Cuckoo's Nest Project -Schuyler K.

Schuyler Kresge
F Block English
12/8/14
"Cuckoo's Nest Final Project"

I. Chief Bromden

1. " ' Haw, you look at 'im shag it? Big enough to eat apples off my head an' he mine me like a baby.' " (Kesey, 3)
2. "The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurses's heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component" (Kesey, 40)
3. "It's too late to stop it now. McMurphy did something to it that first day, put some kind of hex on it with his hand so it won't act like I order it. There's no sense in it, any fool can see; I wouldn't do it on my own. Just by the way the nurse is staring at me with her mouth empty of words I can see I'm in for trouble, but I can't stop it. McMurphy's got hidden wires hooked to it, lifting it slow just to get me out of the fog and into the open where I'm fair game. He's doing it, wires... No. That's not the truth. I lifted it myself." (Kesey, 142)
4. "It's fogging a little, but I won't slip off and hide in it. No... never again... 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, 288)
5. "I ran across the grounds in the direction I had remembered the dog go, toward the highway. 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." (Kesey, 324)

These quotes portray Chief Bromden's progression as a character. In the beginning of the book, he is docile and, although he is still physically intimidating, he is mentally broken. At the end of the book, he is independent, and the spirit of McMurphy allows him to escape from the oppressive ward.

Chief Bromden, a Cherokee Indian thought to be mute and deaf in the mental institution, begins the book humiliated by constant years of abuse from the staff at the ward. However, over the course of the book, he uses his knowledge of the "Combine" and its ability to force conformity to defeat the Combine and defy the Nurse, all with the help of McMurphy. As a child, Bromden's father, Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, an old Indian chief, was forced by society to sell his land, and in turn, his Indian heritage, his defining feature. Chief has "sold" his personality away, and has hid in the fog, much as his father hid in alcohol. When McMurphy arrives at the ward, he attempts to help the men regain their lost individuality, and not only gets the men out of the fog, but gets them to remove themselves from the fog, giving them some of their masculinity back as well. When they vote on the baseball game, Bromden says, "I can't stop it. McMurphy's got hidden wires hooked to it, lifting it slow just to get me out of the fog and into the open where I'm fair game. He's doing it, wires... No. That's not the truth. I lifted it myself." (Kesey, 142) This quote is one of the defining moments in the book and is a real "turning point" for the Chief's progression. He is able to lift himself out of the fog of conformity, and into the open, even though that is more difficult.

II. Nurse Ratched

1. "Sometimes one man says something about himself that he didn't aim to let slip, and one of his buddies at the table where he said it yawns and gets up and sidles over to the big log book by the Nurses' Station and writes down the piece of information he heard- of therapeutic interest to the ward, is what the Big Nurse says the book is for."  (Kesey, 42)
2. "Right at your balls. 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 that they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. " (Kesey, 60)
3. " 'When you broke a rule you knew it. You wanted to be dealt with, needed it, but the punishment did not come. That foolish lenience on the part of your parents may have been the germ that grew into your present illness. I tell you this hoping you will understand that it is entirely for your own good that we enforce discipline and order.' " (Kesey, 200)
4. "The ball punctured, and Martini picked it up 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 208)
5. "And new white uniform. Some of the guys grinned at the front of it; in spite of its being smaller and tighter and more starched than her old uniforms, it could no longer conceal the fact that she was a woman." (Kesey, 320)

Nurse Ratched is a fairly static character, as well as the antagonist. She uses her power to force the patients to conform instead of working to help them. She is also manipulative, and attempts to repress her femininity.

Nurse Ratched, the primary antagonist of the story, is both a physically and mentally challenging opponent for McMurphy. As an Army nurse, she clings to the idea that if she is feminine, she will not have any authority. To reduce her femininity, she starches her uniform and attempts to reduce the patient's masculinity by creating an environment of paranoia and fear. In the quote, "The ball punctured, and Martini picked it up 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 208) Nurse Ratched shows no compassion, and is not very "motherly." The Nurse is also an allegory for the society in which Kesey lived. The Nurse's action of throwing away the basketball is symbolic of how society discards those who are considered different, instead of actually trying to include or help those who need it. She disguises herself as a savior to the patients, however when an actual therapeutic force enters the ward in the form of McMurphy, she sees him as a threat. In the story as well as the allegories it represents, the Nurse is the epitome of oppression of beliefs, repression of self-identity, and the systematic destruction of differences in society.

