One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Summary
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. The narrator of the novel is Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a catatonic half-Indian man whom all of the inmates and staff assume is deaf and dumb. Bromden often suffers from hallucinations during which he feels the room filling with a dense, overwhelming fog generated by a huge mechanized matrix called The Combine which controls everyone in its grasp. The institution is dominated by Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse), a cold, precise woman with calculated gestures and a calm, mechanical manner. When the story begins, a new patient, Randall Patrick McMurphy, arrives at the ward. He is a self-professed “gambling fool” who has just come from a work
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farm at Pendleton as part of his sentence for statutory rape. He clearly is completely sane and lucid, at the hospital only to avoid the work detail. Others on the ward include Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year-old who stutters and appears very young. Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
During the first therapy meeting, Nurse Ratched begins examining Harding's difficulties with his wife. McMurphy takes the opportunity to explain his arrest for statutory rape, suggesting that the girl was of legal age and certainly more than consenting. Dr. Spivey, the main doctor for the ward, questions whether McMurphy is now feigning insanity to get out of doing hard labor at the work farm. Afterward, McMurphy confronts Harding about the way the inmates defer to Ratched so readily. He suggests it is a “pecking-party” in which the patients are to turn on each other. Harding admits that all of the patients and even Dr. Spivey are afraid of the Big Nurse. He adds that the patients are rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need Big Nurse to show them their place. McMurphy bets him that he can get Nurse Ratched to crack within a week.
McMurphy awakens early the next morning to take a shower. He complains to one of the black boys who serve as Nurse Ratched's henchmen that the patients are only allowed to brush their teeth at certain times. When Ratched arrives, McMurphy stands in front of her in a towel, claiming that his clothes have been taken. He threatens to drop his towel (though he has shorts on). Ratched screams to one of the boys to get McMurphy some new clothes.
McMurphy then complains to Ratched about the loud music that constantly plays on the ward, but she refuses to turn it down. He suggests opening the tub room as a game room, but she refuses. At the next group meeting, Dr. Spivey mentions casually that he talked to McMurphy about opening up the tub room as a game room and thinks that it is a great idea. The other inmates ratify the plan while Nurse Ratched's hands begin to shake—her first significant sign of weakness.
McMurphy next pushes for a schedule change so the patients can watch the World Series during the day and do their work at night. He attempts to motivate the patients to push for the schedule change, but he becomes angry at them when they act too “chicken-shit” and refuse to oppose Ratched. Billy Bibbit tells McMurphy that nothing he can do will be of any use in the long run, but McMurphy boasts that he will break out of the institution by lifting up the control panel in the tub room and throwing it through the window.
The patients gradually grow more assertive in their opposition to the boys and to Ratched. At another group meeting, after Billy discusses his stutter and having proposed to a woman his mother disliked, McMurphy brings up the World Series again. Ratched finally allows a vote. All twenty Acute patients vote for his idea, but Ratched declares it a defeat, for none of the Chronics have had the ability to vote. McMurphy finally motivates Chief Bromden to vote for him, but Ratched says it is too late and the vote is over. As a protest, McMurphy refuses to work and sits down in front of the television while the World Series is on. The other patients join him in this mutiny.
During a staff meeting, the doctors discuss McMurphy with Ratched. They believe that he is no ordinary man and might be dangerous. Ratched, however, claims that McMurphy is not an extraordinary man and is subject to all the fears and timidity of the other men. She is confident that she can break McMurphy, for he is committed to the hospital and they are in control, able to decide when he will be released.
McMurphy continues to behave aggressively, but Ratched does not respond. The other patients revisit longstanding gripes against her, such as the rationing of cigarettes and the tight control over their schedules. When the men make their weekly trip to the pool, McMurphy learns that he will only be released after Nurse Ratched and the doctors decide he is ready. At the next group meeting, Cheswick complains about the rationing of cigarettes, and two of the boys are required to drag him away to the Disturbed Ward. He returns, presumably after having undergone shock treatment. Soon after, Cheswick drowns when he gets his fingers stuck in the grate at the bottom of the pool.
Nurse Ratched reassumes her control over the ward after McMurphy gives up his struggle against her, knowing that she controls whether or not he leaves. On the ward's trip to the library, Harding introduces McMurphy to his visiting wife, Vera. Harding and Vera are rude to one another, and she implies that he is a closeted homosexual, then suddenly leaves. Harding asks McMurphy his opinion, and McMurphy snaps that he will not say how awful Vera is, even if that is what Harding wants to hear. McMurphy says he has his own worries and should not have to deal with others' problems.
While getting chest X-rays for TB in another part of the hospital, McMurphy learns about the Shock Shop, where patients get electroshock therapy, and he learns about lobotomies, partial brain removal designed to tame the wildest patients. He confronts Harding and the other patients about why they never told him directly that Nurse Ratched controls whether or not he leaves. They claim to have forgotten he was involuntarily committed, for with rare exceptions, all of the others entered the hospital voluntarily. McMurphy cannot conceive that these men would choose to live in the hospital, but Billy tells him that they are too weak to leave.
Nurse Ratched closes the tub room that the patients had been using for several weeks, on the ground that the men did not apologize for their behavior during the World Series protest. McMurphy responds by punching the glass at the Nurses' Station. Ratched does little to retaliate because she knows she can prolong the fight. McMurphy requests an Accompanied Pass to go deep-sea fishing and tries to recruit patients to go with him. In response, Ratched posts newspaper clippings about the dangers of boating, which frighten several patients.
McMurphy realizes that Chief Bromden is neither deaf nor dumb. One night McMurphy offers Bromden a pack of chewing gum and gets him to speak about his family. McMurphy suggests that Bromden pick up the control panel in the tub room and throw it through the window so that he can escape. McMurphy signs up Bromden for the fishing trip.
On the day of the trip, Nurse Ratched tries to derail it, for only one of the chaperones (a prostitute named Candy Starr) has arrived instead of two. Dr. Spivey, however, acts as the second chaperone. When they stop for gas on the way to the docks, the gas-station attendant asks if they are patients from the asylum. Dr. Spivey claims that they are merely a work crew, but McMurphy boldly brags that they are criminally insane. At the docks, a couple of men yell disparaging comments about Candy and the patients. McMurphy has trouble securing the boat because they lack a waiver, but he takes the boat without a captain. After a day of fishing, the men return rejuvenated, and the men on the docks no longer mock them.
