Chapter One

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is narrated by Chief Bromden (also known as Chief Broom), a mute Indian who ritually mops the mental institution where he is confined. The black boys in white suits who work in the ward mock Chief Broom, assuming that he is deaf and dumb and cannot hear them. Chief Broom never speaks, but we can hear his thoughts.

Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) enters, her lips and her fingernails both an odd orange. She carries a woven wicker bag filled with pills, needles, wire, and forceps. She moves with precise, automatic gestures, her face at once determined and calculated, but she cannot seem to hide her large breasts, which seem incongruous with the rest of her body and disposition. Ruthless and mechanical, she orders the black boys to shave Chief Bromden, who quickly hides in terror. While hiding, he thinks about his father and growing up on the banks of the Columbia River. Soon, one of the boys finds him, and they start to shave him. Terrified, the Chief hallucinates that an Air Raid has begun in the ward and that a thick fog begins to overwhelm him.

Chapter Two

When the fog clears, Bromden realizes he is not in the Shock Shop, where patients are given electroshock treatment, so he relaxes. At that moment, an escort brings in another patient for admission. Nurse Ratched quickly orders that he receive a shower. The patient, a red-haired Irishman named Randall Patrick McMurphy, quickly retorts that every place he goes requires a shower—the courthouse, the jail—and he is already as clean as clean can be. He introduces his tall, strapping self to the ward as a “gambling fool” and takes out his pack of cards. McMurphy has arrived from a work farm named Pendleton, and he is wearing the shirt and pants of his farm uniform—and a leather jacket. McMurphy brags that he is a psychopath, but he clearly gives the impression that he is quite lucid.

Chapter Three

The younger patients are known as Acutes because the doctors in the ward see them as possessing acute or temporary conditions, not chronic mental illness. Therefore they have been deemed capable of being treated and ultimately turned back to society, having become able to function there. Billy Bibbit, one of the Acutes, tries to roll a cigarette, while Martini, another Acute, ambles around the ward. The Acutes take up half of the ward, and the other half is filled with the Chronics, who are in the hospital for good. Some of these include the “Walkers,” like Chief Broom, who retain their physical capabilities, while others are “Vegetables,” essentially comatose. A number of the Chronics used to be Acutes until they began receiving large doses of electroshock therapy (EST). Ruckly and Ellis, for instance, were Acutes who were essentially lobotomized by intense EST. Ruckly now can only say “ffffuck da wife” over and over in a low, creepy tone. Colonel Matterson is the oldest Chronic, a World War I veteran, and Chief Bromden has been in the ward the longest.

McMurphy arrives, circling the Acutes to ask which one is “bull goose loony,” the craziest one to reckon with. In other words, he is asking who is really in charge. Billy Bibbit, a young man who stutters, introduces McMurphy to Harding, the president of the patients' council. Harding is a flat, nervous man and a college graduate. McMurphy tells Harding that there is not room for two bull goose loonies, so Harding will have to step aside. Harding and McMurphy compete to show their lunacy, both claiming they voted for Eisenhower. Harding finally defers to him, and McMurphy introduces himself to everybody, even the Chronics. He finally centers his attention on Chief Bromden. Harding tells McMurphy that Bromden is only half Indian and is deaf and dumb.

Nurse Ratched summons McMurphy and tells him that he must take his admission shower, for everybody must follow the rules. He answers that this what everyone tells him every time they figure he is about to do the opposite.

Chapter Four

Nurse Ratched prepares hypodermic needles as a nurse asks her opinion of McMurphy. Ratched claims McMurphy is a “manipulator” who will use everyone and everything to his own ends. She claims that sometimes a manipulator's end is to disrup the ward. The nurse, Miss Flinn, asks what the motive would be, but Nurse Ratched reminds her that this is an insane asylum.

Chief Bromden notes how Ratched elicits complete control of the staff of the ward, which he now officially names the Combine. Even the doctors are obedient to her, and she has managed to organize a group of henchmen, the sadistic black boys. Most of all, Nurse Ratched is a believer in routine. Each morning she dispenses medications and sets about a carefully controlled scheme of actions. On this day, however, Mr. Taber demands to know what is in his medication, and Nurse Ratched refuses to say. Instead, she remarks coldly that there are means of taking the medicine other than orally. The black boys take him away and inject him.

Chapter Five

Nurse Ratched calls a ward meeting. She interrupts Pete Bancini, who complains that he is tired, and tells the black boys to quiet him. Nobody will look at Ratched except for McMurphy, who still has his cap and deck of cards. She starts the meeting by bringing up Harding's marital problems. She reiterates how Harding is concerned about his well-endowed young wife and the attention she receives, as well as his own feelings of inferiority. She asks for comments, and McMurphy raises his hand.

McMurphy ignores the question and introduces himself as a Korean War veteran dishonorably discharged for insubordination and subsequently convicted of statutory rape. McMurphy argues with Dr. Spivey about who was the aggressor in that case, he or the young girl. Spivey questions whether McMurphy is merely a sane man feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of farm work. Ratched tells McMurphy the theory of the Therapeutic Community: a person must learn to get along in a group before he will be able to function in society. Bancini, a fifty-year-old man who has been a Chronic all his life (his brain was damaged during childbirth), interrupts again to say that he is tired. Ratched orders the boys to take him for treatment after he starts ranting and raving.

After the meeting, McMurphy asks if the meeting procedure is always such a “pecking party,” where all the inmates descend on each other. Harding defends Nurse Ratched and claims that she is a strict middle-aged lady, but no monster. McMurphy replies that she has him by the balls. Harding claims that she is a “veritable angel of mercy” who is “unselfish as the wind”—but Harding finally relents and admits that McMurphy is right, only no one has actually said so before. Harding notes that Dr. Spivey, just like the patients, is afraid of Nurse Ratched. Harding compares the patients to rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood, so they need a strong wolf like Nurse Ratched to teach them their places.

McMurphy says to the men that deep down, they are all lucid and can return to functioning society. Harding now relates the tools that Ratched uses to gain submission from the patients, including domination and even electroshock therapy (EST). McMurphy bets the patients that he can get Nurse Ratched to “crack” or show some vulnerability within a week.

Analysis

In the first chapter, Kesey sets up the hierarchy, geography, and structures of the mental institution which serves as the novel's setting. The book's authority figure, the villain, is clearly Nurse Ratched, also known as Big Nurse, a woman whose characteristics are described as almost inhuman. Kesey makes her essentially a mechanized robot, completely devoted to order, precision, and control. She is an emblem of bureaucracy and authority, unable to feel compassion or recognize men as individuals. Instead, she believes simply in domination and the stamping out of individual characteristics in subjugation to group order. Still, even in this first chapter, there are indications that behind this inhuman facade lies a mortal instability. She seems ready to snap at the black boys at any moment and unleash her animalistic rage, barely suppressed. Besides, her breasts cannot be disguised, revealing that she is incapable of fully hiding her essential humanity.

The black boys at the institution, meanwhile, serve Nurse Ratched out of fear, though they are good for the job of serving her because their most prominent characteristic is their complete hatred for everyone around them. They are sadistic. Having them around permits Ratched to stay above the fray while the boys become her henchmen, externalizing her repressed anger. For her and for the reader, the boys serve as metaphors for the Nurse's deeply suppressed rage.

Although Chief Bromden is the story's narrator, at this point he cannot be trusted fully since his reliability is in question. For one thing, he is prone to hallucinations, most of which involve the Combine, a matrix which allows civil wars to erupt within the ward at the whim of a huge bureaucratic, unnamed “machine” government. The fog that descends is a metaphor for Bromden's lack of mental clarity, thickening whenever he becomes less stable, receding as he gains confidence. It also is significant that Bromden chooses to remain silent, representing the quiescent persons of society who relinquish their own voices when confronted with authority.

In the second chapter, we meet the protagonist, Randall Patrick McMurphy, who will lock horns with the villain, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy is exuberant, vital, vulgar—everything in his personality suggests a great torrent of energy and a great lack of control. Whereas Nurse Ratched represents bureaucracy and control, McMurphy represents the counterculture, for he is liberated, open, in touch with his true self. McMurphy might brag about being a psychopath, but it is easy to discern the ruse, for he is boisterous, entertaining, quick with words, and oddly gentle in his mannerisms. He clings to the idea that he belongs at the ward, but we already sense that he is the only lucid patient in the ward. We will rely on him to illuminate the true sanity and humanness of others. Even so, he is there for a reason. It is only because of statutory rape and avoiding the work farm, or is there a real problem with his open flouting of authority? Does his independence go too far in a repressive society that is not ready for the likes of a countercultural free spirit?

