kesey, p.44)

Finally he throws the whole bundle on the floor—probably forty or fifty dollars’ worth from

each man—and turns to walk out of the tub room. 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?” And walks out and leaves those stained pieces of paper on the floor for whoever wants to sort through them. (Kesey, p.72)

Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at. (Kesey, p.74)

“Winning, for Christsakes,” he said with his eyes closed. ‘‘Hoo boy, winning.” (Kesey, p.149)

These quotes show how McMurphy changed over the course of his stay in the mental hospital. They show how he turns from the gruff happy demeanor he arrives on the ward with to the weary passionate man in the end. They also show how his cause progresses with him.

McMurphy is the newest patient on the ward who comes from a long history of stints in prison and brawls in the streets. His hands are rough, his face is scarred, and his shoulders are wide. He arrives on the ward looking to have some fun asking everyone, “Which one of you claims to be the craziest? Which one is the biggest loony? Who runs these card games?” after finding a way to get out of working at a work farm, but soon takes up the task of fighting against Nurse Ratched. As a charismatic and natural leader, McMurphy leads the other men in their defiance against Nurse Ratched. He tries to encourage them and teach them to act on their own against the nurse, but all the other men can ever do is follow after McMurphy. McMurphy tries to get them to let go and stop fearing the Combine, at first by trying to get them to laugh and regain the confidence that Nurse Ratched had taken from them, but Bromden reflects that, “I think McMurphy knew better than we did that our tough looks were all show, because he still wasn’t able to get a real laugh out of anybody.” (Kesey, p.134) In the end, in order for the other men to act against Nurse Ratched and break free from the expectations of them, McMurphy has to die for them. His martyrdom finally gives all the other men on the ward the strength to fully defy the nurse and many of them leave the hospital.

Nurse Ratched

Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-colored enamel, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils—everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it. (Kesey, p.8)

Under her rule the ward Inside is almost completely adjusted to surroundings. But the thing is

she can’t be on the ward all the time. She’s got to spend some time Outside. So she works with an eye to adjusting the Outside world too. Working alongside others like her who I call the “Combine,” which is a huge organization that aims to adjust the Outside as well as she has the Inside, has made her a real veteran at adjusting things. She was already the Big Nurse in the old place when I came in from the Outside so long back, and she’d been dedicating herself to adjustment for God knows how long.  (Kesey, p.19)

“Right at your balls. No, that nurse ain’t some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a

ball-cutter. (Kesey, p.36)

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of

those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. (Kesey, p.45)

I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don’t make

any difference. One by one the patients are sneaking looks at her to see how she’s taking the way

McMurphy is dominating the meeting, and they see the same thing. She’s too big to be beaten. She covers one whole side of the room like a Jap statue. There’s no moving her and no help against her. She’s lost a little battle here today, but it’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s been winning and that she’ll go on winning.  (Kesey, p.64)

These quotes show the power that Nurse Ratched has and the power that the Combine has. The power of the Combine, taking out the bad and keeping the good, is reflected in the mechanical and authoritative nature of the Nurse. She uses this power to suppress the men and mould them to conform with what society thinks is acceptable.

Nurse Ratched is the main antagonist in the novel. She forces conformity on the men who enter her ward and destroys the one’s who are just too much trouble. Her one job is to turn the men who have been spit out by society into upstanding gentlemen who can be reinserted as successful examples of the work of modern science. She uses her flawless demeanor, her plastered smile, her steady voice, and sweet talk to control the men into doing whatever she wants. Nurse Ratched is described as a ball-cutter, taking away the mens’ power and masculinity and always trying to hide her own femininity. After McMurphy dies, the Big Nurse loses her voice and her power over all the men. “Harding read the paper, then tore it up and threw the pieces at her. She flinched and raised her hand to protect the bruised side of her face from the paper. ‘Lady, I think you’re full of so much bullshit,’ Harding told her.” (Kesey, p.176)

Staff

The Black Boys: 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, p.20)

The Catholic Nurse: But she’s too full of the stuff. While she’s asleep it rises in her throat and into her mouth, drains out of that corner of her mouth like purple spit and down her throat, over her body. In the morning she sees how she’s stained again and somehow she figures it’s not really from inside her—how could it be? a good Catholic girl like her?—and she figures it’s on account of working evenings among a whole wardful of people like me. It’s all our fault, and she’s going to get us for it if it’s the last thing she does. (Kesey, p.93)

The Jap Nurse: McMurphy smoked while she dipped her little hand full of pink birthday candles into a jar of salve and worked over his cuts, flinching every time he flinched and telling him she was sorry. She picked up one of his hands in both of hers and turned it over and salved his knuckles. (Kesey, p.154)

Mr. Turkle: We sat out in the day room in our robes, listening to McMurphy and Mr. Turkle tell Army stories while they passed one of Mr. Turkle’s cigarettes back and forth, smoking it a funny way, holding the smoke in when they inhaled till their eyes bugged. Once Harding asked what Ken Kesey manner of cigarette they were smoking that smelled so provocative, and Mr. Turkle said in a high, breath-holding voice, “Jus’ a plain old cigarette. Hee hoe, yes. You want a toke?” (Kesey, p.163)

The Doctor: McMurphy frowns and asks, “What about that little fart of a doctor? He might be a little slow in the head, but not so much as not to be able to see how she’s taken over and what she’s doing.” Harding takes a long pull off the cigarette and lets the smoke drift out with his talk. “Doctor Spivey … is exactly like the rest of us, McMurphy, completely conscious of his inadequacy. He’s a frightened, desperate, ineffectual little rabbit, totally incapable of running this ward without our Miss Ratched’s help, and he knows it. And, worse, she knows he knows it and reminds him every chance she gets. Every time she finds he’s made a little slip in the bookwork or in, say, the charting you can just imagine her in there grinding his nose in it.” (Kesey, p.37)

In the staff, the Catholic nurse blames all her own faults on the patients. She blames the stain oozing from her hide on the men that she is around all day because she believes that just because she conforms with society, she is without fault. Like all of society, the Catholic nurse blames her problems on the outsiders and that, “It’s all our fault, and she’s going to get us for it if it’s the last thing she does.” She represents the people who never look into themselves to see how they might be negatively affecting society. The Japanese Nurse on the other hand, is sympathetic to all the men on the ward. She knows that they are the ones in need and shows that in her actions. This is Kesey’s way of telling the readers how he believes the outcasts from society should be treated, not like the diseased that urgently need fixing, but like people.

