One Flew East, One Flew West....
He stands looking at us, rocking back in his boots, and he laughs and laughs. He laces his fingers over his belly without taking his thumbs out of his pockets. I see how big and beat up his hands are. Everybody on the ward, patients, staff and all, is stunned dumb by him and his laughing. There's no move to stop him, no move to say anything. He laughs till he's finished for a time, and he walks on into the day room. Even when he isn't laughin, that laughing sound hovers around him, the way the sound hovers around a big bell just quit ringing- it's in his eyes, in the way he smiles and swaggers, in the way he talks. "My name is McMurphy, buddies, R.P. McMurphy, and I'm a gambling fool.".
Our guide to the world of the Cuckoo’s Nest is the towering Chief Bromden, son of a Columbia Indian Chief and a white woman.
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The Chief may seem at first an impossible narrator to know. A man who has for years pretended to be a deaf-mute, his mind is a jumble of seemingly random, terrifying sights and sounds. In moments of greatest stress, the Chief’s mind becomes entirely clouded by a dense fog. Only when he recalls his Indian boyhood are his thoughts at all clear, and even these happy memories tend to be shattered by his fear of the present.
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The Chief has been damaged by an organization he calls the Combine. The Combine is the Chief’s vision of a huge machine like organization that runs the hospital and seeks to ruin the entire world. The Combine represents people and groups in the modern world who value efficiency over individualism and control over freedom.
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Nurse Ratched is part of the Combine as well as the government agencies that destroyed the Chief’s tribal village. As an Indian, the Chief was particularly vulnerable. His white mother felt that she married beneath her by marrying an Indian, so she forced her husband and son to take her name. She also helped arrange the sale of their Indian village for a government hydroelectric dam project.
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After these childhood defeats, come many others. Though intelligent and schooled, he can only find menial jobs. His experience in World War II are so frightening they form the basis for his hallucinations of the fog machine that operates on the ward. He sees his father shrink in his mind, from a proud Indian Chief to a man stripped of his name, able to live only off charity from the government that ruined his life. By the time we meet him in the novel, the Chief believes himself to be small, though his actual height is six feet, seven inches.
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The Chief has endured years in the hospital, years of self-imposed silence, years of abuse. He’s undergone over 200 shock treatments. Needless to say, McMurphy arrives at a crucial point in the patient's life.
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The Chief may seem at first an impossible narrator to know. A man who has for years pretended to be a deaf-mute, his mind is a jumble of seemingly random, terrifying sights and sounds. In moments of greatest stress, the Chief’s mind becomes entirely clouded by a dense fog. Only when he recalls his Indian boyhood are his thoughts at all clear, and even these happy memories tend to be shattered by his fear of the present.
.
The Chief has been damaged by an organization he calls the Combine. The Combine is the Chief’s vision of a huge machine like organization that runs the hospital and seeks to ruin the entire world. The Combine represents people and groups in the modern world who value efficiency over individualism and control over freedom.
.
Nurse Ratched is part of the Combine as well as the government agencies that destroyed the Chief’s tribal village. As an Indian, the Chief was particularly vulnerable. His white mother felt that she married beneath her by marrying an Indian, so she forced her husband and son to take her name. She also helped arrange the sale of their Indian village for a government hydroelectric dam project.
.
After these childhood defeats, come many others. Though intelligent and schooled, he can only find menial jobs. His experience in World War II are so frightening they form the basis for his hallucinations of the fog machine that operates on the ward. He sees his father shrink in his mind, from a proud Indian Chief to a man stripped of his name, able to live only off charity from the government that ruined his life. By the time we meet him in the novel, the Chief believes himself to be small, though his actual height is six feet, seven inches.
.
The Chief has endured years in the hospital, years of self-imposed silence, years of abuse. He’s undergone over 200 shock treatments. Needless to say, McMurphy arrives at a crucial point in the patient's life.
I've taught this novel at least 7-8 times now over the years, and I truly believe that it should be a staple in high school. Although the language is a bit rough, the religious imagery scattered throughout- most noticeably with McMurphy serving as a type of Christ figure to the patients in this abusive ward- is astounding. These religious references increase in intensity and number as McMurphy's martyrdom becomes imminent. Looking for a good book to read this summer? Check this one out. Don't just watch the movie!
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