Daily Journals

In this quote, Chief Bromden says, “I been silent so long it’s going to 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.”(Act 1 32) Chief Bromden, a long-term patient in Nurse Ratcheds psychiatric ward, narrates the events of the novel. The novel begins as he awakes to a typical day on the ward, feeling paranoid about the nighttime activities of the wards three black aides. We are given this brainteaser from chief Bromden. The reader has already gotten a glimpse of Bromden’s paranoia, from the novels opening lines, as well as a sense that he is not seeing things from an everyday perspective. For example, Bromden describes Nurse Ratched transforming into a huge machine, and he has to be sedated when the aides try to shave him and he starts screaming, “Air Raid”. In this story, he claims himself not only the narrator, but the author. He has an important story to tell, even though it’s going to be hard for him. The last line of this quote is Bromden’s request that the reader have an open mind. His hallucinations imply that the audience shouldn’t believe everything he says in the novel. In my opinion, I believe that Bromden regains sanity, but he still witnesses many events while he is hallucinating.

DJ 2 In this quote, Nurse Ratched says, “Now. At the close of Fridays meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street. He has been heard to say, `my dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks any ward or gesture that does not