Nurse Ratched makes her next move against McMurphy by posting the patients' financial statements, which show that McMurphy has made a profit against the other patients since he arrived. She suggests in a meeting that McMurphy is trying to manipulate them. When the men confront McMurphy about this, he admits that he is no saint, but he has been perfectly honest about his intentions. He arranges for Candy to visit the institution for a visit with Billy Bibbit. During a cautionary cleansing that Nurse Ratched orders, several of the black boys harass one of the patients, George Sorenson. McMurphy defends him and gets in a fight with them. Chief Bromden joins in when the black boys gang up on McMurphy, and both men are taken away to the Disturbed Ward.
Down at the Disturbed Ward, a nurse treats McMurphy's and Bromden's wounds and tells them that not every ward is run as autocratically as Nurse Ratched's. The nurse adds that she wishes she could keep patients away from her ward. Ratched gives McMurphy and Bromden a chance to apologize before administering shock treatment. McMurphy refuses. They administer shock treatment to him several times in one week, even though Bromden tries to talk him into complying. McMurphy claims that the electroshock therapy energizes him. When Bromden returns to the ward, Harding congratulates him and tells the Chief that he has heard rumors that McMurphy is not responding at all to the EST. Ratched brings McMurphy back to the ward after she learns that his absence and resistance have led to his becoming an inspirational “legend.”
Harding and the other patients decide to engineer McMurphy's escape when Candy arrives on a Saturday night for her meeting with Billy. They bribe Mr. Turkle, the night watchman, with liquor and an offer of sex with Candy, and the other patients have a party that night. McMurphy delays leaving until early in the morning, however, and falls asleep. The black boys find him the next morning.
When Nurse Ratched arrives, she gathers the patients together in one room to take roll. She realizes that Billy Bibbit is missing. She finds him in the Seclusion Room with Candy. She chastises him for having sex with such a cheap woman, then tells him that she will tell his mother. Billy begins to stutter at this, but she takes him into the doctor's office to calm down. When the doctor arrives, he finds that Billy has cut his throat and killed himself. Ratched blames McMurphy for Billy's suicide, and he responds by trying to strangle her. Although the black boys pull McMurphy off of her before he can kill her, he rips her uniform, exposing her breasts.
Nurse Ratched takes time off to recuperate, and when she returns, she cannot speak. Many of the patients check out of the hospital. Weeks later, McMurphy returns to the ward, now comatose after having a forced lobotomy. Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow in order to put him out of his misery, then throws the control panel in the tub room through the window and escapes the institution, fulfilling McMurphy's escape plan for himself.
Randall Patrick McMurphy
An imposing, red-headed Irishman, R.P. McMurphy enters the institution with a history of hostility, disobedience, and a recent conviction for statutory rape. Still, it is obvious from the start that he is a sane man who simply chose to accept institutionalization rather than live on a "work farm" as part of the judge's sentence. McMurphy is charismatic, sexual, and boisterous to the extreme--a "gambling fool" who looks out primarily for his own self-interest and matches wits with Nurse Ratched in the book's primary conflict. He also seems to care deeply about his fellow inmates, often putting justice and their well-being over his own desires to escape the institution--which inevitably costs him his sanity. McMurphy represents freedom and self-determination versus societal repression--a battle McMurphy ultimately loses in order to pave the way for the rest of the patients to see the light. In many ways, he becomes a sacrificial lamb for the sake of enlightenment and awakening, both within the novel and for readers. McMurphy's character is remembered as a martyr who inspires real-world social change.
Nurse Ratched
A middle-aged nurse who controls the institution where McMurphy is sentenced. Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) is stern, controlling, and determined to quash all resistance to her authority. Nurse Ratched believes in order above all, institutionalizing a systematized reduction of humans to robotic function, with an obliteration of all individual characteristics that might ultimately lead to rebellion. She is, in many ways, a metaphor for all forms of repression, particularly sexual repression. She seems to be ashamed of her own sexuality, consistently buttoned up in her white nurse's outfit, but she cannot hide her large breasts, her one incongruous physical trait. As a metaphor, then, it is only appropriate that her final comeuppance involves McMurphy (symbolizing freedom) tearing open her uniform and unleashing her breasts and body. As punishment, Ratched has McMurphy lobotomized. In that battle, authoritarianism, repression, and conservative sexuality win, but readers are led to fight against what Ratched represents.
Chief Bromden
A tall, half-Indian patient in the ward, Chief Bromden has been in the institution the longest. Although other inmates think that he is deaf and mute, Chief Bromden instead chooses not to speak, at first because others ignored him and then out of fear of Nurse Ratched. Chief Bromden is the narrator of the novel. With the help of McMurphy, he begins to speak once more and reasserts himself against Nurse Ratched and her workers. Ultimately, he breaks free of the Nurse and the hospital, killing the lobotimized McMurphy in order to prevent him from suffering further indignity, and finding his way back into society away from the repressive manipulation and tyrannical authority of the institution.
Billy Bibbit
A thirty-one-year-old patient in the institution, Billy Bibbit still appears very young, partly because of his persistent stutter. Bibbit is dominated and terrorized by his mother, who has intimidated him into behaving younger than his years and has instilled in him a strong sense of guilt. This guilt causes him to commit suicide after Nurse Ratched finds him with a prostitute and threatens to tell his mother.
Dale Harding
The president of the patients' council and a college graduate, Harding is likely the most educated patient in the institution. He explains many of the workings of the ward to McMurphy. Kesey indicates that Harding may be a closeted homosexual. Harding certainly is dominated by his boisterous wife, who intimidates him with her sexuality and his sexual inadequacy.
Bancini
A fifty-year-old resident in the institution, Bancini has been a "Chronic" since his birth, for his brain was damaged during childbirth. He had one moment of lucidity, when he claimed he was "tired" of life and had been dead since birth, but after being punished for this by Nurse Ratched, he succumbed to silence and the occasional whimpers of exhaustion.