In Chapter Three, having described the support staff of the hospital, Chief Bromden turns to the patients who inhabit the institution. Most of the patients are Acutes, meaning that they have the possibility of rehabilitation and release, but Bromden makes the important point that they also have the possibility of worsening at the hands of Nurse Ratched and ultimately becoming Chronics like Ruckly and Ellis. Billy Bibbit and Harding stand out as important characters, and both will play major roles in the novel. Harding is most significant now because of his role as the leader of the patients. He leads by virtue of his education, but McMurphy already begins to usurp his power through his charisma and ebullience.

The lines of conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are already forming. She represents rules and order, while McMurphy represents anarchy, sexual freedom, and disobedience. They sense that this is going to be the root of their conflicts. McMurphy also is a threat to the order of the ward because of his showmanship. He grasps for attention, behaving like a politician on a campaign stop in order to be Top Dog. This choice to gain social approval rather than to be thoroughly an individualist will cause McMurphy to be an easy target for those in the institution, particularly Nurse Ratched. Such a choice also is an early sign that McMurphy will not simply be solipsistic on the ward and will take concern for the other men.

In Chapter Four, Nurse Ratched develops further as an unfeeling automaton dedicated to the service of bureaucracy. She is dispassionate and overly analytical, concerned primarily with the smooth functioning of the ward over any personal concerns. Her main insecurity involves the balance of power in the asylum. McMurphy is a threat to Nurse Ratched because he proves dangerous to the autocratic control she exerts over the others. The black boys, the nurses, and even the doctors are completely submissive to Nurse Ratched's authority, but McMurphy is not yet playing along. It is notable that her control is based as much on intimidation and hatred as efficiency, as demonstrated in this chapter by her threat against Mr. Taber.

Also in this chapter, Chief Bromden opens a critique of the mental institution into a larger societal critique. The social criticism here is based on the idea that the institution, even though it is for the mentally ill, is a microcosm of the rest of society. The mental institution is meant to repair damage done to people’s minds in various ways by religions, schools, and families, yet it operates in the same culture and under the same basic conditions as such organizations and thus suffers the same problems of control and conformity versus individual freedom.

The ward meetings in Chapter Five demonstrate the intimidation and domination techniques that Ratched uses to exert her control. The meeting begins with Nurse Ratched selecting a patient and humiliating him by describing his personal and psychological problems, then asking the other patients to comment on the problems she has described. Her purpose is to pit the patients against one another, thus fostering division among the patients so that they remain submissive to her as the true leader. McMurphy accurately describes this as a pecking party, for the patients are to attack each other as a distraction from the control which she is exerting over them.

The other patients, in particular Harding, realize Nurse Ratched's domination, but they blindly accept this problem as either necessary or insurmountable. Nurse Ratched even has control over the doctors and administrative staff of the hospital, so what could the patients do? Harding suggests that she is part of a matriarchy related to his problems with his wife and his sexual difficulties. Although they implicitly acknowledge Nurse Ratched's control, they do not resist because they have come to believe it is necessary for their convalescence and perhaps for their return to society. Since the inmates believe themselves to be weak, they accept the presence of an authority to control them, which is an important reason they have chosen to be in the asylum. In fact, most are capable of independent action, but they see no reason to resist. McMurphy remains the exception, alone resisting Nurse Ratched's control. This independence marks him as possibly sane, leading Dr. Spivey to suggest that McMurphy is feigning insanity in order to stay out of the work-farm. Spivey is likely right, for McMurphy is able to reason Harding into admitting openly that Ratched is the oppressor McMurphy says she is.

Chapter Six

Bromden says that Nurse Ratched can set the wall clock at whatever speed she chooses just by turning a dial in the door. She generally slows time down to keep the patients at her mercy. Meanwhile, the speakers on the ceiling are playing music loudly, so McMurphy complains to Harding, who explains that they hear music nearly all the time, but never the news because the news might not be therapeutic. McMurphy goes into the Nurses' Station to complain, and one of the nurses, Miss Pilbow, tells him to stay back, apparently because she is a Catholic and may have heard that McMurphy is a sex maniac. He merely picks up a watering can that the nurse dropped. Soon after, McMurphy realizes that Bromden is not deaf, for Bromden jumps whenever McMurphy claims that one of the boys is coming for him.

Chapter Seven

For the first time in a long while, Chief Bromden goes to sleep without taking the little red capsule, which normally makes him fall into a heavy slumber. That night, Chief Bromden dreams for the first time in a while. In the dream, he sees the workers lifting Blastic, one of the Vegetables, onto a hook and slicing him open with a scalpel. No blood comes out, only glass, rust, and ashes, the contents of a broken machine. Bromden thinks of waking up everyone, but he thinks that the workers would do the same to him. Mr. Turkle pulls Bromden out of the fog, telling him that he was having a bad dream.

Chapter Eight

The next morning, McMurphy is awake early, singing. Most of the people on the ward floor have not heard singing in years. Bromden wonders why the black boys allow such loud noise, but he soon realizes that McMurphy is different. He may be as vulnerable as the rest in the ward, but the Combine has not gotten to him. McMurphy asks for toothpaste to brush his teeth, but a boy tells him that it is ward policy to have the toothpaste locked up and only used at a certain time. McMurphy mocks the boy’s question, "What would it be like if everybody was to brush their teeth whenever they felt like it?" Nurse Ratched arrives, and the boy tells her that Blastic died the night before and that McMurphy has been confrontational. Then she hears McMurphy singing. He steps out of the shower in a towel and stands in front of her. She tells him he cannot run around in a towel, and he prepares to drop it, telling her that someone stole his clothes. She chastises Mr. Washington, one of the boys, and orders him to get McMurphy a new set of clothes.

Chapter Nine

McMurphy clowns around during breakfast, embarrassing Billy Bibbit by claiming that Billy is known as "Billy Club" Bibbit of the famous fourteen inches. McMurphy bets the other patients that he can fling a dab of butter into the center of the face of the clock. He misses, but the butter slides down to the clock, hitting the face.

McMurphy complains to Nurse Ratched about the loud music in the hall, but she retorts that he is being selfish, for older men could not hear the radio at all if it were at a lower volume, and the music is all that they have. McMurphy suggests that patients be allowed to take their card games someplace else, such as the room where the tables are stored, but she replies that they do not have adequate personnel for two separate day rooms.

McMurphy has an interview with the doctor. During the daily meeting, the doctor tells the patients that he and McMurphy went to the same high school, and they reminisced about their school's carnivals. He suggests a similar carnival for the ward. The patients reluctantly take to this idea. Nurse Ratched tells the doctor that an idea like this should be discussed in a staff meeting first. Dr. Spivey also mentions that McMurphy was concerned that the older fellows could not hear the radio. Since the younger men have complained about the noise, McMurphy suggests opening a second day room as a game room—the plan that Nurse Ratched recently shot down. Dr. Spivey believes that there is sufficient staff to cover two rooms. When they return to the normal business of the meeting, Nurse Ratched's hands seem to shake. Chief Bromden thinks that this is a sign of her terrible weakness, though he realizes she has the Combine at her disposal to silence the opposition.

Analysis

In Chapter Six, Chief Bromden's suggestion that Nurse Ratched can control the clocks at the ward reveals his paranoia. At the same time, his suggestion provides a sense of the thoroughness with which Nurse Ratched has enacted her domination. Controlling time in this way seems entirely consistent with her controlling character.

Harding continues to serve the plot by providing exposition, explaining to McMurphy the routines and tenets of the ward, including the loud music.

This chapter also highlights the contrast between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in terms of sexuality. In his confrontation with Nurse Pilbow, McMurphy represents a dangerous sexuality, the opposite of the passionless and repressed Nurse Ratched.

Chief Bromden’s dream in Chapter Seven presents his fear that all the men in the ward are turning into mechanized vegetables, losing their capacity to feel, to live, and ultimately to rediscover their own souls. Rather than helping them, their stay at the hospital is slowly obliterating everything inside of them and replacing it with machine-like deadness. At the same time, the Chief still seems unreliable as a narrator in that he is apt to completely lose track of reality at the slightest trigger. He normally does not dream because of the pills that plunge him into heavy slumbers. Now, however, with the opportunity to dream, his subconscious is unleashed, and while this nightmare is not so different from those of sane people, his reaction suggests that he is in another fog. Perhaps he senses that he has reached a critical point where he either must fight back to lucidity or surrender to the fate of Blastic. McMurphy will be pivotal in helping Chief Bromden choose to start recovering.

In Chapter Eight, McMurphy exposes some of the ward's inane policies. He realizes ways in which the ward impedes a person's ability to make rational decisions. Even deciding when to brush one’s teeth is no longer a choice for the ward residents. The boy’s response invokes, hilariously, the chaos that would ensue if people brushed their teeth willy-nilly. Such arguments are the irrational arguments of control for control’s sake; all too often, an authority figure has no good reason for a rule and can only try to scare off the inquirer by invoking an impossible, extreme case.

Chief Bromden perceives that McMurphy is different from the other characters. Bromden’s way of expressing this is to say that McMurphy has not been transformed by the Combine. McMurphy's antisocial history may play a large part in this assessment; he has not yet had the experience of drudge work and responsibility to subdue him. This puts him in substantial contrast to Harding, whose sense of responsibility plays a large role in his psychoses.

The confrontation between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy has clear sexual undertones. Indeed, one of the major themes of the novel involves the contrast between liberated and repressed sexuality. By appearing in front of Nurse Ratched wearing only a towel—and threatening to lose even that—McMurphy confronts her with the prospect of forbidden nakedness. In their final major confrontation, it will be Ratched whose nakedness is exposed against all propriety and at the hands of McMurphy. The fact that McMurphy is actually wearing boxer shorts reveals that he is playing a game with Ratched and figures correctly that she is vulnerable to his charms or at least to his threats of startling activity. Significantly, this is the first moment at which Nurse Ratched shows any strain or tension. McMurphy thus begins to find a place for a wedge and make Big Nurse crack, in line with the bet that he made with other patients.

Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can be construed as a parable pitting the counterculture (McMurphy) against the establishment (Ratched), McMurphy is too complex to be set up merely as a metaphor. If McMurphy is a challenge to the establishment, he also attempts to work within it. Dr. Spivey has power in the ward that McMurphy hopes to redirect against Ratched and in favor of McMurphy’s desires and the needs of the men. His request in Chapter Nine to have the music volume lowered is also an acknowledgment of Ratched’s power, and the request is both rational and diplomatic. Similarly, his counterproposal to open the tub room as a game room for the patients also seems appropriate.

Nurse Ratched seems less complex. True to her controlling character, she is not interested in working with McMurphy to change anything. In rejecting his requests, she demonstrates her dominance over him and refuses to empower him. Her interest is not in the patients but in perpetuating her own sense of control, as shown by her apparent dislike of any idea that is not her own. Once McMurphy finds that his proposals will be immediately dismissed, he manipulates the system by using Dr. Spivey. Nurse Ratched is of course infuriated by what it means that Dr. Spivey can talk separately with McMurphy and work with him to make decisions for the ward. This more subtle uprising, the passive-aggressiveness that McMurphy succeeds with, opens a crack in her steel facade. He is winning at the system that Nurse Ratched has been an expert at manipulating against him and the insane people on the ward.

Nevertheless, Chief Bromden emphasizes that no matter what McMurphy gains, his struggles are inevitably in vain. Ultimately, Nurse Ratched has the power of the Combine, a social sanction for any punishment the institution has at its disposal against those who rebel. Ratched has many cards left to play.

McMurphy plays Monopoly with Harding, Martini, Scanlon, and Cheswick. Martini hallucinates, thinking he sees things on the board. McMurphy keeps high-class manners around the nurses and the boys in spite of what they say to him—in spite of every trick they pull to make him lose his temper. McMurphy also keeps his sense of humor. He continues to see how funny the rules are. As long as he can laugh at the ridiculousness of everything that is happening around him, he will be safe.

Only once does he become visibly angry. At one of the group meetings, he chastises the patients for acting too cagey, for being “chicken-shit.” McMurphy wanted to change the schedule around so the men could watch the World Series during the day and do the cleaning work at night. McMurphy expects the nurses to oppose him and his fellows to support him. But when McMurphy attempts to round up a vote for the schedule change, the Acutes fail to see the purpose in doing any such thing. He confronts Harding, whose failure of support suggests to McMurphy that he is afraid of Nurse Ratched. Billy Bibbit claims that nothing they do will be of any use in the long run.

McMurphy claims that he is going to break out of the institution by lifting up the control panel in the tub room and throwing it through the window. He tries to lift it, but it weighs far too much.

The person named Public Relations shows the institution to a visiting doctor. The doctor examines Chief Bromden. Public Relations claims that there must be something wrong with any man who would want to run away from a place as nice as this. The fog gets worse for Chief Bromden. Bromden thinks that McMurphy cannot understand that the fog keeps the patients safe.

One of the patients, Old Rawler, kills himself, creating a dangerous sense of instability in the ward.

Bromden explains where the thick fog comes from. It emanates from the fog machines he saw during the war. The machines obscured the surroundings so that nobody could see anything in front of him. Bromden would get lost in the fog and always find himself returning to the same place. Bromden waits for Nurse Ratched to fog them in again; lately they have been doing it more and more now that McMurphy has fomented the rebellion of Cheswick and Harding to the point where they might actually stand up to the boys.

Ratched discusses with a doctor whether or not McMurphy should be on the ward, since he is upsetting the patients.

During the therapeutic meeting, the group tries to discuss the source of Billy Bibbit's stutter. Billy relates that he flunked out of college because he quit ROTC when he couldn't answer to his own name. He also recalls that the first word that he stuttered was “mama.” He flubbed a proposal to a girl because he stuttered. Nurse Ratched tells him that his mother mentioned the girl to whom he proposed—this girl was said to be quite beneath him. McMurphy brings up the World Series again, and Nurse Ratched reluctantly allows one more vote on the matter.

This time he rouses all twenty Acutes to vote for him, but Nurse Ratched claims that this is insufficient, for none of the Chronics vote for him. McMurphy attempts to rouse at least one Chronic to vote for a schedule change, but none responds. Finally, McMurphy approaches Chief Bromden, who raises his hand. But Nurse Ratched now claims that the vote was already decided and the meeting is closed. An hour later, it is time for the World Series. McMurphy stops work and turns on the television. Nurse Ratched becomes angry and turns off the television from the Nurses' Station, but McMurphy remains sitting there. Finally she approaches him and scolds him for not obeying her. Mr. Harding sits down beside McMurphy, and Cheswick, Scanlon, Billy Bibbit, and the other Acutes join him. Chief Bromden also joins them by the television.

Analysis

If One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a work of social criticism, this section develops points about the role of everyday people in effecting change. Nurse Ratched is not the only obstacle that McMurphy faces. The apathy of the other patients proves a substantial burden to McMurphy, for they do not have the energy to support changes in ward policy that they actually want. In fact, they take Billy Bibbit's position that any action will not really make a difference for them anyway. It could even be counterproductive. It is up to McMurphy to engage in some consciousness-raising among, at least, the Acutes, who might still have a degree of consciousness that can be raised. McMurphy will work to create a solidarity among the patients.

The control panel in the tub room will prove significant later in the novel. In this section, McMurphy’s idea of using it to escape foreshadows later events. Although McMurphy cannot lift it, the Chief is one who can.

Chapters Twelve to Fourteen appear in short succession. Two of them contain little more than one paragraph. This structure serves to show the disjointed nature of Chief Bromden's observations. He presents only brief glimpses of events that occur in the institution, none of which contains any great significance. Even the suicide of Old Rawler is largely inconsequential in terms of the plot and atmosphere of the novel, though the later deaths will be consequential for what they signify about the state of the ward. The most important point that Chief Bromden makes in these chapters is that the “insanity” represented by the fog is a comfort for the patients. It allows them to recede from the difficulties of reality. The additional trouble for McMurphy is that reality is what he wants them to confront.

Chief Bromden acts primarily as a narrator who describes external conditions rather than his own psychology. But in Chapter Fifteen, he provides some indication of the origin of his psychological problems. Bromden compares the imaginary “fog machine” of the mental institution to the real fog that apparently surrounded him during wartime as a matter of military tactics. This tale indicates that Chief Bromden likely suffers from some sort of shell-shock caused by his war experience.