III. R. P. McMurphy

1. " 'My name is McMurphy, buddies, R.P. McMurphy, and I'm a gambling fool.' He winks and sings a little piece of a song: '...and whenever I meet with a deck a cards I lays... my... money... down,' " (Kesey, 23)
2. "His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't lift, something everybody knows he can't lift ... 'But I tried, though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?" (Kesey, 125)
3. "He shrugged his shoulders and with a loud sigh slapped both hands down on his knees and pushed himself standing out of the chair. He stretched and yawned and scratched the nose again and started strolling across the day-room floor to where she sat by the Nurses' Station, heisting his pants with his thumbs as he walked. I could see it was too late to keep him from doing whatever fool thing he had in mind, and I just watched, like everybody else... The iron in his boots cracked lightning out of the tile. He was ... the cowboy out of the TV set walking down the middle of the street to meet a dare... This was supposed to be her final victory over him, supposed to establish her rule once and for all. But here he comes and he's as big as a house!" (Kesey, 201)
4. " 'Winning, for Christsakes,' he said with his eyes closed. 'Hoo boy, winning.' " (Kesey, 270)
5. " 'Aaah, what's the old bitch tryin' to put over on us anyhow, for crap sakes. That ain't him.' 'Nothing like him,' Martini said. 'How stupid she think we are?' 'Oh, they done a pretty fair job, though,' Martini said, moving up alongside the head and pointing as he talked. 'See. They got the broken nose and that crazy scar - even the sideburns.' 'Sure,' Scanlon growled, 'but hell!' I pushed past the other patients to stand beside Martini. 'Sure, they can do things like scars and broken noses,' I said. 'But they can't do that look. There's nothing in the face. Just like one of those store dummies, ain't that right, Scanlon?' " (Kesey, 321)

R.P. McMurphy, with "boots that cracked lightning into the tiles" is the story's protagonist. These quotes show his fiery personality, and how that personality is weakened by his attacks against the Nurse's regime. He is a Jesus figure for the men, and they regard him as their savior from the Nurse's harsh rules.

Randle Patrick McMurphy is "The logger, the brawling Irishman, the cowboy out of the TV set walking down the middle of the street to meet a dare." (Kesey, 201) however, as the novel progresses, we find that he has some noble intentions, and becomes the rowdy leader of the patients on the ward. Early in the novel, he is consistently portrayed as incredulous to the strict laws that the Big Nurse has in place. He takes it as his official duty to try and gain some rights back for the patients. The attempts start as rambunctious pranks, such as writing vulgar words on the toilets. Nevertheless, the pranks escalate to a more serious level, and eventually become all out attacks on her authority. McMurphy is also a Jesus figure on the allegorical level. He fights for the patients, and eventually dies. However, unlike Jesus, his intentions are to fight back against injustice inflicted upon the patients by the Nurse and the society she stands for. He is a very dynamic character, although at first glance he appears to be static. His strong stance against her rules actually very quickly diminishes on its own, and he is essentially "propped up" by the need of the patients in the ward. He fights for them when they do not know they need to fight, and it is that that makes him such a powerful and thought-provoking protagonist.

IV. The Staff

1. "She rubs and rubs and hails Mary to beat thunder, but the stain stays. She looks in the mirror, sees it's darker'n ever. Finally takes a wire brush used to take paint off boats and scrubs the stain away, puts a nightgown on over the raw, oozing hide, and craws in bed...In the morning she sees how she's stain again and somehow she figures it's not really from inside her - how could it be? a good Catholic girl like her?" (Kesey, 166)
2. "Her three daytime black boys she acquires after more years of testing and rejecting thousands...She appraises them and their hate for a month or so, then lets them go because they don't hate enough." (Kesey, 30)
3. " '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 Miss Ratched's help, and he knows it.' " (Kesey, 63)
4. "She worked over his cuts, flinching every time he flinched and telling him she was sorry...'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.' " (Kesey, 279)
5. "McMurphy shook him off like a bull shaking off a monkey, but he was right back. So I picked him off and threw him in the shower. He was full of tubes: he didn't weigh more'n ten or fifteen pounds." (Kesey, 275)