Charles Cheswick
One of the patients on the ward, he is one of the first patients to support McMurphy, but he is taken to the Disturbed Ward, presumably for shock treatment, when he starts to protest the ward policies. Cheswick later dies in the swimming pool when he gets his fingers caught in the grate, an action that is possibly suicidal.
Ellis
Although formerly an "Acute," Ellis became a "Chronic" at the institution after receiving electroshock treatment.
Miss Flinn
One of the nurses in the ward, she talks with Nurse Ratched about McMurphy's possible motivation for wanting to disrupt the ward.
Frederickson
One of the patients on the ward, Frederickson takes the seizure medication that Sefelt refuses.
Geever
Geever is one of the black boys who works for Nurse Ratched and becomes her henchman in the management of the ward. Bromden makes the observation that these black boys are filled with hatred and thus enjoy punishing the inmates at Ratched's will.
Vera Harding
The wife of Dale Harding, Vera visits her husband at the institution and promptly gets into an argument with him. She is a physically imposing woman who uses her sexuality to intimidate her husband and who plays on his sexual insecurities.
Martini
One of the patients on the ward, Martini hallucinates that he sees objects on the board when the men play Monopoly. Despite his disruptions, McMurphy includes him in the games.
Colonel Matterson
The oldest Chronic in the ward, Colonel Matterson is a World War veteran who can now only utter incoherent phrases such as "the flag is America."
Nurse Pilbow
Nurse Pilbow is one of Ratched's nurses, a Catholic woman with a prominent birthmark that she attempts to wash away. She is intensely affected by feelings of guilt over her job and her sexuality.
Public Relation
A fat bureaucrat who often visits the ward, Public Relation attempts to frame the ward as a wonderful place to stay run with great generosity by Nurse Ratched.
Rawler
Rawler commits suicide one night, cutting off his testicles (suggesting that the ward leads patients to emasculate themselves).
Ruckly
A former Acute patient, Ruckly became a Chronic after electroshock treatment and now can only say over and over "fffffuck da wife."
Sandy Gilfilliam
One of the Portland prostitutes who was to accompany McMurphy and the men on the fishing trip, Sandy does not attend because she got married. Later, however, she divorces her husband and visits the institution with Candy, a fellow prostitute.
Scanlon
Scanlon is one of the Acute patients on the ward, the only patient who is involuntarily committed besides McMurphy.
Sefelt
Sefelt is an epileptic who refuses to take his seizure medicine because it destroys his gums. He tends to give his medication to Frederickson, who takes double doses in his stead. Sefelt, who has a legitimate medical condition, is often ignored by the staff, who seem more interested in dominating the rebellious patients.
George Sorenson
An old Swede nicknamed "Rub-a-Dub George" because of his obsession for cleanliness. A patient on the ward, George is a former fishing boat captain whom McMurphy cajoles into leading the fishing expedition. McMurphy later defends him when the black boys harass him during a humiliating cleansing, leading to the riot which prompts Ratched to send McMurphy and Bromden to "Disturbed."
Dr. Spivey
The main doctor on the ward, Dr. Spivey is easily manipulated by both Nurse Ratched and R.P. McMurphy, who in turn use him as a pawn. McMurphy uses him as his institutional defense on the ward, convincing him to open the tub room and to chaperone the patients on the fishing trip. Nurse Ratched, meanwhile, uses him to champion her authoritarian policies to discipline rebellious inmates.
Candy Starr
Candy Starr, a prostitute from Portland, chaperones McMurphy and the other patients on the fishing trip. McMurphy later plans a visit for Candy to the ward so that she may have sex with Billy Bibbit, with whom she became close during the fishing trip.
Mr. Taber
One of the patients on the ward, Mr. Taber complains to Nurse Ratched that he does not know what is in his medicine. Nurse Ratched claims that he was once a manipulator, like McMurphy, and she eventually made him quiescent through her tyrannical punishments.
Tee Ah Millatoona
Chief Bromden's father, also known as The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain.
An Indian chief, he married a Caucasian woman named Bromden and took her last name, but she ultimately drove him to alcoholism. He becomes a metaphor for the results of repression, obliteration, and in general the encroachment of authority on individualism.
Mr. Turkle
The night watchman on the ward. McMurphy bribes Mr. Turkle to allow Candy Starr into the ward.
Warren
Warren is one of the black boys who work for Nurse Ratched. Like Geever, he is one of her henchmen. He takes glee in torturing the inmates when she commands it.
Washington
Washington, like Geever and Warren, is one of the black boys who works for Nurse Ratched and follows her orders when commanded to round up and discipline one of the disobedient inmates.
Sexual Repression vs. Sexual …show more content…
Freedom
One of the prevailing motifs of Kesey's novel involves the metaphorical contrast between clamped-down sexual mores and freewheeling, instinctive, "natural" sexual freedom. The conflict is represented by the war between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. The "Big Nurse" represents a frigid, controlled sexuality, an attempt to button up natural instincts and resist impulse through conscious order. She cannot, however, disguise her huge breasts, which show through her uniform no matter how much she covers up. McMurphy, the symbol of total sexual abandon, ultimately tears the Nurse's clothes from her body to "unleash" her breasts in a final climax of the battle. McMurphy himself is almost animalistic in his sexuality, which is a main reason he has been institutionalized by a repressive society. He is considered dangerous and hostile because he acts on his urges. His primary crime is statutory rape, an offense he defends by arguing that the young girl pressed him to have sex rather than the other way around. At the end of the novel, though McMurphy frees nearly all the main characters sexually--bringing a prostitute for fellow inmates, encouraging the men to rediscover the emasculated souls they've surrendered to Nurse Ratched--he must pay for his free sexuality by losing a part of his brain. Kesey suggests that fully unfettered sexuality is too dangerous for modern society to tolerate.