We also get a bit of psychological insight into Billy Bibbit. The origin of Billy Bibbit's problems, following a Freudian perspective, is that his mother is not primarily loving but is domineering like a man. She seems to control his every action, being the judge of which woman is appropriate for him to marry. That the first word Billy Bibbit stuttered was “mama” is a clear indication that she is the source of his problems. His mother's apparent collaboration with Nurse Ratched is further evidence that Billy's mother is the source of most of his difficulties. Apparently he cannot escape his mother even in the asylum.

McMurphy takes even further the role of a revolutionary in this chapter. When he rebels against Nurse Ratched by breaking from the established schedule to watch the World Series, McMurphy is abandoning the rules and regulations of the ward. This rebellion occurs, however, only after it is apparent that the supposedly democratic system of voting on the ward is not actually free; Nurse Ratched controls and manipulates the outcomes of the votes. McMurphy cannot win simply by playing by the rules. This is an important point, for it demonstrates that McMurphy is not just an anarchist bent on breaking down any system of governance. He is driven to rebellion by the unfair system around him, one which he could not change from within even if he tried. Note, too, that he does not act with force but with passive resistance, simply continuing to sit after the television is turned off.

Despite Nurse Ratched's claim that the vote is democratic, her tally includes the Chronics, who have no real ability to make the rational choice required in a vote. This tactic ensures that Nurse Ratched can maintain the status quo whenever she wants, despite the obvious support for McMurphy among the Acutes.

When McMurphy breaks from his schedule to watch the World Series, he makes a definitive break from the regime of Nurse Ratched. It is a revolutionary act that threatens to throw the institution into full upheaval. Indeed, others join him in the protest.

The vote for the World Series is also a turning point for Chief Bromden, for it is the first time he reasserts himself as a functioning person. He does this through his vote for McMurphy, the first definitive, responsive action that Chief Bromden has taken during the novel. He continues this pattern when he joins McMurphy and the other Acutes in their protest against Nurse Ratched.

These actions underscore a major theme of the novel, the importance of rational choice. The ability to choose reflects one's status as a rational, functioning human being. Cannot McMurphy insist, at least, on that? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest centers around the conflict between this capability for choice and Nurse Ratched’s refusal to allow people to make decisions for themselves. As a matter of social commentary, too many bureaucrats think it is their job to be the experts and the decision-makers for everyone else, and the novel warns us to be wary of such ideas. The general population may be too apathetic, but we do have rational minds and are not crazy, after all.

Chapter Sixteen

Everyone keeps his eyes on Nurse Ratched, who occupies the Nurses' Station. For Chief Bromden, the fog has dissipated. One of the boys prods Chief Bromden to continue with his duties, but Bromden will not move until he is physically prodded to clean the staff room.

He goes to the staff room, where Nurse Ratched is holding a meeting. One doctor discusses the “revolution” that occurred minutes before and says that McMurphy is no ordinary man they are dealing with. Another doctor suggests that McMurphy may be simply a shrewd con man and not mentally ill, but another says that McMurphy is sick and definitely a “Potential Assaultive.” The doctor worries that McMurphy may attack him during Individual Therapy. One of the doctors, Gideon, finally decides that they are not dealing with an ordinary man, but Nurse Ratched tells him that he is absolutely wrong. She says that McMurphy is not extraordinary, simply a man and just as subject to all the fears and cowardice and timidity as any other man, such that he ultimately can be controlled. One doctor worries that this could take weeks, but Ratched reminds them that they have all the time in the world. McMurphy is committed involuntarily, so he must remain in the hospital as long as they want.

Chapter Seventeen

The patients love knowing that McMurphy "got the nurse's goat the way he said he would." McMurphy becomes more bold and aggressive. He asks Nurse Ratched for the measurements of her breasts, which she tries so hard to conceal. But Nurse Ratched does not lose control again. Bromden thinks that McMurphy may be strong enough to resist the Combine, suggesting at least a stalemate between hero and villain.

Bromden wakes one night to find the ward clean and silent. He gets up and walks over to the window. He looks outside, and for the first time, he seems to really see the outside world. He can see that the hospital is surrounded by countryside. He watches a dog sniffing around outside until Geever, one of the boys, and the Catholic nurse put Chief Bromden back in bed. Bromden dreams about how the nurse goes home and tries to scrub away her birthmarks, aghast that a good Catholic girl has such stains.

Chapter Eighteen

In the group meetings, the other patients bring up longstanding gripes which they had kept buried. They complain that the dorms are locked on the weekends, that they are not allowed to go various places alone, and that they do not have the right to have their own cigarettes. McMurphy notes that Nurse Ratched acts as if she still holds all of the cards up her sleeve.

When the patients make their weekly trip to the pool, McMurphy learns that she really does have insurmountable power over them. The realization comes in a single moment, when McMurphy discusses with a lifeguard how the hospital is better than a jail. The lifeguard points out to him that, at least in jail, a person has a definite release date. The lifeguard, who is also a patient, tells McMurphy that he was picked up for drunkenness and disorderly conduct and has now been in the institution for nearly nine years. McMurphy will be there as long as Nurse Ratched intends to keep him.

The next day, McMurphy surprises everyone by behaving well. That afternoon, in the group meeting, Cheswick complains that he wants something done about the cigarettes and whines that they are treating him like a child. Two of the black boys drag him away to the Disturbed Ward. McMurphy does not say a thing during the meeting. He has chosen to give in because it is the smart thing to do. The next time that the inmates go to the pool, Cheswick immediately dives into the pool after telling McMurphy that he wishes something had been done. He gets his fingers stuck in the grate at the bottom of the pool and drowns.

Analysis

In Chapter Sixteen, the fog that Chief Bromden claims to see symbolizes his lack of lucidity and his inability to assert himself. But once Bromden makes the decision to join the other men in protest of Nurse Ratched, the fog disappears. This decision comes at a cost. By making choices to resist authority, Chief Bromden becomes vulnerable once again to his long-buried feelings. He loses the safety of the fog and embraces the risks and rewards of personal choice and freedom.

Chief Bromden's choice to continue presenting himself as deaf and dumb is a tactic to deflect harassment by Nurse Ratched's henchmen. This deception also enables Chief Bromden to access staff meetings. In comparison with others, Chief Bromden's purported handicap renders him innocuous, allowing him to be the most omniscient narrator because of his access to places others cannot go. McMurphy himself would be a more lucid narrator, but his self-interest in telling his own story would be likely to distort the narrative. It seems better this way, to have McMurphy’s character loom large in an observer’s mind as almost a mythological hero. It is up to Chief Bromden to take McMurphy's story out of the institution and into the world. Besides, Bromden will end up being in the clichéd situation of being the one survivor able to tell the tale.

The staff meeting is at once ironic and ridiculous because it reveals the outright absurdity of the doctors' diagnoses. The various doctors use tortured doublespeak. They believe his behavior indicates the presence of a sane man, but he also seems potentially explosive precisely because of his sanity in an environment meant for the insane. Nurse Ratched seems almost desperately afraid that McMurphy might be normal, pushing her further towards a diagnosis of him as a psychotic. Indeed, the Nurse believes that his ordinariness in the context of the ward proves he is insane. His kind of relative insanity in the ward proves him more likely to be sane in normal society.

Ratched wants to win this battle. Whether the sexual subtext is still here or this is simply a matter of pride and power, Nurse Ratched insists to the doctors that McMurphy stay in her department. She intends to break McMurphy down by any means and no matter how long it may take. In this, she is a good totalitarian re-educator.

In Chapter Seventeen, sexuality is again a tactic of McMurphy. He questions Nurse Ratched about her breasts. The theme is continued in some sense by Chief Bromden later when he wonders about the birthmarks of the Catholic nurse in relation to the desire for purity. His observations about the Catholic nurse suggest the detrimental effects of sexual repression; unlike the tightly corseted Nurse Ratched, this nurse seems to demonstrate intense guilt and shame about her sexuality. The narrator describes this situation almost entirely in metaphorical terms of "stains," with obvious sexual connotations.

