Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

chief broaden

Good Essays
844 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
chief broaden
This essay is build up on the following statement: ”Often a protest is seen through the struggle of one person”. I will start of with the beginning of the studied text “One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest with the analysis of Chief Bromden. Secondly I will analyze the physical and mental behavior of the Chief through out the studied text. The same analytical structure will succeed for the Protagonist Sheila Birling in the studied text “An Inspector calls” by John Boynton Priestley.

At the beginning of the studied text, the Chief hallucinates the fog machine and Air Raids, which represent his mental instability. The mental issues occur when he is less stable and recede when he's more coherent. That is the first noticeable change by Bromden because of the receding hallucinations when McMurphy enters the ward. The next step towards Bromdens self realization is his awareness of the outside and watches the dog through the window. It shows he can conceive of existence outside of the institution, as he could not before. McMurphy is a catalyst for this change. The paranoia and hallucinations the Chief suffers from, which center on hidden machines in the hospital that physically and psychologically control the patients, can be read as metaphors for the dehumanization he has experienced in his life. We can observe a similar structure of behavior throughout a different text with a character similar to the Chief, namely Sheila Birling.

Sheila Birling is “a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited.” Sheila is a playful character in the opening. Later on Sheila is suspicious about Gerald who never came near her “last summer,” suggesting that Sheila isn’t as naive and shallow as she first appeared through out the text. She is angry with her parents for not seeing everything unfold the way she does when they pretend nothing much has happened that evening. Sheila is definitely impressionable and willing to accept new concepts and ideas. She is affected by the Inspector’s revelations about the Birling family and society. She and Eric are the only real cause for optimism in the play with a positive change in attitude and strength. Sheila is not cold blooded in the way that her parents are. She wants to get to the truth and is not as revengeful as Gerald says. Her parents never learn and reject what they discover because they are set in their ways and always remain the same. Like the inspector, she can see her family trying to hide the truth and Sheila is thus willing to accept her portion of responsibility for Eva and seems truly sorry.
Secondly I want to discuss why the Chief sees the combine as a humiliating threat to himself and other inmates. The Chief describes the Combine as a machine in which all parts are related because they depend on each other for the machine to run smoothly they must all be programmed in the same way. The Chief recognizes the potential of the Combine to mow down a man into what it wishes him to be. He even tells McMurphy about its existence and power. He warns McMurphy that the Combine cannot let a man as big and as powerful as McMurphy exists unless he is on society’s repressive side. The Chief knows that if McMurphy is opposed to the Combine, it will try to cut him down to size.

Furthermore, I want to discuss the struggle and changes of the characteristics of Sheila Birling through out the text. Sheila is very caring throughout the play she demonstrates this clearly by the way she speaks and acts to fellow colleagues and people she doesn’t even know “destroying herself so horribly and I’ve been so happy tonight. Oh I wish you hadn’t told me. What was she like? Quite young?” those quotes shows that Sheila is very warm hearted character. She once again shows interest for a girl she doesn’t even know. Sheila in a way is the opposite to her father, she does not care about the business and the money stolen due to Eric’s and Eva’s relationship. She only cares about understanding what Eva felt like and feels it for her. Due to the fact that Sheila shows remorse, the audience feels sympathetic as these sorts of situations are common in every day life. In my opinion, Sheila as well as Chief Bromden both play an enormous role as an optimistic person through out both texts. Sheila and Eric are the representatives of the younger generation. I personally think that young people should learn mainly how to accept that people are not just responsible for themselves, but others too.

Because of McMurphy, Chief finally has the courage to break free from the hospital through a window after breaking it the way McMurphy trained him to. Chief plays the role of eyes and ears in the novel, as well as the one who guides us into and out of this strange, mysterious, crazy world.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    McMurphy I was quite skeptical of his self-diagnosed insanity. He showed tremendous self-confidence and had a certain charisma not often seen in the mentally unstable. Furthermore, Nurse Ratched’s intimidating presence seemed to have no effect on him. When I think back now, to how everything was before we met McMurphy, I wonder how he did it. At the time the patients thought him as some sort of hero, superhuman even. I laughed such notions off at first, considering them to be the desperate thoughts of the weak and unstable. But then he died. Every day his ghost grows larger and more powerful. And as this memory grows, so do the patients. You see it, in the way they talk, the way they hold the once overpowering gaze of Nurse Ratched with ease. We’ve had three voluntary’s leave the ward already since McMurphy arrived here, their own decisions, not mine, not the Nurse’s. Who could accomplish so much in so little time but a hero? When McMurphy saved these patients, he threw away his mind. He lost his sanity so the others may find…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    McMurphy arrives at the mental institution with vivacity and happiness. He enters the ward by being boisterous and full of laughter. His laughter is noticed by all the patients because it is the first laughter they have heard in years. Chief Bromden recalls that his relatives used to mock the government officials by laughing and comments “I forget sometimes what laughter can do,” (pg 95). McMurphy is noticeably different than the other patients at the ward. Most of the patients are languid and shielded from the outside world. He walks in and declares that he is going to be their leader and show them how to have fun. Christ entered the world in a similar way. He was a man who was visibly different than the other Jews and he wanted to show others his Father’s teachings. He was full of life and wanted people to achieve inner peace. The Gospels preach that the way to find inner peace is through laughter. Christ wanted to be a model and leader for his disciples just as McMurphy wants to be a model and leader for the other patients.…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is narrated by Chief Bromden. Chief is one of the most dynamic characters in the novel. He is half Native American, a large man and he frequently has hallucinations. Since he is the narrator the reader has to pick whether his hallucinations are real or fiction. The reader then gets introduced to nurse Ratched. Ratched is a power-hungry nurse who only seeks out her own benefit. She will do whatever it takes to keep herself in charge, whether it be blackmailing her coworkers or convincing the other patients that her way is the only option. The reader is then finally introduced to the last main character who is Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy is the game changer in the ward. He was involuntarily submitted and extremely detests the way that Ratched is running the ward. The novel is in essence a power struggle between Ratched and McMurphy. The first milestone that McMurphy succeeds in is…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is important to understand that some conflicts in literature might not always be obvious. Considering how an author addresses conflict via literary techniques can reveal other more complex conflicts or different kinds of conflicts that interact in multiple ways. Analyzing those more complicated elements can help discover what literature represents about the human experience and condition. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the poem of Juan Delgado and the story of Tim O’Brien.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The set-up ends with the inciting moment. The inciting moment in One flew over the cuckoo's nest is the scene where McMurphy and the other patients play a basketball game. During this scene it is becomes clear that the rebellious actions of McMurphy have an affect of the other patients as well, because The Chief is listening to him. You can see Nurse Ratched looking down on them from her window, probably thinking about the affect that new patient McMurphy is going to have on the other patients and life in the institution in general.…