Independence vs. Acquiescence
Throughout the novel, we consistently root for the inmates to find freedom, either through a mass escape or by overthrowing the regime and winning a new order in the institution. This is all subverted, however, when McMurphy discovers that he and Scanlon are the only two involuntarily committed inmates. The rest of the inmates are there by choice. They would rather be quiescent followers, surrendering themselves to institutional oppression, than independent in a society where they do not quite fit and may not be able to function. McMurphy sees emasculation as the prime reason for the choice to stay. The Nurse has found a way to mentally castrate each and every one of the inmates--including Rawlins, who commits suicide by physical emasculation. McMurphy may perceive that the best way to free the other men is to expose Nurse Ratched as flesh and blood rather than an inevitable oppressor--someone with her own flaws and pains. McMurphy attempts to work within the Nurse's system, trying to outmanipulate and outfox her with his various schemes. But ultimately, the only way to change the acquiescence of his fellow inmates is to lead by example. He feels presure to acquiesce and avoid pain, but he choose to follow his independent spirit, which explodes in brute force when he rips the Nurse's clothes open. This act prevents the rest of the inmates from ever seeing her as merely the robotic hand of authority. She has a body now, and they can no longer follow her blindly, understanding that she is just as mortal as they are. They are likely to continue choosing the institution to the outside world, but they will remain with a greater degree of independence than before.
Self-Interest vs. Altruism
McMurphy’s character is worth considering in comparing the drives for altruism and self-interest. When McMurphy enters the hospital, he has the goal of causing chaos in order to disrupt Nurse Ratched's carefully designed schemes, which quash the inmates' spirits. At first it seems that he does so primarily for amusement, or in order to establish himself as Top Dog and ensure that he has the power in the ward. He also consistently fleeces the other inmates in gambling games. Over time, however, we suspect that money, power, and amusement are not—or are no longer—his primary motivation for taking on Ratched. He develops a sincere desire to resuscitate these fallen, empty, drained souls. In one of the most significant moments of the novel, when he is frustrated that the men are not trying to get out, he throws all their money back at them, in a demonstration that he cares more about them than self-interest alone would dictate. Once McMurphy realizes that he might never get out, being involuntarily committed subject to Ratched's will, he for a while follows his self-interest. But this is temporary, for he ultimately sacrifices himself in order to allow the inmates to see their chance for escape from the ward in both body and soul.
Mind vs. Matter
Kesey’s novel elucidates some ways that people imprison themselves psychosomatically, using the mind to trap the body. In the case of Chief Bromden, for instance, the Indian has convinced others—maybe even himself—that he is deaf and dumb. This chosen handicap dictates the conditions of even the most mundane moments of his life. Meanwhile, for the rest of the inmates, in group therapy sessions Nurse Ratched uses the power of suggestion to expose their deepest insecurities. We see over and over that belief in a particular ailment seems to induce it. Specifically, in the case of electroshock therapy (EST), given to disturbed patients whenever they misbehave, most of them succumb and find themselves changed negatively by the experience. Chief Bromden, in particular, says that fighting EST was not an option: the fog simply envelops you and warps your brain. But McMurphy teaches him that fighting EST requires willpower, and through focus of mind it can be resisted like much else. Again and again, McMurphy uses his strength to fight the effect of EST, allowing Bromden to follow him and finally escape. There are natural limits—namely, nature itself—to the use of mind over matter. Some people have genuine medical conditions. Ratched herself cannot wish away her large bosom. As for McMurphy, he cannot withstand Ratched's final tool of punishment, the actual removal of part of his brain.
Fear vs. Experience
The inmates tend to be prisoners of their own fear. Kesey suggests that modern society, figured by Nurse Ratched’s institution, preys on fear, that authoritarian, repressive regimes, whether in the government, the home, or the workplace, rely on fear to control individuals. Ratched's methods of manipulation include using public embarrassment to make the inmates turn on each other, then the power of suggestion to make the inmates afraid of her potential to expose each one of their unique flaws to the group. She uses a carrot-and-stick approach to make the inmates afraid of physical punishment for the slightest disobedience. What McMurphy finds upon entering the ward is a group of sniveling, whipped animals who have lost the sense of their own capacity for learning from everyday experience. They have given up sex, alcohol, and even living voluntarily because of their fear of indulging in everyday life. Whatever fear of life brought most of them into the institution in the first place has been magnified many times by Ratched’s regime, and McMurphy takes up the challenge of helping the others again want to experience more out of life.
Origins of Violence
Many critics have mistakenly cried racism against Kesey in the novel’s depiction of the three black boys who serve Nurse Ratched.
They certainly are portrayed as dumb, sniveling brutes who follow the Nurse's orders as perverse henchmen. They are intent on destruction. Why did Kesey choose to make these characters black? Kesey’s choice is not racist but is a critique of racism in society or at least racism in Ratched’s mind. This is because the novel provides a very clear etiology for each of these boys early in the novel. The Nurse carefully sorts through potential boys for the job, looking for the ones who have the most hate within them, those who have learned to internalize their rage so that they have every reason to be completely obedient to her will and to act brutally when they get the chance. Nurse Ratched has chosen boys who already express the internalized anger she feels, the fury and pain she has repressed under the facade of calm, serene order. If the boys who fit the bill are black, it is because in a racist society they already have experienced (more than others) the hurt in their lives that has made them so angry, and if anyone is racist in this regard, it is Ratched for thinking the black boys are most likely to be the kind of boys she wants. If one's environment is largely to blame for a person becoming angry and violent, it is worth examining the causes of anger and violence in other characters from the same
perspective.
Group Mentality vs. Individualism
Perhaps Nurse Ratched's most sinister tool is preying on the group mentality of the inmates to instill fear and self-loathing. She makes it very clear that the inmates are not allowed to be on their own; they must form groups of eight in order to request access to even the most mundane activity. There is method to this seeming draconian order. The Nurse knows that as long as the men can reflect, mirror, and expose each other's pain, they will have enough to occupy themselves with rather than rebelling against her. Only in the solitude of one’s own room can one of them look inside and develop the strength of will and character to begin questioning her authority. Such questioning of the hospital, its leadership, the role of the hospital in their convalescence, or broadly questioning authority or society is a mark of individualism that Nurse Ratched will not allow. In a group of disturbed people, the group identity is going nowhere, and that is the way she wants it. She controls the inmates by controlling the questions asked, and as long as she prevents them from being alone for very long, she knows that she will have the upper hand.
farm at Pendleton as part of his sentence for statutory rape. He clearly is completely sane and lucid, at the hospital only to avoid the work detail. Others on the ward include Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty-year-old who stutters and appears very young. Ratched immediately pegs McMurphy as a manipulator.