The staff of Ratched's ward is hypocritical. These quotes demonstrate that although they preach conformity, to both the Nurse's rules and society's stereotypes. However, they all have their differences, from the Catholic nurse that has the "unnatural" birthmark, to the black boys, who are a minority themselves, and even including the Big Nurse herself. The Big Nurse hides her femininity because it is irregular for a leader. However, some, like the Japanese nurse, are compassionate to the patients.

The staff of the entire hospital is shown to foil each other from ward to ward. From the caring, compassionate nurse on Disturbed to the harsh, "full of hate" (Kesey, recurring quote) black boys on Ratched's ward, they all have different roles in fulfilling the allegory of society that Kesey is illustrating in the novel. The black boys are  "in contact with her on a high-voltage wave length of hate, and the black boys are out there performing her bidding before she even thinks it." (Kesey, 30) When thought of as an extension of the Big Nurse, they become more relevant on the allegorical level. They are the means by which society forces conformity and condemns individuality. This is represented in the book by their harsh methods of punishment and seemingly indifferent reactions to the patients' outbreaks. A foil of the black boys and the Big Nurse would be the Japanese nurse on Disturbed, who "Flinched every time he (McMurphy) flinched." Described as caring and compassionate, Kesey chooses a Japanese nurse because of the Japanese people's forced internment in camps during World War II. Kesey is trying to say that society's outcasts are sometimes the nicest people, as it is with the Japanese nurse. These characters foil each other, and it is interesting to see how they play into Kesey's allegory of society.

V. The Other Characters

1. " 'Mexico is...woo-den.' I can see what he's driving at. He's been saying this sort of thing for the whole six years he's been here, but I never paid him any mind, figured he was no more than a talking statue...He pauses and peers up at me again to make sure I'm getting it, and I want to yell out to him Yes, I see; Mexico is like a walnut; it's brown and hard and you feel it with your eye and it feels like a walnut! You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think." (Kesey, 135)
2. "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, the panic in his face doubled...two black boys clamped his arms from behind, and the least one threw a strap around him. He sagged like he'd been punctured." (Kesey, 173)
3. " '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!'...'Well, I'm not big and tough. Neither is Harding. Neither is F-Fredrickson. Neither is Suh-Sefelt. Oh-oh, you-you t-talk like we stayed in here because we liked it!' " (Kesey, 195)
4. " 'For myself? Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was-shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general word than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deady, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me-and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.' " (Kesey, 308)
5. "One Christmas at midnight on the button, at the old place, the ward door blows open with a crash, in comes a fat man with a beard, his eyes ringed red by the cold and his nose just the color of a cherry. The black boys get him cornered in the hall with flashlights...'Ho ho ho,' he says. 'I'd like to stay but I must be hurrying along. Very tight schedule, ya know. Ho ho. Must be going....' The black boys move in with the flashlights. They kept him with us for six years before they discharged him, clean-shaven and skinny as a pole." (Kesey, 76)

All of the patients are deemed crazy, by society, the Nurse, and themselves. Harding, a suspected homosexual, felt the shame of his sexuality as a child, and it is still affecting him in the novel. However, as Chief Bromden states to the Colonel, they are not crazy, and "make sense, a sense of your own." Contrasting the patients before the influence of McMurphy to the patients after McMurphy, or McMurphy himself, the change is drastic. Under McMurphy's tutelage, they have become stronger, more resilient, and more unique people. They have broken the Nurse's forced conformity. 