Although McMurphy becomes more bold and authoritative in this chapter, Nurse Ratched remains calm and reassured. She has regained composure because she knows she has control over the situation in the long run. She can determine what happens to McMurphy and whether or not he is ever released from the asylum, so she can tolerate any short-term challenges to her power, even if occasionally he can draw others to his cause.

The changes in Chief Bromden are particular important in this chapter. We awakens, literally and figuratively, and watches the dog outside the window. For the first time in ages, he is truly aware of the outside world. He is acknowledging it and feels in some way a part of it; he is not simply ignoring it or afraid of it. He can conceive of existence outside of the institution in ways that he could not imagine before. No doubt, McMurphy is the primary facilitator of this change.

Chapter Eighteen emphasizes the effects that McMurphy has had on the other men in the institution. Because of McMurphy, these men begin to reassert their rights against Nurse Ratched. But there is a critical difference between Cheswick's complaints and McMurphy's conscious rebellion, for Cheswick cannot modulate his complaints. He refuses to cease his complaints even after they place him in corporeal danger. Although the actual chronology of the events is unclear, it seems that the black boys take Cheswick to Disturbed to administer shock treatment because of his rebellion. This treatment in turn may have rendered Cheswick incoherent, with the subsequent effect that he makes the foolish error of getting his hands stuck in the grate in the swimming pool. But there is a strong possibility that Cheswick's action is suicidal, for his death occurs almost immediately after he jumps in the pool. Cheswick may feel let down by McMurphy, who has started to play along just when Cheswick has taken the bold step of initiating his own rebellion. Cheswick's death demonstrates the more disturbing consequences of the clarity that McMurphy instills in the other patients: they sense that they can progress beyond their supposed insanity but might not actually be able to handle their progress or the new awakening they are experiencing. As the patients regain the ability to assert themselves and make choices, they also must face the effects of these decisions, and if their past is any indication, they are generally not very able to face the real world.

As for McMurphy, he shows himself to be pragmatic in acquiescing to Nurse Ratched and following her orders. McMurphy rebelled against Nurse Ratched partially because he did not realize her power to control his dismissal from the institution. This power, as earlier established, has given Nurse Ratched the confidence that she will ultimately break McMurphy. McMurphy's change in behavior in this chapter demonstrates that her confidence is well-founded. Moreover, she also has punishments at her disposal, so the next round is likely to lead to another win by Nurse Ratched.

Chapter Nineteen

Sefelt, an epileptic, has a seizure during lunch because he refuses to take his medication. Sefelt has been giving his medication to Frederickson. McMurphy asks Frederickson why Sefelt refuses to take his medicine, Dilantin, and he answers that Dilantin makes one’s gums rot. The choice is between having his gums rot or having seizures. One of the boys removes two of Sefelt’s teeth as Scanlon mentions, “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Chapter Twenty

The clean, calculated movements of the ward resume as Nurse Ratched reassumes her complete control over the function and operation of the institution.

Chapter Twenty-One

Chief Bromden goes with the Acutes to the library. One of the boys brings Harding’s wife into the library. She is as tall as he is and carries a black purse; her fingernails are blood red. Harding introduces McMurphy to his “counterpart and Nemesis.” Harding tells his wife, Vera, how McMurphy stood up to Nurse Ratched. She scolds her husband for making a mousy squeak when he laughs. This comment makes Harding nervous and jumpy. Vera then asks for a cigarette, and Harding tells her that the cigarettes have been rationed. This causes a fight between Harding and his wife; she asks whether he ever does have enough, and he asks her in return whether she is speaking symbolically.

McMurphy offers her a cigarette, and she leans forward to take it so that everyone can see down her blouse. Vera complains that Harding’s friends, “hoity-toity boys with the nice long hair combed so perfectly and the limp little wrists,” keep visiting the house to see him. She suddenly decides to leave. Harding asks McMurphy what he thinks of her, and he replies that she has breasts as big as Nurse Ratched’s. McMurphy gets angry when Harding asks for a more serious answer, telling Harding that he has worries of his own and does not want to deal with Harding’s. Later, McMurphy admits that he has been suffering from bad dreams over the past week.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Several weeks after the vote on the World Series, the patients are taken to another building to get chest X-rays for tuberculosis. McMurphy sees a room that is unmarked. He asks Harding what happens inside, and Harding tells him that the room is the Shock Shop. Although Harding says that they are witnessing the sunset of electroshock therapy (EST), Nurse Ratched is one of the few remaining advocates of it. Harding claims that EST is not always used for punitive means but “for a patient’s own good.”

Harding relates the history of EST. It came about when two psychiatrists were visiting a slaughterhouse and watched how a blow to the head would induce an epileptic convulsion in a cow, and they concluded that if a seizure could be induced in non-epileptics, great benefits might result. Harding claims that the process is painless, but the jolt sets off a wild carnival of images.

Harding also mentions lobotomy, which he calls “frontal lobe castration.” He says that if Ratched “can’t cut below the belt she’ll do it above the eyes.” McMurphy says that if Nurse Ratched is truly the patients’ problem, the solution is to throw her down and penetrate through her sexually repressive defenses. The other patients propose that McMurphy do the job.

McMurphy asks the other patients why they never told him that Nurse Ratched controls whether or not he can leave. Harding says that he forgot that McMurphy was committed involuntarily. Harding tells him that most of the patients are not committed involuntarily, just Scanlon and some of the Chronics. McMurphy asks why Billy is here if he does not have to be—he could be in a convertible “bird-dogging girls.” Billy claims that he is too weak to leave and likes it where he is. He then begins to cry as the scars on his wrist open and begin to bleed.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The other patients calm Billy as the patients return to the ward. Chief Bromden walks beside McMurphy and can tell that he is afflicted with some great worry. McMurphy asks Sam, one of the boys, if he can stop by the canteen to get cigarettes. At the canteen, McMurphy buys several cartons. During the meeting that afternoon, Nurse Ratched brings up their behavior several weeks ago. She claims that she waited too long to deal with it and give the men a chance to apologize. She claims that her discipline now is entirely for their own good. She is taking away tub room privileges. McMurphy says nothing. He stands up and walks with his normal swagger to the Nurses’ Station and punches the glass in order to get his cigarettes. He sarcastically says that the glass was so clean that he completely forgot it was there.

Analysis

In Chapter Nineteen, Sefelt chooses not to take his medicine because it causes his gums to rot. This is not a psychosomatic fear; gum problems can be real side effects of the medicine. But because Sefelt refuses to take his medicine, he has seizures, ultimately causing him to lose teeth. Sefelt’s choice is thus between bad teeth or bad gums, as Scanlon puts it—”damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” This fatalism is a disappointing condition in the ward. What Scanlon fails to note is that the bad gums are a price to pay for the benefit of reducing seizures, while the bad teeth are tied to the extra troubles of the seizures. The choice should be easy—to take the medicine—but Sefelt chooses badly.

Chapter Twenty, just a paragraph long, marks the change in the ward after McMurphy gives up his struggle against Nurse Ratched. She once again reasserts her control over the rest of the patients, for McMurphy knows that to oppose her is to ensure that he will never leave the ward.

The confrontation between Harding and his wife in Chapter Twenty-One centers almost entirely around their sexual problems. Vera Harding is juxtaposed with Nurse Ratched. They are outwardly similar (especially in McMurphy’s eyes) because they both have large breasts, but while Big Nurse is repressed and cold, Vera Harding is imposing in her sexuality. Her blood-red fingernails are a complement and contrast to Nurse Ratched’s icy orange polish. Vera Harding intimidates her husband with her sexuality, leaning over to get a cigarette intentionally so that the other patients can see down her blouse. She goes on to complain about her husband’s inadequacies, which he perceives as a sexual metaphor, probably correctly. Vera additionally questions her husband’s sexual preference, mentioning the boys with “limp wrists” who visit their home—a stereotypical invocation of male homosexuality—who are Harding’s friends. Whether or not Harding is a closeted homosexual, Vera seems to be using this idea as a tactic to humiliate her husband by playing on his sexual anxieties.

McMurphy demonstrates some strain in this chapter as well. He seems to be weary of acting as the leader or authority figure for the men on the ward. If Cheswick might have caught a sense of this weariness, it becomes clearer when McMurphy refuses to give his appraisal of the problems between Harding and his wife. McMurphy is under some psychological strain, likely caused by worry that he will never be able to leave the institution.