During the first therapy meeting, Nurse Ratched begins examining Harding's difficulties with his wife. McMurphy takes the opportunity to explain his arrest for statutory rape, suggesting that the girl was of legal age and certainly more than consenting. Dr. Spivey, the main doctor for the ward, questions whether McMurphy is now feigning insanity to get out of doing hard labor at the work farm. Afterward, McMurphy confronts Harding about the way the inmates defer to Ratched so readily. He suggests it is a “pecking-party” in which the patients are to turn on each other. Harding admits that all of the patients and even Dr. Spivey are afraid of the Big Nurse. He adds that the patients are rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need Big Nurse to show them their place. McMurphy bets him that he can get Nurse Ratched to crack within a week.
McMurphy awakens early the next morning to take a shower. He complains to one of the black boys who serve as Nurse Ratched's henchmen that the patients are only allowed to brush their teeth at certain times. When Ratched arrives, McMurphy stands in front of her in a towel, claiming that his clothes have been taken. He threatens to drop his towel (though he has shorts on). Ratched screams to one of the boys to get McMurphy some new clothes.
McMurphy then complains to Ratched about the loud music that constantly plays on the ward, but she refuses to turn it down. He suggests opening the tub room as a game room, but she refuses. At the next group meeting, Dr. Spivey mentions casually that he talked to McMurphy about opening up the tub room as a game room and thinks that it is a great idea. The other inmates ratify the plan while Nurse Ratched's hands begin to shake—her first significant sign of weakness.
McMurphy next pushes for a schedule change so the patients can watch the World Series during the day and do their work at night. He attempts to motivate the patients to push for the schedule change, but he becomes angry at them when they act too “chicken-shit” and refuse to oppose Ratched. Billy Bibbit tells McMurphy that nothing he can do will be of any use in the long run, but McMurphy boasts that he will break out of the institution by lifting up the control panel in the tub room and throwing it through the window.
The patients gradually grow more assertive in their opposition to the boys and to Ratched. At another group meeting, after Billy discusses his stutter and having proposed to a woman his mother disliked, McMurphy brings up the World Series again. Ratched finally allows a vote. All twenty Acute patients vote for his idea, but Ratched declares it a defeat, for none of the Chronics have had the ability to vote. McMurphy finally motivates Chief Bromden to vote for him, but Ratched says it is too late and the vote is over. As a protest, McMurphy refuses to work and sits down in front of the television while the World Series is on. The other patients join him in this mutiny.
During a staff meeting, the doctors discuss McMurphy with Ratched. They believe that he is no ordinary man and might be dangerous. Ratched, however, claims that McMurphy is not an extraordinary man and is subject to all the fears and timidity of the other men. She is confident that she can break McMurphy, for he is committed to the hospital and they are in control, able to decide when he will be released.
McMurphy continues to behave aggressively, but Ratched does not respond. The other patients revisit longstanding gripes against her, such as the rationing of cigarettes and the tight control over their schedules. When the men make their weekly trip to the pool, McMurphy learns that he will only be released after Nurse Ratched and the doctors decide he is ready. At the next group meeting, Cheswick complains about the rationing of cigarettes, and two of the boys are required to drag him away to the Disturbed Ward. He returns, presumably after having undergone shock treatment. Soon after, Cheswick drowns when he gets his fingers stuck in the grate at the bottom of the pool.
Nurse Ratched reassumes her control over the ward after McMurphy gives up his struggle against her, knowing that she controls whether or not he leaves. On the ward's trip to the library, Harding introduces McMurphy to his visiting wife, Vera. Harding and Vera are rude to one another, and she implies that he is a closeted homosexual, then suddenly leaves. Harding asks McMurphy his opinion, and McMurphy snaps that he will not say how awful Vera is, even if that is what Harding wants to hear. McMurphy says he has his own worries and should not have to deal with others' problems.
While getting chest X-rays for TB in another part of the hospital, McMurphy learns about the Shock Shop, where patients get electroshock therapy, and he learns about lobotomies, partial brain removal designed to tame the wildest patients. He confronts Harding and the other patients about why they never told him directly that Nurse Ratched controls whether or not he leaves. They claim to have forgotten he was involuntarily committed, for with rare exceptions, all of the others entered the hospital voluntarily. McMurphy cannot conceive that these men would choose to live in the hospital, but Billy tells him that they are too weak to leave.
Nurse Ratched closes the tub room that the patients had been using for several weeks, on the ground that the men did not apologize for their behavior during the World Series protest. McMurphy responds by punching the glass at the Nurses' Station. Ratched does little to retaliate because she knows she can prolong the fight. McMurphy requests an Accompanied Pass to go deep-sea fishing and tries to recruit patients to go with him. In response, Ratched posts newspaper clippings about the dangers of boating, which frighten several patients.
McMurphy realizes that Chief Bromden is neither deaf nor dumb. One night McMurphy offers Bromden a pack of chewing gum and gets him to speak about his family. McMurphy suggests that Bromden pick up the control panel in the tub room and throw it through the window so that he can escape. McMurphy signs up Bromden for the fishing trip.
On the day of the trip, Nurse Ratched tries to derail it, for only one of the chaperones (a prostitute named Candy Starr) has arrived instead of two. Dr. Spivey, however, acts as the second chaperone. When they stop for gas on the way to the docks, the gas-station attendant asks if they are patients from the asylum. Dr. Spivey claims that they are merely a work crew, but McMurphy boldly brags that they are criminally insane. At the docks, a couple of men yell disparaging comments about Candy and the patients. McMurphy has trouble securing the boat because they lack a waiver, but he takes the boat without a captain. After a day of fishing, the men return rejuvenated, and the men on the docks no longer mock them.