Other Characters

Billy: “Sure!” It’s Billy, turned from the screen, his face boiling tears. “Sure!” he screams again. “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 MMiss Ratched, and I could get an AMA signed this afternoon, if I had the guts!” (Kesey, p.110)

Scanlon: The other Acutes were beginning to follow his lead…Scanlon did [the window] in by accidentally bouncing our basketball through it before the whitewashed X was even dry. The ball punctured, and Martini picked it off the floor like a dead bird and carried it to the nurse in the station, where she was staring at the new splash of broken glass all over her desk, and asked couldn’t she please fix it with tape or something? Make it well again? Without a word she jerked it out of his hand and stuffed it in the garbage. (Kesey, p.117)

Billy: “He cut his throat,” she said. She waited, hoping he would say something. He wouldn’t look up. “He opened the doctor’s desk and found some instruments and cut his throat. The poor miserable, misunderstood boy killed himself. He’s there now, in the doctor’s chair, with his throat cut.” (Kesey, p.175)

Harding: “This world ... belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?” (Kesey, p.38)

Cheswick: He never had looked big; he was short and too fat and had a bald spot in the back of his head that showed like a pink dollar, but standing there by himself in the center of the day room like that he looked tiny. He looked at McMurphy and got no look back, and went down the line of Acutes looking for help. Each time a man looked away and refused to back him up, and the panic on his face doubled. His looking finally came to a stop at the Big Nurse. He stamped his foot again. “I want something done! Hear me? I want something done! Something! Something! Some—” (Kesey, p.97)

These quotes show the different ways that all the men on the ward reacted to McMurphy’s actions. Cheswick is among the first of the men to support McMurphy, following him in everything he does. But in his time of greatest need, McMurphy does not support him, and so Cheswick dies by drowning himself in the swimming pool. Harding is initially against McMurphy because he believes that as the rabbits of society, they need stay low and recognize their role in society, but he turns to McMurphy’s side in the end. He realizes that maybe just because he is something that society thinks it wrong, the Combine can be wrong. Scanlon was one of the men who made it through the whole ordeal. He followed McMurphy’s lead and after his death, is able to completely shake off Nurse Ratched’s influence. Billy Bibbit, in his final act of defiance against the Nurse could not handle it, so he slits his throat in the morning after Candy comes to the ward.

Motifs

Christianity

The Acutes who weren’t going gathered at the day-room door, told us don’t bring our catch back

till it’s cleaned, and Ellis pulled his hands down off the nails in the wall and squeezed Billy Bibbit’s hand and told him to be a fisher of men. (Kesey, p.131)

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, p.153)

A recurring parallel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of the life of Jesus. This motif is used as a well known story to help people understand how McMurphy is helping these men on the ward to escape from the Combine. McMurphy is Jesus in this metaphor and he saves all the men through his sacrificial death. Billy Bibbit betrays McMurphy to Nurse Ratched like Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans and gives her a reason to give him a lobotomy. McMurphy’s death is the reason that all the other men are finally inspired to leave the hospital behind and have the confidence to ignore what society says they need to be doing.

Machines

She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head. Nobody up to see, just old Broom Bromden the half-breed Indian back there hiding

behind his mop and can’t talk to call for help. So she really lets herself go and her painted smile

twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load. (Kesey, p.7)

I can’t even hear the guys around me breathing, and I realize all of a sudden it’s because that drumming’s gradually got so loud I can’t hear anything else. We must be square in the middle of it. I go to clawing at that damned sheet tied across me and just about have it loose when a whole wall slides up, reveals a huge room of endless machines stretching clear out of sight, swarming with sweating, shirtless men running up and down catwalks, faces blank and dreamy in firelight thrown from a hundred blast furnaces. (Kesey, p.50)

The constant presence of machines on the ward is a symbol of the power society. Society does not change easily and just runs without any thought to the consequences. Like the machines, society as a whole is mindless and the staff on the ward are the gears in the machine of society. Machinery and the Combine is also used as a representation of how society weeds out all the trouble cases and puts them into one place.

Fog

Right and left there are other things happening just as bad—crazy, horrible things too goofy and

outlandish to cry about and too much true to laugh about—but the fog is getting thick enough I

don’t have to watch. And somebody’s tugging at my arm. I know already what will happen:

somebody’ll drag me out of the fog and we’ll be back on the ward and there won’t be a sign of what went on tonight and if I was fool enough to try and tell anybody about it they’d say, Idiot, you just had a nightmare; things as crazy as a big machine room down in the bowels of a dam where people get cut up by robot workers don’t exist. (Kesey, p.52)

The fog in the novel is Bromden’s representation of the influence of the Nurse and society and is always present when the Combine’s drugs are active. “Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.” (Kesey, p.74) While the fog can hide the men from society and make them feel safe, it also blocks their view and makes their minds blurry. In the end, Bromden is free of the fog and the influence of society that it came with.