Harding describes the processes of electroshock therapy and lobotomies in great detail in Chapter Twenty-Two, thus foreshadowing their use. He makes the important point that it is Nurse Ratched who uses these methods, even if they are becoming discredited. Though he notes that such treatment is not always for punitive means, he simultaneously suggests that these methods sometimes actually are used as punishment when Ratched is disobeyed. Harding also uses lobotomies as a metaphor for sexual crippling through “castration” of the frontal lobe. The conversation between McMurphy and Harding once again defines the opposition between McMurphy and Ratched in sexual terms. Nurse Ratched can use lobotomies as the equivalent of castration, while McMurphy suggests sex as the cure for Nurse Ratched’s repression and control. McMurphy also puts himself in the role of sexual liberator.

Billy Bibbit’s mother seems to control his actions, rendering him weak and at least symbolically impotent. There is a link between Mrs. Bibbit and Nurse Ratched; Billy claims that the two women are close friends. Nurse Ratched thus serves as a stand-in mother who can manipulate Billy Bibbit’s weaknesses and insecurities. This vulnerability will become important in future chapters.

When McMurphy realizes that most of the patients have made the choice to remain in the institution, he realizes that personal choice and fear of one’s problems in the outside world have put most of the inmates in the asylum. Only he and a small number are actually committed; the others remain under Nurse Ratched’s control out of fear or habit. This differentiates McMurphy from the other patients; he is sane because he uses his ability to make rational choices while the other patients are coded as insane through their refusal to take their chances out in the world.

Nurse Ratched has reasserted her control over the institution in Chapter Twenty-Three, again a mother or a warden who dominates the men. She speaks to them in utterly condescending terms, even referring to them as “boys” and treating them as children who cannot accept any sense of responsibility. Having treated these men with such great disrespect and taking away something of value to McMurphy, she triggers his anger. He responds with impudence. When he breaks the glass, this is the first physically aggressive action he takes against Nurse Ratched. This brings the confrontation between the two characters back to the fore, for McMurphy is aggressively acting out on behalf of the privileges of the patients. He is taking a risk in that the act will mean a longer stay in the institution, but at this moment his anger or rebellion is stronger than such a fear.

Chapter Twenty-Four

McMurphy has things his own way for a while after the incident with the cigarettes. Nurse Ratched is in no hurry to retaliate because she knows she can prolong the fight as long as she wishes. McMurphy gets together a basketball team and talks the doctor into letting him bring a ball back from the gym to get the team used to handling it. Trying to push the limits, McMurphy requests an Accompanied Pass—to be accompanied specifically by "a switch from Portland named Candy Starr." When this request is turned down, McMurphy breaks the glass again. The other Acutes begin to follow McMurphy's lead in behaving aggressively. Martini accidentally bounces the basketball into the window, breaking it a third time.

McMurphy decides that fishing is the thing to do. He requests a pass after telling the doctor he has some friends at the Siuslaw Bay at Florence who could take several patients deep-sea fishing. He would be accompanied by "two sweet old aunts from a little place outside of Oregon City." McMurphy begins recruiting patients to go, but Nurse Ratched puts up clippings about wrecked boats and sudden storms on the coast in efforts to dissuade the patients.

Chief Bromden wants to go but does not have the money and does not want Nurse Ratched to think that he can hear others. Bromden remembers that he did not start acting deaf; others started acting as if he were too dumb to hear or see anything. Bromden reminisces about his childhood, when men in Stetson hats used to visit the Indian reservation where he lived. These men insulted the Indians in front of Bromden, but when he attempted to speak up, they ignored him.

One night McMurphy finds Chief Bromden awake and talks to him. He wonders where he gets his chewing gum, for Chief Bromden never visits the canteen, but then realizes that the Chief chews already-used gum. McMurphy gives Bromden a new pack of Juicy Fruit; he tries to actually speak the words “Thank you.” McMurphy tells Bromden that he once had a job picking beans. Since he was the only kid there, McMurphy never said a word, but he listened intently and, on the last day, revealed all that he heard and created a disturbance. McMurphy wonders if Chief Bromden is doing the same thing, but he admits to McMurphy that he could not tell anyone off like McMurphy does because Bromden is not as big or as tough.

Bromden also tells McMurphy that his father was a full Chief, Tee Ah Millatoona (The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain)—and his mother was twice his size. Bromden says that the Combine worked on his father for years, but his father fought it until his mother made him too little to fight anymore. Bromden wants to touch McMurphy, not because he is "one of those queers" but because of who he is. McMurphy offers to let Chief Bromden go on the fishing trip for free. He wonders if Chief Bromden could lift the control panel in the tub room. He suggests that the Chief take the opportunity and break out of the institution.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chief Bromden eagerly awaits the deep-sea fishing trip. He sees that McMurphy signed his name on the list. The black boys wonder who signed Chief Bromden's name, fully convinced that Indians cannot read or write. McMurphy wakes up the others on the ward, trying to gather one more person to go on the trip. George Sorenson, a big, toothless old Swede with a compulsion about sanitation, agrees to go.

Nurse Ratched arrives and attempts to scare the patients once more about the dangers on the ocean. Still, George remains resolved to go, and McMurphy even makes him “captain.” Only one of the two chaperones/whores arrives, a girl named Candy, and she is late. She tells McMurphy that Sandra, the other hooker, left and got married. Nurse Ratched does not allow the men to leave because they need another chaperone for so many patients. Dr. Spivey agrees to accompany them.

When the men stop for gas, the service-station man asks if they are from the asylum. The doctor tells him that they are a work crew, not inmates. The service-station man behaves rudely to the men, but McMurphy tells them that they are in fact criminally insane men from the asylum and are entitled to a government-sponsored discount. Harding perceives that mental illness has the aspect of power: the more insane a man is, the more powerful he can become.

When they reach the docks, McMurphy argues with the captain who was supposed to take them out. He demands a signed waiver clearing him with the proper authorities. While McMurphy argues with the captain, a couple of men at the dock yell disparaging comments at Candy, asking whether she is one of the insane or part of the cure for them. McMurphy exits the captain's office and tells the men to quickly get in the boat. They all jump in and push off before the captain gets off the phone.

Candy and Billy Bibbit fish together, and she nearly gets hurt, but everyone laughs at the situation thanks to McMurphy. Dr. Spivey hooks the largest fish, but it takes several men to pull it in. When the men return to shore, the police are waiting for them. The doctor claims that they are a legal, government-sponsored expedition, and he notes that there were not enough life jackets on the boat. The captain thus decides not to press charges. The men who made disparaging comments to Candy say nothing when they return from fishing, for they sense a change in the inmates; these are not the same bunch of "weak-knees from a nuthouse" as before.

On the ride back to the institution, Candy falls asleep against Billy's chest. He later asks her for a date. McMurphy plans to sneak Candy into the ward on Saturday night so she can meet with Billy. McMurphy seems exhausted on the trip back to the institution. He points out the house where he lived as a youth and points out a dress hanging in the branches of a tree. The first girl who dragged McMurphy to bed wore that dress, and it now stands in the tree as a de facto memorial. He was about ten at the time.

Analysis

McMurphy becomes more bold in Chapter Twenty-Four, erroneously believing that Nurse Ratched's failure to retaliate against him indicates that he has won. Instead, however, Nurse Ratched refuses to respond to McMurphy's aggressive stance because she is confident that she will inevitably break him. McMurphy's behavior seems, in fact, a tactical error, for his aggression does not promote self-sufficiency among the patients so much as insubordination. Nurse Ratched essentially gives McMurphy this latitude to allow him eventually to make a grievous error that would justify punishment. Still, the conflict between the two characters remains muted. Nurse Ratched is content with subtle undermining of the fishing trip by putting up clippings of news stories.

Chief Bromden's stories about his childhood suggest that he, like Harding and Billy Bibbit, suffers to some degree from a domineering female. Like Billy Bibbit, Chief Bromden is intimidated by his mother, whom he describes as "twice as tall" as his tall father. Bromden indicates that his mother dominated both him and his father, contributing to the problems they faced. It is from his father that Chief Bromden developed the idea of the Combine. The stories also relate a great deal about his character. He appears to be deaf and dumb primarily because he has been intimidated by others around him, including the callous inspectors or his domineering mother. He has been ignored or disregarded out of racism and other factors, yet he is ready to reassert himself once McMurphy shows him a degree of kindness and respect. Chief Bromden is the best example of the beneficial effect that McMurphy has on the patients in the institution.