Some of the most important characters in the novel do not have large roles. Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, for example, is never physically present in the ward, however, he is has a role in portraying what it means to give up who you are to fit in, and also gives us a little insight into Bromden's past. Chief Tee Ah Millatoona sells away the reservation, and at the same time sells away his individuality and background. He ends up drinking himself to death because he was unsure of what he was. Cheswick has a somewhat different, however no less tragic, story. With McMurphy on the ward, he finally gets up the courage to directly confront the Big Nurse. Unfortunately, this confrontation occurs during McMurphy's hiatus from attacking the Nurse, and Cheswick gets no support from any other patients. "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, the panic in his face doubled." (Kesey, 173) Cheswick eventually realizes that nothing was accomplished, and kills himself, with his last words in the novel being, "[I] just wish something mighta been done, though" (Kesey, 175) The men eventually stand together, and Cheswick's death serves as part of a wake up call to McMurphy. The men of the ward are the outcasts of society, the ones the Combine deemed broken, and they have a very defeatist attitude in the beginning of the novel. However, that changes with McMurphy, and they begin to rebel and express their individuality. The patients learn that it is okay to be different, and that is one of the key themes that Kesey attempts to demonstrate in the novel.

VI. Motifs

Religious Parable

1. "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, 234)
2. "They put the graphite salve on his temples. 'What is it?' he says. 'Conductant,' the technician says. 'Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?' " (Kesey, 283)

When we look at the novel in a biblical sense, much more of the novel becomes clear. Although the allegory is not perfect, McMurphy fills a "Jesus" role quite well. He comes to the ward to fight back the injustices and save the patients from their own doubt and attempts to make them express their individuality. His twelve "disciples" are timid and mentally weak when he arrives in the ward, and McMurphy helps them not by fighting for them, but by fighting with them. He returns their "manhood" to them while still making sure that they are having fun. At the end of the novel, McMurphy is revealed to be operating not just on his own willpower, but the willpower of the other patients, much as Jesus did towards the end of his life. This allegory advances the novel because it parallels what is happening both in the ward and in society, so it gives us another perspective from which to look upon the novel.

The Combine and Society's Outcasts

1. "'No, my friend. We are the lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you? No? You must hurry on? Ah, he's gone. Pity.' He turned to McMurphy. 'Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become.' " (Kesey, 238)
2. "Maybe the Combine wasn't all powerful. What was to stop us from doing it again, now that we saw that we could? Or keep us from doing other things we wanted?" (Kesey, 305)

The Combine, a hallucination in Chief's mind, is actually an allegory for how Kesey saw the society he was living in. In the novel, the Combine runs through every person and molds them to be helpful for the Combine's purposes. Those that the Combine misses are picked up by the mental institutions and re-purposed to aid the Combine. Bromden sees how this works and is afraid of the Combine, but is also ultimately resigned to his fate. However, once McMurphy enters the ward and begins to "mess" with the Combine, the Chief begins to be more bold as well. The Combine, a symbol of society, treats those who are different very poorly, and McMurphy notices this and attempts to fight the system. This is Kesey's way of telling Americans to be more accepting of individuality, and to fight the Combine just like McMurphy and the ward.

1. Gender Stereotypes and Individuality
1. " 'Yet it seems I have been accused of a multitude of things, of jealousy and paranoia, of not being man enough to satisfy my wife, of having relations with male friends of mine, of holding my cigarette in an affected manner, even-it seems to me-accused of having nothing betweeen my legs but a patch of hair-and soft and downy and blond hair at that!' " (Kesey, 64)
2. "She held out her smile, begging him to see how sympathetic she was. 'Randle, there's no cutting involv-' 'Besides,' he went on, 'it wouldn't be any use to lop 'em off; I got another pair in my nightstand.' 'Another-pair?' 'One about as big as a baseball, Doc.' 'Mr.  McMurphy!' " (Kesey, 293)

Throughout the book, the Nurse is described as constantly attempting to repress her sexuality, using starched uniforms and keeping tools in her basket, instead of traditional "womanly" things. McMurphy describes her as a "ball-cutter," or someone who is attempting to take away their manliness. She uses manipulation to pit all of the men against each other, and they end up being afraid and a quite pitiful sight to McMurphy, a traditional man. He consistently tells her that she won't be able to take his manliness away from him, because he is not afraid to stand up to her. At the end of the book, McMurphy rips open her uniform when he is strangling her, as an attempt to prove to the men once and for all that she is a female, and cannot take away their manliness that easily. When she comes back to the ward, she has an even more starched uniform, however the men smile, because they know that she is a woman, and there is nothing she can do anymore to repress that.