Chief Bromden Is The Narrator Of The Story, Which Furthers

The oppressor, or antagonist, of the story is Nurse Ratched, or the Big Nurse. Her methods of oppression, including attempts to emasculating the men in the medical ward, is the foundation of the work. The nurse uses her power to manipulate the patients as well as members of the staff in the hospital. Since she is in charge of the entire ward, she runs it with an iron fist while concealing her feminism and humanity behind a patronizing façade. As the story progresses, Nurse Ratched loses some power over the patients with the introduction of a new patient on the ward, Randle McMurphy. As McMurphy continues to fight her oppression, her façade breaks down and falls apart as she loses control.

The men stand up against Nurse Ratched for the first time when they join McMurphy by sitting in front of the blank television screen even when told they cannot watch the baseball game. For the first time, the men are independent, “watching the gray screen just like [they] could see the baseball game clear as day” while Nurse Ratched “rant[s] and scream[s]” behind them (Kesey). Imagery and descriptive words reveal Nurse Ratched’s anger, describing her voice as “an electric saw ripping through pine” (Kesey). The boys still join McMurphy despite the enormous fit the Nurse is throwing which reveals the trust and inspiration McMurphy has given to them already. Because of McMurphy, Chief Bromden transforms from a shy, lurking shadow into someone that feels the need to take action. In the beginning of the novel Billy Bibbit states that Bromden is “scared of his own sh-sh-shadow” and that he is “just a bi-big deaf Indian” (Kesey). However, Bromden is faking being unable to hear and actually narrates the entire novel from his point of view. McMurphy realizes that he can hear and builds up his confidence which will eventually inspire Chief Bromden to put McMurphy out of his misery and escape the ward himself. The trust Bromden puts into McMurphy builds their relationship which proves to be pertinent in the end. Billy Bibbit’s confidence is also

Second in a discussion of power are the women associated with the patients. The supervisor at the hospital is associated with the patients by controlling who is employed to take care of the patients. Nurse Ratched and the supervisor served in the Army together as nurses. They are still very close and have a good relationship. Because of this relationship, Nurse Ratched’s employment is secured and others won’t stand up to her for fear of losing their own jobs. Harding states “In this hospital, the doctor doesn’t hold the power of hiring and firing. That power goes to the supervisor and the supervisor is a woman, a dear old friend of Miss Ratched’s” (61). The receptionist on the ward is Nurse Ratched’s neighbor

Both Taber and the men view Nurse Ratched as a counselor of their decisions, a mother. In fact, he tells the others, “This is Miss Ratched. I chose this ward because it’s her ward. She’s, girls, just like a mother. Not that I mean age but you girls understand” (37). The way that Nurse Ratched’s ward functions is by her manipulation of the men through the use of pills and lobotomy as demonstrated on Taber. Thus, why he was dismissed, the men are set up to believe in conforming or are dehumanized enough to conform to Nurse Ratched’s authority in order to be prepared for the real world. However, Taber previously rejected her pills, “He still isn’t ready to swallow some-thing, he don’t know what is, not even just for her” (34). This action-made decision influences the progress the patients make as individuals as they follow his footsteps. The men realize they can follow their own decisions and although few are afraid of her authority some chose to rise against her along with McMurphy, “ dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching tv, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed…” This is parallel to the attitude presented by Taber, when he refused to take the pills, and ignored the Nurse’s request, making him metaphorically influential of the

In the beginning of Part III, Bromden has been reflecting on his past when he remembers a scarring experience that affected him for the rest of his life:

Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) was used to being forceful to get what she wanted. She stopped at no end to have complete oversight over the men in the ward. When the men were in the nurse’s presence they were either saying what they knew she wanted to hear or cleaning something that she ordered them to clean. They knew not to speak out against her and to not say something that would make you stand out too much. Ratched’s tactics to get them to be fit for society were normally some kind of procedure on the man

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

In the beginning of the novel, Nurse Ratched undoubtedly dominates the control of the mental hospital. Chief’s profound description of Nurse Ratched reveals he feels threatened by her. Chief insists that “she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor”(5) indicating he feels figuratively smaller than Nurse Ratched. He also details her as a stiff, calculated, and precise like a machine running the whole facility. Chief Bromden feels so impotent under her ruling, that he hallucinates a fog machine and keeps everyone satisfied under her power. The fog is a reoccurring symbol in the novel that can represent Chief’s helplessness: “One of these days I'll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself

This belief has made her incredibly sure of herself and given her confidence with the unruly patients. Chief Bromden is observing the Big Nurse and through her expression he creates this picture in his mind of a robot, which oversees every movement, thought, and word said. Since she is described as a robot, I imagine the nurse to be cold and have a metaphorical mask over her face at all times. In order for her to maintain her value of order in the hospital, she must show no sign of affection or love in her behavior. If she were to grow too attached to a patient, the smooth order of the hospital would turn erratic because the patients could do whatever they want and receive little punishment in return. I predict that the nurse must not be married or have any children, because she behaves so frigid and her actions are script-like. If she were to have a family, the BIg Nurse would sometimes show pity or kindness to the patients. The quote contains both imagery and simile, because the nurse is compared to a robot, and the narrator describes how the nurse keeps an eye on everything in the ward. The Big Nurse is like a robot because Chief Bromden believes her to control everything that is happening in the hospital, similar to a machine. In addition, the imagery in the quote depicts the nurse with wires shooting out and sending constant signals, another indication of her power over the

The way Nurse Ratched controls the inmates and punishes them using electric shock therapy symbolizes how McMurphy is trapped. This feeling of entrapment leaves McMurphy in a continuous battle to gain back his freedom from Nurse Ratched. According to McMurphy, “we must pursue freedom at any cost, even if that cost is death.” Along with gaining freedom, Chief Bromden shows characteristics of the second theme, heroism. Throughout the book Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb. This symbolizes how he feels hidden and different compared to the world he is living in. As the novel continues he becomes greedy for freedom and eventually rises up to his biggest fears when he suffocates Nurse Ratched. Once Nurse Ratched is out of the picture, Bromden breaks the window and escapes from the hospital. The idea that Bromden was able to remove the control panel and use it to break the window, symbolizes his true strength and how he can accomplish anything after running “through” his freedom.

Chief wants us to decide whether or not that he is a trustworthy narrator and wants us to decide whether or not to believe the events that occurred in the book. Chief uses symbols to describe events that happened or uses the symbols within his description. One being fog. The fog represent something bad in the ward and that it is made by nurse Rachet. The fog prevents the patients from changing anything and causing a rebellion it blocks them from seeing what is actually going on Chief used to be afraid of the fog because he was afraid if he got too comfortable and explored he would be hurt. “So I used to try not to get in too deep, for fear I’d get lost and turn up at the shock shop

It is with this paranoid rambling that the reader meets Bromden. As the first chapter progresses we witness more instances of his troubled mind and his way of describing people as part machine, part human. Nurse Ratched is the called "the Big Nurse," by Bromden. His description of her is an example of his ability to link people with machines. "She slides through the door with a gust of cold...(the) tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which." (Pg. 4 Kesey). She has the ability, in Bromden's mind, to increase her size. She, "blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big you can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load." (Pg 5 Kesey). These descriptions of humans who are made part machine, part human allow the reader to get a clearer understanding of Bromden's illness. This, I believe, is a positive aspect of the novel, however there would seem to be, at least one, negative aspect to Kesey's choice of narrators.

The Chief’s exhibit’s his pretense throughout the movie to every character but Mac. The other patients and nurses see The Chief as a dumb, deaf, and mute Indian. We as the audience know that not to be true. The Chief is quite the opposite as what others see him as, has the ability to talk and listen but chooses not to do those things because he doesn’t want to be disturbed by the other nurses in patients in the institution. The most evident scene supporting this is at the end of the movie. When The chief sees Mac after he’s been labotimized, he suffocates Mac with a pillow. He did that because he knows Mac will never be the same person as he once was and he doesn’t want the other patients to see what Mac has become. The Chief understood the importance of What Mac stood for to the other patients. He then executes Mac’s previous plan of escape by lifting up the hydrotherapy console then throwing it through the window.

The plot of the story is Bromden’s worldview is subjugated by his fear of what he calls the Combine, a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb and tries to go unnoticed, even though he is six feet seven inches tall. The all-male mental patients are divided into Acutes, who can be cured, and Chronics, who couldn’t be cured. They are controlled by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who runs the ward with harsh, mechanical precision. Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the work farm; Bromden senses that something is different about him. McMurphy swaggers into the ward and introduces himself as a gambling man. Bromden suffocates McMurphy in his bed, enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live as a symbol of Ratched’s power. Bromden, having improved his immense strength that he had thought was gone during his time in the mental ward, but escapes from the hospital by breaking through a window.

Characters like Billy Bibbit, who is too timid, with a speech impediment and Harding who is a closet homosexual and was less avert in sexuality were seen as having mental problems, and were committed to the asylum. McMurphy demonstrated the treating of these patients like normal people, helped them to become more in line with society then Nurse Ratched’s rules and group therapy meetings, or pecking party as Chief Bromden would call it. Chief Bromden was a Native American and wasn’t insane until he was institutionalized and withdrew himself from everyone else pretending he was deaf and dumb to protect himself. Ken Kesey’s message here with Chief Bromdens silence, was to portray the natives of the time having no voice in the country and to show the controlling and manipulative manner of Nurse Ratched that emasculated and de-socialised these grown men.