The narrator employs foreshadowing again later when McMurphy discusses the control panel in the tub room. McMurphy gives Chief Bromden the idea that he might be able to lift the control panel and throw it through the window, allowing an escape. The reader is coming to believe that Bromden might gain enough wherewithal to do it. The question is what will ultimately motivate Chief Bromden to assert himself so strongly.

The conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy gives way during Chapter Twenty-Five to a different conflict between the institutional patients and the rest of society. Regular human society is not in the institution or out on the water; it is at the gas station and the docks. Upon leaving the institution, McMurphy and the other patients face the suspicion and mockery of those who view them as completely insane. The outsiders are probably more right than wrong, but McMurphy proudly faces these objections through confrontation, celebrating their insanity as a means of intimidation. The good doctor is also on their side, willing to lie when the time comes.

This chapter sets up further plot developments, such as the developing intimacy between Candy Starr and Billy Bibbit.

This chapter also carries strong religious imagery. McMurphy leaves the hospital with twelve followers, an allusion to the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, their task is deep-sea fishing, another Christian religious symbol insofar as the fish is a prominent symbol of Jesus. The accumulation of these allusions positions R.P. McMurphy as a Christ-figure in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. If he is a redeemer on the pattern of Christ, the inmates are being invited to cast aside their former selves and find new life in what McMurphy represents—freedom. But following this pattern, McMurphy must at least symbolically die for the men in order to accomplish their final transformation.

The fishing trip itself is a transformative event for the patients. It is a conversion for the men, for they return from their journey changed, now worthy of respect because they seem more sane than insane. The hecklers at the docks no longer mock the patients upon their return from fishing. While McMurphy and the trip itself are agents of the change, the transformation is also due to the patients' physical freedom from Nurse Ratched's control. Freed from her domineering policies, these men do have their own abilities to make their own choices; they can achieve the sense of self-worth that she denies them.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nurse Ratched plans her next maneuver for the day after the fishing trip, just as McMurphy begins hustling for more changes in the rules, including a subscription to Playboy to replace the current one for McCall’s. She pastes up statements of the patients’ financial doings over the past several months, suggesting that McMurphy has made money from the rest of the patients. McMurphy does not appear ashamed, however, and he brags that he might be able to retire to Florida with the money he has made. The patients start to wonder, however, what scam McMurphy is trying to pull.

Nurse Ratched capitalizes on these fears and sets up a meeting without McMurphy, at which she implies that he is trying to fleece them of their money and that this is his only motivation in befriending them. She tells them that McMurphy is no martyr or saint but an old-fashioned con artist. Finally, she questions the profit that McMurphy made on the fishing trip. Harding breaks ranks and agrees that Nurse Ratched is correct, but he asks why they should criticize McMurphy when he is showing off his capitalist flair.

When confronted, McMurphy makes no pretense about his motives. Billy is the only one who openly defends McMurphy, but after the meeting McMurphy asks Billy for money for Candy’s visit. Chief Bromden still believes that McMurphy is a “giant come out of the sky to save us from the Combine,” but Nurse Ratched’s arguments make him start to question McMurphy’s deeper motives. These doubts deepen when McMurphy has Chief Bromden move the control panel in the tub room to win the bet he had with the other patients--and then gives Chief Bromden part of the profits. When Chief Bromden refuses to take the money, McMurphy confronts him about the cold treatment the patients are giving him. Chief Bromden tells him that the other patients are suspicious about how McMurphy is always winning things and accumulating their money.

Nurse Ratched orders a cautionary cleansing for the patients in which the men must line up nude against the tile of the shower room and be cleaned by the black boys. The boys torment George Sorenson because he refuses soap and then refuses to bend over for a different cleaning treatment, but McMurphy defends Sorenson. Washington, one of the boys, punches McMurphy, kindling a melee between McMurphy and all of the boys. Chief Bromden takes up the fight with one of the boys as McMurphy’s new ally, and the two eventually are victorious. The smallest boy manages to run and get help from the Disturbed Ward. Soon help arrives and people take McMurphy and Bromden away.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There is a high-pitched machine-room clatter on the Disturbed Ward, as well as the singed smell of men going berserk. With all the progressive chaos, a tall bony man tells a black boy, “I wash my hands of the whole deal.” A nurse treats McMurphy’s and Bromden’s wounds and tells them that not every ward is like Nurse Ratched’s. The nurse claims that Nurse Ratched tries to run it like an Army hospital, and she believes that all single nurses should be fired after they reach thirty-five. The nurse admits that she sometimes wishes she could keep the men there instead of sending them back to Nurse Ratched.

The next morning, Nurse Ratched asks McMurphy if he is ashamed of what he did, and if he is ashamed he will not receive shock treatment. McMurphy refuses. He says that the “Chinese Commies” could have learned a few things from her. As the doctors put graphite salve on McMurphy’s temples, he asks if he gets a crown of thorns. Chief Bromden receives shock treatment too. As he does, he thinks about his parents, but he manages to regain lucidity afterward, and for the first time knows that he has beaten Nurse Ratched.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

McMurphy receives three more treatments that week, even though Chief Bromden tries to talk McMurphy into complying with Nurse Ratched to get out of it. McMurphy jokes that she is merely “charging his battery.” The first woman who takes him on will “light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars.” Chief Bromden leaves Disturbed at the end of the week, and Harding congratulates him when he returns.

There are rumors, however, that McMurphy is not responding at all to the EST. Nurse Ratched realizes that McMurphy is quickly becoming a legend while he is out of the ward, so she plans to bring him back to the ward. The men believe that the best thing for McMurphy would be an escape from the ward on Saturday night. During a meeting Nurse Ratched suggests “an operation,” and McMurphy jokes that she is considering castration.

Chief Bromden notes that Billy Bibbit, although he looks young, is actually over thirty. Chief Bromden thinks remembers that when Billy’s mother visited and Billy asserted his age, she asked, “Do I look like the mother of a thirty-one year old?”

At midnight, Mr. Turkle comes in for his shift, and McMurphy bribes him by offering Candy’s services to him. Candy arrives with Sandy, the whore who had skipped the fishing trip. While Candy gives Mr. Turkle wine, McMurphy attempts to pick the lock to the drug room. Meanwhile, other men look through the files in the Nurses’ Station. Harding gets pills for Sefelt and imitates a religious ceremony, sprinkling them over Sefelt and Sandy. Harding claims that they are “doomed henceforth,” for Ratched will tranquilize them out of existence. Harding’s speech makes the men realize the seriousness of what they are doing.

Mr. Turkle unlocks the seclusion room for Billy and Candy. Harding has a plan to tie up Turkle and make it look like McMurphy had tied him up and taken his keys. This plan, according to Harding, would keep the other men out of trouble, keep Turkle his job, and get McMurphy off the ward. McMurphy asks why Harding does not leave, and he responds that he is not ready. He claims that he is guilty and has indulged in certain practices society considers shameful. McMurphy and Sandy snuggle in each other’s shoulders, getting comfortable, as McMurphy postpones his departure for another hour or so. The black boys find him when they arrive at six-thirty that morning.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chief Bromden realizes that what happened that night was inevitable, even if Mr. Turkle had gotten McMurphy and the two girls off the ward as planned. The black boys herd all the inmates into the day room, Chronics and Acutes alike. Everyone is still in pajamas. Mr. Turkle resigns and leaves with Sandy. Harding tells McMurphy to run away with them, but McMurphy refuses. The boys take roll in reverse alphabetical order to throw people off. Finally they call Billy Bibbit’s name, but he is not there. Nurse Ratched does a room check to find him and reaches the Seclusion Room. She finds Billy in bed with Candy.

Nurse Ratched vigorously scolds Billy for being with “a woman like this. A Cheap! Low! Painted,” and Harding suggests “Jezebel” or “Courtesan” or “Salome.” The other patients laugh at Harding’s comment. Nurse Ratched asks Billy what his mother will think about this incident. She claims that Mrs. Bibbit has always been proud of her son’s discretion and will be terribly disturbed; Mrs. Bibbit may even become sick from the news. Billy begins stuttering again and shakes, pleading with Nurse Ratched not to tell his mother. Nurse Ratched attempts to reassure him that nobody will harm him, but she will explain it all to his mother. She leads Billy into the doctor’s office, then leaves him there alone as she calls the doctor. When the doctor arrives, he finds that Billy has cut his throat.

Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy, telling him that he is playing with human lives, as if he thought himself to be a god. McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched, ripping her uniform all the way down the front to expose her breasts as he tries to strangle her. The black boys pull him off Nurse Ratched before he can kill her. Afterwards, several patients sign out of the hospital, and Dr. Spivey resigns. Nurse Ratched stays in Medical for a week while a Japanese nurse runs the ward.

When Nurse Ratched returns, Harding asks about McMurphy. She cannot speak, so she writes on a notepad that he will be back. Harding says that she is “full of so much bullshit.” Nurse Ratched finds it difficult to get the ward back into shape. Harding signs out, and George transfers to a different ward. Martini, Scanlon, and Chief Bromden are the only members of the group who remain.

After three weeks, McMurphy returns; the black boys wheel him in on a gurney. He has had a lobotomy and is now a Vegetable. Martini and Scanlon cannot recognize McMurphy. That night, Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy with a pillow, putting him out of his misery.

Scanlon tells chief Bromden he has to leave. Chief Bromden then lifts the control panel in the tub room and throws it through the window. Chief Bromden runs away and catches a ride with a Mexican man going north. He may go to Canada, but he will stop along the Columbia to check out Portland and The Dalles. He has been gone a long time.

Analysis

In Chapter Twenty-Six, having initiated the transformation of the men on the ward in the previous chapter, McMurphy now asserts himself as the controlling force on the ward. The men are full converts to McMurphy’s ethos, following his lead in behavior. However, Nurse Ratched undermines this force by dividing the men from one another; she exposes McMurphy for his self-interested actions and manipulation.

Her criticism of McMurphy bolsters the religious allusions of the previous chapter: she claims that McMurphy is not a “martyr” or a “saint,” just a manipulative con man. The irony of this situation is that she herself manipulates the patients, while McMurphy has remained fairly honest about his intentions and his entrepreneurial spirit.

When Nurse Ratched orders the cleaning of the men on the ward, she demonstrates her omnipotence over the patients’ bodies. The procedure is at once invasive and emasculating, an intrusion into the men’s bodies, analogous to rape. If the men experienced a transformation from being meek and easily dominated to being more confident and respectable, McMurphy experiences an equally momentous shift in this chapter. McMurphy assumes the role of selfless martyr in this chapter, defending George Sorenson against the invasive cleaning procedures of the black boys. In the past, his decisions generally benefited him monetarily or built his reputation. But this is a time when McMurphy is motivated least by self-interest, for he can gain very little or nothing from defending Sorenson.

Christian symbolism dominates Chapter Twenty-Seven, which more fully completes the analogy between McMurphy and Jesus Christ. “I wash my hands of the whole deal” is a direct allusion to Pontius Pilate, who made a similar comment upon ordering the crucifixion of Christ. McMurphy himself realizes this comparison when he asks whether or not he gets a “crown of thorns,” another reference to the crucifixion.

The nurse with whom McMurphy speaks also gives a greater indication of Nurse Ratched’s character. The younger nurse suggests that a significant motivation for Ratched’s behavior is the fact that she is a bitter, old spinster and has taken out her frustrations on the men on the ward. This point returns to the contrast between the sexuality of McMurphy and the repression of Nurse Ratched. The suggestion is that if Nurse Ratched were sexually satisfied, or at least satisfied with her personal life, she would allow greater freedom on her ward.

Nurse Ratched does gain a victory over McMurphy in this chapter, but whatever victory she has will be short-lived. The shock treatment does not significantly affect Chief Bromden; he quickly regains a sense of lucidity afterward and returns to coherence. More importantly, the nurse who treats McMurphy’s wounds makes the important point that other nurses are opposed to Nurse Ratched’s behavior. Although Nurse Ratched maintains a tight grip on her particular ward, she is vulnerable within the institutional structure she uses against her patients.

Paralleling the Christian story, McMurphy becomes a martyr in Chapter Twenty-Eight when he refuses to accommodate Nurse Ratched’s demands for an apology. McMurphy gains power and authority through receiving the electroshock treatment, just as crucifixion and resurrection demonstrate the divinity of Jesus in Christian teachings. Kesey combines this religious symbolism with the sexual themes that informed the first part of the novel, for McMurphy facetiously claims that the EST increases his sexual potency in that his next conquest will “light up like a pinball machine.” Kesey reinforces this theme when McMurphy underscores that Nurse Ratched would advocate castration. The religious parallels and increasing indications of martyrdom cause Nurse Ratched to return McMurphy to the ward, even if she only dimly perceives the depth of what he represents to the other men. His reputation can only grow while he is away; by returning him to the ward she can remind the men that he is not the godlike martyr the inmates have imagined.

McMurphy’s supposed final night in the institution continues the pattern of religious and sexual imagery, for Harding imitates a religious ritual when he sprinkles the pills on Sefelt. Kesey gives further psychological analyses of the more significant inmates. Harding admits to McMurphy that he has committed practices that society finds unacceptable, a coded final admission that he is a homosexual, while Chief Bromden details more of Billy Bibbit’s past. Mrs. Bibbit has rendered her son a thirty-year-old child; she will not allow him to age precisely because it would reflect that she has aged as well. Billy is thus a perpetual child, dominated by his mother’s oppressive behavior. When McMurphy arranges for the meeting between Candy and Billy, McMurphy is emphasizing his role as a sexual liberator.

McMurphy’s delay in leaving the ward is an ambiguous event, for although he ostensibly makes a small error by falling asleep, the event is perhaps too convenient. Given the signs of his martyrdom, there is a strong possibility that McMurphy never intended to leave the ward and that his actions are a form of self-sacrifice. There are many reasons for him to go, but there are also important reasons for him to stay.

The final chapter of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest culminates in a pyrrhic victory for Nurse Ratched and a pyrrhic victory for the martyred McMurphy. That is, they both win and both lose. The confrontation between the two characters finally becomes both violent and sexual, having been set up as sexual by the confrontation between Nurse Ratched and Billy Bibbit over the prostitute. Nurse Ratched has used repressive sexuality as a weapon against Billy Bibbit, instilling in him a sense of shame that stems from both religious sexual guilt and his domineering mother. Harding even makes a religious allusion to Jezebel that underscores the religious idea of certain kinds of sexuality as sinful. Yet it is when Nurse Ratched uses Billy Bibbit’s mother to instill a sense of shame that she drives him to suicide, showing with unerring finality the cause of Billy’s problems.

The religious theme continues as Nurse Ratched chastises McMurphy for playing God and causing the deaths of Cheswick and Billy Bibbit. The irony is that her policies and abuses of power are what drove them to their respective deaths. All of her criticisms of McMurphy can be better applied to Nurse Ratched herself, a vengeful goddess over the ward.

McMurphy’s attack on Nurse Ratched is about power and sexuality. He effects a literal and figurative exposing of the Big Nurse. When he attacks her, he exposes her breasts, the one barely suppressed sign of her femininity. This point also relates back to Harding’s earlier suggestion that sex is the cure for Nurse Ratched—here it is at least a cure for the men against her. The result of this fight is the final humanization of Nurse Ratched in that everyone learns what McMurphy has known from the beginning: she is human and weak and troubled like everyone else. When she returns to the ward after the fight, she is unable to speak and thus has lost a major sign of her power. While she loses this sign of humanity, she neatly parallels Chief Bromden, who in the course of the novel regains his voice and his humanity.

McMurphy ostensibly loses his battle against Nurse Ratched when she orders a lobotomy for him, but the victory is hollow, for she loses control of the ward as the other patients free themselves of her grip and voluntarily leave the hospital. This is an ultimate win for him and an ultimate loss for her. This circumstance also fits well with the Christian symbolism of the novel; although McMurphy dies for his cause, his disciples leave the hospital to live according to his teachings. They have gained the strength and the freedom to make independent choices as McMurphy proposed that they could.

Chief Bromden best exemplifies the new life McMurphy has enabled. Through the course of the novel he has regained his voice, and he makes the final step toward self-realization when he escapes the ward. By moving the control panel and escaping, Chief Bromden fulfills McMurphy’s wishes and reasserts himself as a more or less healthy member of society. He now is in a position to tell the tale of McMurphy’s liberation.

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