One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Character Analysis

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Every person has a right to a different way of mental processes, a right to express their beliefs in ways they believe is morally and ethically right; however, we see in novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, that the patients of the mental ward are stripped of their rights and beliefs and labeled as outcast and troublemaker. Kesey tells the story about how individuals who were locked up in an asylum because they were different, grow and conquer the authoritarian figure, Nurse Ratchet, through the eyes and ears of the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden, or “Chief Broom”, is the son of Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, which means “the pine that stands the tallest on the mountain, and a white woman
named Mary Lousie Bromden. In the beginning of the novel, we see Chief Bromden as weak, paranoid, bullied, and constantly hallucinating through his words and thoughts. However, through the actions and defiance of McMurphy, we see him recover and grow into a confident individual who no longer bends under Nurse Ratchet’s control. From the very beginning of the book, we can see that Chief Bromden is paranoid by fear of being seen by the three angry black aides of Nurse Ratchet: “When they hate like this, better if they don’t see me.” This leads us to see that the narrator is very keen on his surroundings and that he instinctively shrinks in fear to make himself unnoticeable, which is quite unlikely, thanks to his six feet seven height.
Chief Bromden is often surrounded by a hallucinating fog which is a result from his medicated state and his desire to hide from those who control him. Moreover, we see that Chief Bromden is the key to helping us understand the symbols of the metal hospital through his descriptions of the oppressed and the oppressors, in and out of his medicated state. For example, he notices that there is a higher power above Nurse Ratchet, which symbolizes society, whom he calls the “Combine”. When he speaks to McMurphy for the very first time, he says “they (the Combine) start as quick as they see you’re gonna be big and go to working and installing their filthy machinery when you’re little, and keep on and one and on till you’re fixed!” This shows that he believes that the Combine is like a big machine and while everyone is a part of that machine, those in the mental ward are the broken pieces that are either thrown away or sent to be fixed. This shows that Chief Bromden is actually one of the most dangerous patience in the ward because he has the ability to be “cagey” and
understand the bigger picture of the control that society has on the different and oppressed. As the novel progresses, the hallucinating fog begins to lift off of Chief Bromden and he begins to understand that he is “way too little” mainly because he believes himself to be.
He grows in confidence through McMurphy and even risks his own safety and the secret of him not being deaf and mute by protecting and supporting McMurphy multiple times. After realizing that he is not a helpless, weak victim, he begins to “grow taller” and larger and when MrMurphy begins to fight with the black aides, he picks the one hanging on McMurphy’s back and “[throws] him in the shower” (275). We see that as he grows in confidence, his strength that was once stripped from him, returns and the black aid who once caused him to shrink in fear, is only a being “full of tubes” because he “didn’t weight more’n ten or fifteen
pounds”(275). Chief Bromden was a paranoid, bullied and heavily medicated patient of the mental ward who was stripped of his confidence, sanity and his very being until the arrival of McMurphy. His journey towards sanity, his actions and thoughts all lead us to believe that the strongest of them all was not McMurphy but Chief Bromden. He believed he was weak but when he began to realize the unreasonable control that Nurse Ratchet imposed upon the patients; he began to regain his inner and outer strength until he was able to overcome the control of the “Combine”, save McMurphy from a devastating future and escape from the mental ward.