Nurse Ratched makes her next move against McMurphy by posting the patients' financial statements, which show that McMurphy has made a profit against the other patients since he arrived. She suggests in a meeting that McMurphy is trying to manipulate them. When the men confront McMurphy about this, he admits that he is no saint, but he has been perfectly honest about his intentions. He arranges for Candy to visit the institution for a visit with Billy Bibbit. During a cautionary cleansing that Nurse Ratched orders, several of the black boys harass one of the patients, George Sorenson. McMurphy defends him and gets in a fight with them. Chief Bromden joins in when the black boys gang up on McMurphy, and both men are taken away to the Disturbed Ward.
Down at the Disturbed Ward, a nurse treats McMurphy's and Bromden's wounds and tells them that not every ward is run as autocratically as Nurse Ratched's. The nurse adds that she wishes she could keep patients away from her ward. Ratched gives McMurphy and Bromden a chance to apologize before administering shock treatment. McMurphy refuses. They administer shock treatment to him several times in one week, even though Bromden tries to talk him into complying. McMurphy claims that the electroshock therapy energizes him. When Bromden returns to the ward, Harding congratulates him and tells the Chief that he has heard rumors that McMurphy is not responding at all to the EST. Ratched brings McMurphy back to the ward after she learns that his absence and resistance have led to his becoming an inspirational “legend.”
Harding and the other patients decide to engineer McMurphy's escape when Candy arrives on a Saturday night for her meeting with Billy. They bribe Mr. Turkle, the night watchman, with liquor and an offer of sex with Candy, and the other patients have a party that night. McMurphy delays leaving until early in the morning, however, and falls asleep. The black boys find him the next morning.
When Nurse Ratched arrives, she gathers the patients together in one room to take roll. She realizes that Billy Bibbit is missing. She finds him in the Seclusion Room with Candy. She chastises him for having sex with such a cheap woman, then tells him that she will tell his mother. Billy begins to stutter at this, but she takes him into the doctor's office to calm down. When the doctor arrives, he finds that Billy has cut his throat and killed himself. Ratched blames McMurphy for Billy's suicide, and he responds by trying to strangle her. Although the black boys pull McMurphy off of her before he can kill her, he rips her uniform, exposing her breasts.
Nurse Ratched takes time off to recuperate, and when she returns, she cannot speak. Many of the patients check out of the hospital. Weeks later, McMurphy returns to the ward, now comatose after having a forced lobotomy. Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow in order to put him out of his misery, then throws the control panel in the tub room through the window and escapes the institution, fulfilling McMurphy's escape plan for himself.
Randall Patrick McMurphy
An imposing, red-headed Irishman, R.P. McMurphy enters the institution with a history of hostility, disobedience, and a recent conviction for statutory rape. Still, it is obvious from the start that he is a sane man who simply chose to accept institutionalization rather than live on a "work farm" as part of the judge's sentence. McMurphy is charismatic, sexual, and boisterous to the extreme--a "gambling fool" who looks out primarily for his own self-interest and matches wits with Nurse Ratched in the book's primary conflict. He also seems to care deeply about his fellow inmates, often putting justice and their well-being over his own desires to escape the institution--which inevitably costs him his sanity. McMurphy represents freedom and self-determination versus societal repression--a battle McMurphy ultimately loses in order to pave the way for the rest of the patients to see the light. In many ways, he becomes a sacrificial lamb for the sake of enlightenment and awakening, both within the novel and for readers. McMurphy's character is remembered as a martyr who inspires real-world social change.
Nurse Ratched
A middle-aged nurse who controls the institution where McMurphy is sentenced. Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) is stern, controlling, and determined to quash all resistance to her authority. Nurse Ratched believes in order above all, institutionalizing a systematized reduction of humans to robotic function, with an obliteration of all individual characteristics that might ultimately lead to rebellion. She is, in many ways, a metaphor for all forms of repression, particularly sexual repression. She seems to be ashamed of her own sexuality, consistently buttoned up in her white nurse's outfit, but she cannot hide her large breasts, her one incongruous physical trait. As a metaphor, then, it is only appropriate that her final comeuppance involves McMurphy (symbolizing freedom) tearing open her uniform and unleashing her breasts and body. As punishment, Ratched has McMurphy lobotomized. In that battle, authoritarianism, repression, and conservative sexuality win, but readers are led to fight against what Ratched represents.
Chief Bromden
A tall, half-Indian patient in the ward, Chief Bromden has been in the institution the longest. Although other inmates think that he is deaf and mute, Chief Bromden instead chooses not to speak, at first because others ignored him and then out of fear of Nurse Ratched. Chief Bromden is the narrator of the novel. With the help of McMurphy, he begins to speak once more and reasserts himself against Nurse Ratched and her workers. Ultimately, he breaks free of the Nurse and the hospital, killing the lobotimized McMurphy in order to prevent him from suffering further indignity, and finding his way back into society away from the repressive manipulation and tyrannical authority of the institution.
Billy Bibbit
A thirty-one-year-old patient in the institution, Billy Bibbit still appears very young, partly because of his persistent stutter. Bibbit is dominated and terrorized by his mother, who has intimidated him into behaving younger than his years and has instilled in him a strong sense of guilt. This guilt causes him to commit suicide after Nurse Ratched finds him with a prostitute and threatens to tell his mother.
Dale Harding
The president of the patients' council and a college graduate, Harding is likely the most educated patient in the institution. He explains many of the workings of the ward to McMurphy. Kesey indicates that Harding may be a closeted homosexual. Harding certainly is dominated by his boisterous wife, who intimidates him with her sexuality and his sexual inadequacy.
Bancini
A fifty-year-old resident in the institution, Bancini has been a "Chronic" since his birth, for his brain was damaged during childbirth. He had one moment of lucidity, when he claimed he was "tired" of life and had been dead since birth, but after being punished for this by Nurse Ratched, he succumbed to silence and the occasional whimpers of exhaustion.
Charles Cheswick
One of the patients on the ward, he is one of the first patients to support McMurphy, but he is taken to the Disturbed Ward, presumably for shock treatment, when he starts to protest the ward policies. Cheswick later dies in the swimming pool when he gets his fingers caught in the grate, an action that is possibly suicidal.
Ellis
Although formerly an "Acute," Ellis became a "Chronic" at the institution after receiving electroshock treatment.
Miss Flinn
One of the nurses in the ward, she talks with Nurse Ratched about McMurphy's possible motivation for wanting to disrupt the ward.
Frederickson
One of the patients on the ward, Frederickson takes the seizure medication that Sefelt refuses.
Geever
Geever is one of the black boys who works for Nurse Ratched and becomes her henchman in the management of the ward. Bromden makes the observation that these black boys are filled with hatred and thus enjoy punishing the inmates at Ratched's will.
Vera Harding
The wife of Dale Harding, Vera visits her husband at the institution and promptly gets into an argument with him. She is a physically imposing woman who uses her sexuality to intimidate her husband and who plays on his sexual insecurities.
Martini
One of the patients on the ward, Martini hallucinates that he sees objects on the board when the men play Monopoly. Despite his disruptions, McMurphy includes him in the games.
Colonel Matterson
The oldest Chronic in the ward, Colonel Matterson is a World War veteran who can now only utter incoherent phrases such as "the flag is America."
Nurse Pilbow
Nurse Pilbow is one of Ratched's nurses, a Catholic woman with a prominent birthmark that she attempts to wash away. She is intensely affected by feelings of guilt over her job and her sexuality.
Public Relation
A fat bureaucrat who often visits the ward, Public Relation attempts to frame the ward as a wonderful place to stay run with great generosity by Nurse Ratched.
Rawler
Rawler commits suicide one night, cutting off his testicles (suggesting that the ward leads patients to emasculate themselves).
Ruckly
A former Acute patient, Ruckly became a Chronic after electroshock treatment and now can only say over and over "fffffuck da wife."
Sandy Gilfilliam
One of the Portland prostitutes who was to accompany McMurphy and the men on the fishing trip, Sandy does not attend because she got married. Later, however, she divorces her husband and visits the institution with Candy, a fellow prostitute.
Scanlon
Scanlon is one of the Acute patients on the ward, the only patient who is involuntarily committed besides McMurphy.
Sefelt
Sefelt is an epileptic who refuses to take his seizure medicine because it destroys his gums. He tends to give his medication to Frederickson, who takes double doses in his stead. Sefelt, who has a legitimate medical condition, is often ignored by the staff, who seem more interested in dominating the rebellious patients.
George Sorenson
An old Swede nicknamed "Rub-a-Dub George" because of his obsession for cleanliness. A patient on the ward, George is a former fishing boat captain whom McMurphy cajoles into leading the fishing expedition. McMurphy later defends him when the black boys harass him during a humiliating cleansing, leading to the riot which prompts Ratched to send McMurphy and Bromden to "Disturbed."
Dr. Spivey
The main doctor on the ward, Dr. Spivey is easily manipulated by both Nurse Ratched and R.P. McMurphy, who in turn use him as a pawn. McMurphy uses him as his institutional defense on the ward, convincing him to open the tub room and to chaperone the patients on the fishing trip. Nurse Ratched, meanwhile, uses him to champion her authoritarian policies to discipline rebellious inmates.
Candy Starr
Candy Starr, a prostitute from Portland, chaperones McMurphy and the other patients on the fishing trip. McMurphy later plans a visit for Candy to the ward so that she may have sex with Billy Bibbit, with whom she became close during the fishing trip.
Mr. Taber
One of the patients on the ward, Mr. Taber complains to Nurse Ratched that he does not know what is in his medicine. Nurse Ratched claims that he was once a manipulator, like McMurphy, and she eventually made him quiescent through her tyrannical punishments.
Tee Ah Millatoona
Chief Bromden's father, also known as The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain.
An Indian chief, he married a Caucasian woman named Bromden and took her last name, but she ultimately drove him to alcoholism. He becomes a metaphor for the results of repression, obliteration, and in general the encroachment of authority on individualism.
Mr. Turkle
The night watchman on the ward. McMurphy bribes Mr. Turkle to allow Candy Starr into the ward.
Warren
Warren is one of the black boys who work for Nurse Ratched. Like Geever, he is one of her henchmen. He takes glee in torturing the inmates when she commands it.
Washington
Washington, like Geever and Warren, is one of the black boys who works for Nurse Ratched and follows her orders when commanded to round up and discipline one of the disobedient inmates.
Sexual Repression vs. Sexual …show more content…
Freedom
One of the prevailing motifs of Kesey's novel involves the metaphorical contrast between clamped-down sexual mores and freewheeling, instinctive, "natural" sexual freedom. The conflict is represented by the war between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. The "Big Nurse" represents a frigid, controlled sexuality, an attempt to button up natural instincts and resist impulse through conscious order. She cannot, however, disguise her huge breasts, which show through her uniform no matter how much she covers up. McMurphy, the symbol of total sexual abandon, ultimately tears the Nurse's clothes from her body to "unleash" her breasts in a final climax of the battle. McMurphy himself is almost animalistic in his sexuality, which is a main reason he has been institutionalized by a repressive society. He is considered dangerous and hostile because he acts on his urges. His primary crime is statutory rape, an offense he defends by arguing that the young girl pressed him to have sex rather than the other way around. At the end of the novel, though McMurphy frees nearly all the main characters sexually--bringing a prostitute for fellow inmates, encouraging the men to rediscover the emasculated souls they've surrendered to Nurse Ratched--he must pay for his free sexuality by losing a part of his brain. Kesey suggests that fully unfettered sexuality is too dangerous for modern society to tolerate.
Independence vs. Acquiescence
Throughout the novel, we consistently root for the inmates to find freedom, either through a mass escape or by overthrowing the regime and winning a new order in the institution. This is all subverted, however, when McMurphy discovers that he and Scanlon are the only two involuntarily committed inmates. The rest of the inmates are there by choice. They would rather be quiescent followers, surrendering themselves to institutional oppression, than independent in a society where they do not quite fit and may not be able to function. McMurphy sees emasculation as the prime reason for the choice to stay. The Nurse has found a way to mentally castrate each and every one of the inmates--including Rawlins, who commits suicide by physical emasculation. McMurphy may perceive that the best way to free the other men is to expose Nurse Ratched as flesh and blood rather than an inevitable oppressor--someone with her own flaws and pains. McMurphy attempts to work within the Nurse's system, trying to outmanipulate and outfox her with his various schemes. But ultimately, the only way to change the acquiescence of his fellow inmates is to lead by example. He feels presure to acquiesce and avoid pain, but he choose to follow his independent spirit, which explodes in brute force when he rips the Nurse's clothes open. This act prevents the rest of the inmates from ever seeing her as merely the robotic hand of authority. She has a body now, and they can no longer follow her blindly, understanding that she is just as mortal as they are. They are likely to continue choosing the institution to the outside world, but they will remain with a greater degree of independence than before.
Self-Interest vs. Altruism
McMurphy’s character is worth considering in comparing the drives for altruism and self-interest. When McMurphy enters the hospital, he has the goal of causing chaos in order to disrupt Nurse Ratched's carefully designed schemes, which quash the inmates' spirits. At first it seems that he does so primarily for amusement, or in order to establish himself as Top Dog and ensure that he has the power in the ward. He also consistently fleeces the other inmates in gambling games. Over time, however, we suspect that money, power, and amusement are not—or are no longer—his primary motivation for taking on Ratched. He develops a sincere desire to resuscitate these fallen, empty, drained souls. In one of the most significant moments of the novel, when he is frustrated that the men are not trying to get out, he throws all their money back at them, in a demonstration that he cares more about them than self-interest alone would dictate. Once McMurphy realizes that he might never get out, being involuntarily committed subject to Ratched's will, he for a while follows his self-interest. But this is temporary, for he ultimately sacrifices himself in order to allow the inmates to see their chance for escape from the ward in both body and soul.
Mind vs. Matter
Kesey’s novel elucidates some ways that people imprison themselves psychosomatically, using the mind to trap the body. In the case of Chief Bromden, for instance, the Indian has convinced others—maybe even himself—that he is deaf and dumb. This chosen handicap dictates the conditions of even the most mundane moments of his life. Meanwhile, for the rest of the inmates, in group therapy sessions Nurse Ratched uses the power of suggestion to expose their deepest insecurities. We see over and over that belief in a particular ailment seems to induce it. Specifically, in the case of electroshock therapy (EST), given to disturbed patients whenever they misbehave, most of them succumb and find themselves changed negatively by the experience. Chief Bromden, in particular, says that fighting EST was not an option: the fog simply envelops you and warps your brain. But McMurphy teaches him that fighting EST requires willpower, and through focus of mind it can be resisted like much else. Again and again, McMurphy uses his strength to fight the effect of EST, allowing Bromden to follow him and finally escape. There are natural limits—namely, nature itself—to the use of mind over matter. Some people have genuine medical conditions. Ratched herself cannot wish away her large bosom. As for McMurphy, he cannot withstand Ratched's final tool of punishment, the actual removal of part of his brain.
Fear vs. Experience
The inmates tend to be prisoners of their own fear. Kesey suggests that modern society, figured by Nurse Ratched’s institution, preys on fear, that authoritarian, repressive regimes, whether in the government, the home, or the workplace, rely on fear to control individuals. Ratched's methods of manipulation include using public embarrassment to make the inmates turn on each other, then the power of suggestion to make the inmates afraid of her potential to expose each one of their unique flaws to the group. She uses a carrot-and-stick approach to make the inmates afraid of physical punishment for the slightest disobedience. What McMurphy finds upon entering the ward is a group of sniveling, whipped animals who have lost the sense of their own capacity for learning from everyday experience. They have given up sex, alcohol, and even living voluntarily because of their fear of indulging in everyday life. Whatever fear of life brought most of them into the institution in the first place has been magnified many times by Ratched’s regime, and McMurphy takes up the challenge of helping the others again want to experience more out of life.
Origins of Violence
Many critics have mistakenly cried racism against Kesey in the novel’s depiction of the three black boys who serve Nurse Ratched.
They certainly are portrayed as dumb, sniveling brutes who follow the Nurse's orders as perverse henchmen. They are intent on destruction. Why did Kesey choose to make these characters black? Kesey’s choice is not racist but is a critique of racism in society or at least racism in Ratched’s mind. This is because the novel provides a very clear etiology for each of these boys early in the novel. The Nurse carefully sorts through potential boys for the job, looking for the ones who have the most hate within them, those who have learned to internalize their rage so that they have every reason to be completely obedient to her will and to act brutally when they get the chance. Nurse Ratched has chosen boys who already express the internalized anger she feels, the fury and pain she has repressed under the facade of calm, serene order. If the boys who fit the bill are black, it is because in a racist society they already have experienced (more than others) the hurt in their lives that has made them so angry, and if anyone is racist in this regard, it is Ratched for thinking the black boys are most likely to be the kind of boys she wants. If one's environment is largely to blame for a person becoming angry and violent, it is worth examining the causes of anger and violence in other characters from the same
perspective.
Group Mentality vs. Individualism
Perhaps Nurse Ratched's most sinister tool is preying on the group mentality of the inmates to instill fear and self-loathing. She makes it very clear that the inmates are not allowed to be on their own; they must form groups of eight in order to request access to even the most mundane activity. There is method to this seeming draconian order. The Nurse knows that as long as the men can reflect, mirror, and expose each other's pain, they will have enough to occupy themselves with rather than rebelling against her. Only in the solitude of one’s own room can one of them look inside and develop the strength of will and character to begin questioning her authority. Such questioning of the hospital, its leadership, the role of the hospital in their convalescence, or broadly questioning authority or society is a mark of individualism that Nurse Ratched will not allow. In a group of disturbed people, the group identity is going nowhere, and that is the way she wants it. She controls the inmates by controlling the questions asked, and as long as she prevents them from being alone for very long, she knows that she will have the upper hand.