Chief Bromden
A Chief Bromden
Chief Bromden is the schizophrenic narrator of the story, and has been in the mental institution since leaving the Army shortly after World War II; Harding says he’s heard that Chief has received over two hundred shock treatments. The son of an American Indian father and a Caucasian mother, he attributes his shrewdness to his Native American heritage. Chief has a paranoid belief in something he calls the “Combine,” a collaboration of governmental and industrial groups he believes are trying to control people by way of machines. For many years, Chief has isolated himself from the bizarre environment of the Chronic and Acute ward by pretending to be deaf and dumb. This way, he finds out everything he wants to know and yet is able to keep his own counsel and to stay out of trouble. Chief imagines that every day the staff creates a fog that hangs over the ward. Sometimes the fog is smoke because he believes that walls are wired and filled with humming mechanisms. But he snaps to awareness when a new admission, the irrepressible, irreverent McMurphy, arrives and immediately tries to take over as boss of the ward. At first, Chief is able to hide behind his feigned deafness and just watch McMurphy’s antics. But McMurphy soon tricks him into revealing to him that he can both hear and speak-a secret guarded from everyone else. Gradually, under McMurphy’s influence, Chief begins to withdraw from his hallucinatory world and begins to join the other residents in activities, even joining them on a fishing expedition. Leaves the institution to take control of his own destiny.
Chief Bromden is the schizophrenic narrator of the story, and has been in the mental institution since leaving the Army shortly after World War II; Harding says he’s heard that Chief has received over two hundred shock treatments. The son of an American Indian father and a Caucasian mother, he attributes his shrewdness to his Native American heritage. Chief has a paranoid belief in something he calls the “Combine,” a collaboration of governmental and industrial groups he believes are trying to control people by way of machines. For many years, Chief has isolated himself from the bizarre environment of the Chronic and Acute ward by pretending to be deaf and dumb. This way, he finds out everything he wants to know and yet is able to keep his own counsel and to stay out of trouble. Chief imagines that every day the staff creates a fog that hangs over the ward. Sometimes the fog is smoke because he believes that walls are wired and filled with humming mechanisms. But he snaps to awareness when a new admission, the irrepressible, irreverent McMurphy, arrives and immediately tries to take over as boss of the ward. At first, Chief is able to hide behind his feigned deafness and just watch McMurphy’s antics. But McMurphy soon tricks him into revealing to him that he can both hear and speak-a secret guarded from everyone else. Gradually, under McMurphy’s influence, Chief begins to withdraw from his hallucinatory world and begins to join the other residents in activities, even joining them on a fishing expedition. Leaves the institution to take control of his own destiny.