One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The novel opens on a typical Monday morning in an unnamed Oregon psychiatric hospital. The narrator, Chief Bromden, is a tall, half-Native American man who has paranoid schizophrenia. He presents himself as deaf and mute, though he is neither. Emerging from the dorm, Bromden encounters three hospital aides he refers to as “black boys,” describing them as “sulky and hating everything” (3). The aides address Bromden as “Chief Broom” and assign him to mop the hallway. As Bromden mops, the ward’s head nurse, Nurse Ratched, enters through the locking doors at the end of the hallway. When she scolds the aides for chatting instead of working, Bromden imagines her growing “big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside” (5). Here and throughout the novel, Bromden perceives and describes Ratched and other staff members in mechanical terms as parts of a larger entity he calls “The Combine,” which enforces conformity to social norms.

Ratched instructs the aides to shave Bromden; scared, he hides in the closet and attempts to calm down by recalling hunting with his father alongside the Columbia River. When he exits the closet, the aides capture him. He panics and resists their attempt to shave him. As he struggles, he hallucinates a thickening fog, which he believes is controlled by the staff and produced by machines. Ratched appears and forcibly medicates him. Addressing readers, Bromden announces his intent to share his experiences as a patient, calling his account “the truth even if it didn’t happen” (8).

Bromden regains consciousness in the ward’s day room with the other patients, who fall into two groups: the acute patients, whom the doctors hope to cure and release, and the chronic patients, who stay in the hospital permanently. Two patients, Ellis and Ruckly, were admitted as acute patients but ended up developing chronic symptoms following electroshock therapy and a lobotomy gone wrong, respectively.

Admitted about 10 years earlier, during World War II, Bromden is the ward’s longest-standing patient. He describes daily life in the ward. Morning routines are completed in an orderly manner following a strict schedule. After breakfast, the nurses administer medicine to the patients, who pass the rest of the morning playing games or doing puzzles. They are rewarded for reporting their peers’ noteworthy words and behavior in a logbook, and their reports are discussed during afternoon group meetings. Occasional visitors include a public relations man with an empty laugh who leads tours of the hospital. Bromden notes that the PR man “never looks at the men’s faces” (34).

On this morning, an escort arrives, bringing a new admission: Randle Patrick McMurphy, a large, redheaded man who was transferred from a work farm after he attacked another man and then pled insanity in court. McMurphy grins, laughs, and speaks in a loud, confident voice as he makes his way around the ward, shaking hands and introducing himself. Approaching the card table, McMurphy states that he settled into a life of gambling following military service in the Korean War. He asks which of the patients is considered their leader. William “Billy” Bibbit, a nervous young man with a stutter, directs him to Dale Harding, an effeminate, college-educated man. For a moment, Harding and McMurphy spar verbally, but they end up shaking hands. After meeting the acute patients, McMurphy greets the chronic ones, including Bromden. Billy tells McMurphy that Bromden is deaf and mute, but McMurphy doesn’t seem convinced. He holds out his hand; Bromden hesitates and then shakes it. Ratched appears and chides McMurphy for resisting the aides’ attempts to administer regular admission procedures, stressing that “everyone . . . must follow the rules” (24).

In the medical station, which is separated from the day room by a large glass window, Ratched warns a subordinate nurse that McMurphy is a “manipulator […] who will use everyone and everything to his own ends” (24). Ratched recalls a previous patient, Maxwell Taber, who caused trouble until he underwent electroshock therapy, which rendered him docile, allowing him to be discharged. Bromden characterizes Ratched as a “watchful robot” in a “web of wires” who has gained near-total control of the ward over the years by selecting staff to fit her goals (25-26), including a submissive doctor and aides who “hate enough to be capable” (26).

Bromden again sees some fog, but it clears before the scheduled group meeting, as Bromden is interested to see what McMurphy will do. Ratched, Dr. Spivey, the ward’s doctor, and the patients arrange their chairs in a circle. Ratched opens the meeting by reading from her notes about Harding’s insecurities regarding his relationship with his wife, the topic of discussion at the end of the previous meeting. Harding is attracted to other men, but he represses his feelings to appear macho to his wife and others. When McMurphy makes a crude remark about Harding’s wife, Ratched reads aloud from McMurphy’s record, noting an award for his military service, his subsequent dismissal from the military for insubordination, a series of arrests for gambling and violence, and one arrest for statutory rape. When Dr. Spivey asks about McMurphy’s mental health history, McMurphy insists that he deserves to be recognized as a psychopath due to his violent behaviors and excessive sexual appetite. “Doctor, is that real serious?” he asks in mock concern, much to the amusement of the other patients and Spivey (42). Annoyed at McMurphy’s disruption of the meeting, Ratched invites Spivey to explain theory of the “Therapeutic Community” that their group meetings exemplify. McMurphy quietly observes the remainder of the meeting, including during continued discussion of Harding’s relationship with his wife.

Bromden, who has heard Spivey explain the theory many times, summarizes it for readers. The ward is intended to function as a microcosm of the larger world, in which the patients help each other learn to “function in a normal society” by talking openly and democratically about their concerns and mistakes (44). Bromden recalls a meeting when Pete Bancini, a patient who sustained brain damage at birth, interrupted a stream of confessions from the patients with his adamant, oft-repeated complaint: “I’m tired!” (45). An aide attempted to remove Pete from the room, but Pete knocked him out. In a rare moment of clarity, Pete declared, “I was born dead” and announced that the other patients “got it easy” (48).

After the meeting ends, the patients separate, ashamed of the way they treated Harding. McMurphy approaches Harding and compares the meeting to a violent “peckin’ party” among chickens (51), in which Ratched leads the emasculating attack. Agitated, Harding first defends Ratched and her methods but then admits that McMurphy is right. In response to McMurphy’s assertion that the patients should push back against Ratched, Harding explains the various punishments she uses to deal with difficult patients, including shock therapy. He further argues that society increasingly counters a man’s “one truly effective weapon against the juggernaut of modern matriarchy”: his sexual prowess (64). Swayed from his resolution to confront Ratched directly, McMurphy makes a bet that he can use Ratched’s subtle methods against her to expose her vulnerability within the week. Several patients put down money on the outcome.