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Points of view have a great impact throughout stories sequences. The points of views provide details and evoke emotions that implies readers anxiety as well as depicts images in the reader’s mind. Moreover, a good observer is a good story teller. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel written in 1962, by Ken Kesey, illustrates the use and misuse of authority from hospitals and their administrators, passive racism faced because of origin, and the desire of changes to be made. Throughout Chief Bromden’s point of view along the novel, readers depict ideas of patients live’s within the ward under the administrator’s harsh regimen and consequences in the result of the patients’ rebellion against authority.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ken Kesey's experiences in a mental institution urged him to tell the story of such a ward. We are told this story through the eyes of a abnormally large Indian who everyone believes to be deaf and dumb named Chief in his novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". Chief Bromden also referred to as "Chief Buh-room" is a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital on the ward of Mrs. Ratched, she is the symbol of authority and female domination throughout the novel. This ward forms the backdrop for the rest of the story.…

    • 2241 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The reader gets a glimpse of Chief Bromden's paranoia in the beginning of the novel. His paranoia mostly takes the form of hallucinations, he believes there are hidden machines in the hospital that physically and psychologically control the patients. "I creep along the wall quiet as dust in my canvas shoes, but they got special sensitive equipment detects my fear and they all look up, all three at once, eyes glittering out of the black faces," this is a quote taken from pg.9, and it reveals the Chief's way of looking at thing.…

    • 842 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Big Nurse, or Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is introduced as a very bossy and meticulous figure. Bromden is a patient at the ward and also narrator of the story, always describing the Nurse’s personality, looks, and actions. In one passage, Bromden describes how he always sees her with figurative language; “I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the result she wants.” (Kesey 29). Kesey used similes to relate Nurse Ratched to a watchful robot and the ward as her network. This lets readers infer that she is very controlling and is seen by herself and the patients as superior. At the mental hospital the story takes place at, they use electric shock therapy and other treatments of the like to supposedly help treat the patients. The idea of electricity is hinted as Kesey related her knowing of where and when everything happens by relating it to wires sending currents. Nurse’s controllingness could lead to problems later on in the book because Bromden is always complaining in his narration of how he is treated and the new patient, McMurphy, also proves to like having authority. Tension is already forming between characters which could possibly result in rebellion rebellion. The passage characterizes the Nurse as well as the treatments of the hospital between the lines.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this essay I am going to discuss how John Steinbeck creates tension during the fight scene in ’Of Mice and Men’. I am going to look at how Steinbeck uses different techniques such as vocabulary, body language, similes, and dynamic verbs to build up different levels of tension during the scene.…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    this mental ward in the eyes of Chief Bromden. As he walks down the hall, and the…

    • 1601 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The character of Randall P. McMurphy in Ken Kesey's acclaimed film, 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', displays characteristics that are commonly associated with being both a psychopath and a saviour. The film is set in an American mental institution in the early 1960's, which means that the attitudes of the staff, and community in general, towards mental illness were a lot different to that of the twenty-first century. McMurphy's persona seemed to be constantly changing throughout the film to fit each situation; whether he was being a madman towards his superiors or being the nice guy to his fellow inmates McMurphy always 'tried' to know what to do. "Mac", as the inmates knew him developed into a man who was on the good side of evil, slightly eccentric and mischievous but underneath a warm, loveable gentleman who would break an arm and a leg to help his friends. It is for this reason that the character of Randall P. McMurphy is comparative to Jesus Christ - he empowered and cured others to the dissatisfaction of his superiors.…

    • 1957 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Chief Bromden

    • 2005 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Bromden is a very conservative yet diverse character. In “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, Ken Kesey depicts Bromden as an inconfident, shallow man with great hidden potenial that only shines when he is pushed. Many reasons of his flaws and triumphs can be seen through out the book.…

    • 2005 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    McMurphy is kind of the idol for the men in the ward. He tries to prove that the men are individuals and and don’t have to listen to the nurses. He shows this through many examples.…

    • 1218 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Answer: The novel represents the psychiatric hospital as a metaphor for the oppression which Kessey observes in the modern society. I will agree that matriarchy is associated with castration. Kessey describes the fog machine as the powerless of the patient forced by the staff to stay hidden in their own individual fog. This is the same way the society has castrated the men (mostly black men) by making them remain in their fog.…

    • 570 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays