Why Does Chief Bromden Talk Again

1962 novel by Ken Kesey

1 Flew Over the Cuckoo'south Nest

Showtime edition
Author	Ken Kesey
Comprehend artist	Paul Bacon[1]
Country	U.s.
Linguistic communication	English
Genres	Tragedy
Publisher	Viking Press & Signet Books
Publication appointment	February 1, 1962[2]
Pages	320
OCLC	37505041

1 Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel by Ken Kesey published in 1962. Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves every bit a study of institutional processes and the human heed, including a critique of psychiatry^[3] and a tribute to individualistic principles.^[4] It was adapted into the Broadway (and subsequently off-Broadway) play I Flew Over the Cuckoo'due south Nest by Dale Wasserman in 1963. Bo Goldman adapted the novel into a 1975 picture of the same proper noun directed by Miloš Forman, which won five Academy Awards.

Time magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-linguistic communication Novels from 1923 to 2005" listing.^[5] In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK'south 200 "best-loved novels."^[6]

Plot [edit]

The book is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a gigantic yet docile half-Native American patient at a psychiatric infirmary, who presents himself equally deafened and mute. Bromden'southward tale focuses mainly on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, who faked insanity to serve his sentence for battery and gambling in the hospital rather than at a prison work subcontract. The head administrative nurse, Nurse Ratched, rules the ward with accented potency and little medical oversight. She is assisted by her iii day-shift orderlies and her assistant doctors and nurses.

McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines of the ward, leading to countless power struggles between the inmate and the nurse. He runs a bill of fare table, captains the ward's basketball team, comments on Nurse Ratched's figure, incites the other patients to conduct a vote nearly watching the World Series on television, and organizes a deep-ocean fishing trip wherein the patients were going to exist "supervised" by prostitutes. After claiming to be able, and afterwards failing, to lift a heavy control panel in the defunct hydrotherapy room (referred to every bit the "tub room"), his response—"But at least I tried"—gives the men incentive to try to stand up for themselves, instead of allowing Nurse Ratched to take control of every aspect of their lives. The Chief opens up to McMurphy, revealing late i night that he can speak and hear. A fierce disturbance after the line-fishing trip results in McMurphy and the Chief beingness sent for electroshock therapy sessions, but such penalisation does nada to curb McMurphy'south rambunctious behavior.

One nighttime, later bribing the night orderly, McMurphy smuggles two prostitute girlfriends with liquor onto the ward and breaks into the pharmacy for codeine coughing syrup and unnamed psychiatric medications. McMurphy, having noticed on the angling trip that Baton Bibbit—a timid, adolescent patient with a stutter and piddling experience with women—had a beat out on the prostitute named Candy, primarily arranged this break-in then that Billy could lose his virginity and, to a slightly bottom extent and then that McMurphy and other patients could throw an unsanctioned political party. Although McMurphy agrees before the cease of the nighttime to a programme involving his escaping before the morning time shift starts, he and the other patients instead autumn comatose without cleaning upward the mess of the group'due south antics, and the morning staff discovers the ward in complete disarray. Nurse Ratched finds Baton and the prostitute in each other's arms, partially dressed, and admonishes him. Billy asserts himself for the first fourth dimension, answering Nurse Ratched without stuttering. Ratched calmly threatens to tell Billy's female parent what she has seen. Billy has an emotional breakdown, regressing immediately back to a adolescent state, and, upon being left alone in the dr.'south part, takes his life by cutting his own throat. Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for the loss of Billy'due south life. Enraged at what she has washed to Baton, McMurphy attacks Ratched by ripping her shirt open and attempting to strangle her to death. McMurphy is physically restrained and moved to the Disturbed ward.

Nurse Ratched misses a week of work due to her injuries, during which time many of the patients either transfer to other wards or check out of the hospital forever. When she returns, she cannot speak and is thus deprived of her most potent tool to keep the men in line. With Bromden, Martini, and Scanlon the simply patients who attended the gunkhole trip left on the ward, McMurphy is brought back in. He has received a lobotomy, and is now in a vegetative state, rendering him silent and motionless. The Main smothers McMurphy with a pillow during the night in an human action of mercy earlier lifting the tub room control panel that McMurphy could not lift earlier, throwing it through a window and escaping the hospital.

Background [edit]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written in 1959 and published in 1962 in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement^[7] and deep changes to the way psychology and psychiatry were being approached in America. The 1960s began the controversial movement towards deinstitutionalization,^{[viii] [9]} an human action that would accept affected the characters in Kesey'due south novel. The novel is a directly production of Kesey's fourth dimension working the graveyard shift as an orderly at a mental wellness facility in Menlo Park, California.^[ten] Non but did he speak to the patients and witness the workings of the establishment, he also voluntarily took psychoactive drugs, including mescaline and LSD, as part of Project MKUltra.^[eleven] In addition to his work with Projection MKUltra, Kesey took LSD recreationally; advocating for drug apply every bit a path to private freedom.^[12]

The novel constantly refers to dissimilar authorities that control individuals through subtle and coercive methods. The novel's narrator, the Chief, combines these authorities in his mind, calling them "The Combine" in reference to the mechanistic way they manipulate and process individuals. The authorization of The Combine is most often personified in the character of Nurse Ratched who controls the inhabitants of the novel'due south mental ward through a combination of rewards and subtle shame.^[13] Although she does not usually resort to conventionally harsh discipline, her deportment are portrayed as more insidious than those of a conventional prison administrator. This is because the subtlety of her actions prevents her prisoners from understanding they are existence controlled at all. The Chief likewise sees the Combine in the damming of the wild Columbia River at Celilo Falls, where his Native American ancestors hunted, and in the broader conformity of mail-war American consumer society. The novel's critique of the mental ward as an instrument of oppression comparable to the prison mirrored many of the claims that French intellectual Michel Foucault was making at the same time. Similarly, Foucault argued that invisible forms of subject field oppressed individuals on a broad societal scale, encouraging them to censor aspects of themselves and their actions. The novel also criticizes the emasculation of men in society, particularly in the character of Billy Bibbit, the stuttering Acute patient who is domineered past both Nurse Ratched and his mother.

Title [edit]

The title of the book is a line from a plant nursery rhyme:

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew Due east
1 flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest

Master Bromden's grandmother sang a version of this song to him when he was a child, a fact revealed in the story when the Chief received still some other ECT treatment later on he assisted McMurphy with defending George, a patient existence abused by the ward's aides.

Main characters [edit]

• Randle McMurphy: A gratuitous-spirited, rebellious con human being, sent to the hospital from a prison work subcontract. He is guilty of battery and gambling. He had also been charged with — but never bedevilled of, due to the girl in question not wishing to testify so as not to implicate herself and her willingness to participate — statutory rape. McMurphy is transferred from a prison work subcontract to the hospital, thinking it will exist an piece of cake manner to serve out his judgement in condolement. In the end, McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched, inadvertently sacrificing his freedom and his health in substitution for freeing the previously shackled spirits of the cowed patients on the ward.
• Chief Bromden: The novel's half-Native American narrator has been in the mental hospital since the end of World War II. Bromden is presumed by staff and patients akin to be deafened and mute, and through this guise he becomes privy to many of the ward's dirtiest secrets.^[13] As a young man, the Chief was a high school football game star, a college student, and a war hero. After seeing his father, a Native American chieftain, humiliated at the hands of the U.S. government and his white wife, Chief Bromden descends into clinical low and begins hallucinating. Soon he is diagnosed with schizophrenia. He believes society is controlled by a large, mechanized system which he calls "The Combine."

Staff [edit]

• Nurse Ratched (also known as "Big Nurse"): The tyrannical caput nurse of the mental institution, who exercises most-total control over those in her care, including her subordinates. She volition not hesitate to restrict her patients' admission to medication, amenities, and basic human necessities if it suits her manipulative whims. Her favorite informant is the timid Billy Bibbit, whom she coerces into divulging the unit'due south secrets past threatening to mutter near him to his mother. McMurphy's fun-loving, rebellious presence in Ratched's institution is a abiding annoyance, as neither threats nor penalisation nor shock therapy volition stop him or the patients under his sway. Somewhen, after McMurphy about chokes her to decease in a fit of rage, Nurse Ratched has him lobotomized. Notwithstanding, the damage has already been washed, and McMurphy's attack leaves her virtually unable to speak, which renders her unable to intimidate her patients, subordinates and superiors.
• The "Blackness Boys" Washington, Williams, and Warren: Three black men who piece of work as aides in the ward. Williams is a dwarf, his growth supposedly "stunted after witnessing his mother being raped by white men." The Principal says Nurse Ratched hired them for their sadistic nature.
• Geever: the swing shift adjutant.
• Dr. John Spivey: The ward doctor. Nurse Ratched drove off other doctors, simply she kept Spivey considering he ever did every bit he was told. Harding suggests that the nurse could threaten to expose him as a drug addict if he stood up to her. McMurphy's rebellion inspires him to stand up to Nurse Ratched.
• Nurse Pilbow: The young night nurse whose face, neck, and chest are stained with a profound birthmark. A devout Catholic who fears sinning, she blames the patients for infecting her with their evil and takes it out on them.
• Mr. Turkle: An elderly African American adjutant who works the late shift in the ward. He agrees to permit McMurphy host a party and sneak in prostitutes one night.
• The Japanese Nurse: The nurse in charge of the upstairs disturbed ward, for violent and unmanageable patients. She is kind and openly opposes Nurse Ratched'south methods.

Acutes [edit]

The acutes are patients who officials believe tin still exist cured. With few exceptions, they are at that place voluntarily, a fact that angers McMurphy when he first learns of it, then afterward causes him to feel further pity for the patients, thus further inspiring him to prove to them they can still exist strong despite their seeming willingness to exist weak.

• Billy Bibbit: A nervous, shy, and boyish patient with an farthermost speech impediment, Billy cuts and burns himself, and has attempted suicide numerous times. Billy has a fear of women, especially those with authority such as his mother. To alleviate this, McMurphy sneaks a prostitute into the ward so Billy tin lose his virginity. The adjacent forenoon, Nurse Ratched threatens to tell his mother; fearing the loss of his mother'southward love, Billy has an emotional breakdown and commits suicide past cutting his own pharynx.
• Dale Harding: The unofficial leader of the patients earlier McMurphy arrives, he is an intelligent, adept-looking man who is ashamed of his repressed homosexuality. Harding's beautiful nonetheless malcontent wife is a source of shame for him.
• George Sorensen: A man with germaphobia, he spends his days washing his hands in the ward's drinking fountain. McMurphy manages to persuade him to lead a angling trek for the patients later discovering he had captained a PT gunkhole during World War 2. Afterward, the iii blackness men maliciously forcibly delouse him, cruelly knowing the mental anguish this volition cause him.
• Charlie Cheswick: A loud-mouthed patient who always demands changes in the ward, but never has the backbone to run across anything through. He finds a friend in McMurphy, who is able to voice his opinions for him. At i point McMurphy decides to fall in line when he learns his stay in the ward is indefinite and his release is solely determined by the Big Nurse. As a result, Cheswick drowns himself in the ward's swimming puddle when he decides he himself will never escape the relentless Large Nurse.
• Martini: A patient who has severe hallucinations.
• Scanlon: A patient obsessed with explosives and devastation. He is the simply other not-vegetative patient confined to the ward by strength aside from McMurphy and Bromden; the rest tin can leave at whatsoever time.
• Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson: Ii epileptic patients. Sefelt refuses to accept his anti-seizure medication, every bit it makes his teeth fall out and as such makes him self-conscious over his appearance. Fredrickson takes Sefelt'due south medication besides every bit his ain considering he is terrified of the seizures, and loses teeth due to the resulting overdosage.
• Max Taber: An unruly patient who was released before McMurphy arrived. The Chief later describes how, later on he questioned what was in his medication, Nurse Ratched had him "fixed."

Chronics [edit]

The chronics are patients who volition never be cured. Many of the chronics are elderly and/or in vegetative states.

• Ruckly: A hell-raising patient who challenged the rules until the Big Nurse authorized his lobotomy. After the lobotomy, he sits and stares at a picture of his wife, and occasionally screams profanities.
• Ellis: Ellis was put in a vegetative state by electroshock therapy. He stands against the wall in a disturbing messianic position with arms outstretched.
• Pete Bancini: Bancini had encephalon damage at birth but managed to hold down elementary jobs, such every bit a switch operator on a lightly used railroad branch line, until the switches were automated and he lost his job, after which he was institutionalized. The Chief remembers how one time, and only once, he lashed out violently against the aides, telling the other patients that he was a living miscarriage, born expressionless.
• Rawler: A patient on the Disturbed ward, above the main ward, who says aught but "loo, loo, loo!" all day and tries to stitch the walls. One night, Rawler castrates himself while sitting on the toilet and bleeds to death before anyone realizes what he has done.
• Onetime Blastic: An old patient who is in a vegetative state. The start night McMurphy is in the ward, Bromden dreams Blastic is hung by his heel and sliced open, spilling his rusty visceral matter. The next morning time, Bromden learns Blastic died during the dark.
• The Lifeguard: An ex-professional football role player, he all the same has the cleat marks on his forehead from the injury that scrambled his brains. He explains to McMurphy, different prison house, patients are kept in the hospital as long as the staff desires. It is this conversation that causes McMurphy to autumn in line for a time.
• Colonel Matterson: The oldest patient in the ward, he has severe senile dementia and cannot move without a wheelchair. He is a veteran of Globe War I, and spends his days "explaining" objects through metaphor.

Other characters [edit]

• Processed: The prostitute McMurphy brings on the fishing trip. Billy Bibbit has a beat on her and McMurphy arranges a night for Candy to have sex with him.
• Sandra: Another prostitute and friend of Processed and McMurphy. She and Sefelt slumber together on the nighttime she and Candy are sneaked into the ward late i night. Sefelt has a seizure while they are fornicating.
• Vera Harding: Dale Harding's wife. Described as an attractive lady with very large breasts. She is a master cause of concern for Dale, who oft worries about her allegiance. She reveals to the patients that actually Dale himself has affairs - with other men.

Controversy [edit]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of America's nearly challenged and banned novels.

• 1974: Five residents of Strongsville, Ohio sued the local Board of Education to remove the novel from classrooms. They deemed the volume "pornographic" and said it "glorifies criminal activity, has a tendency to corrupt juveniles, and contains descriptions of bestiality, bizarre violence, and torture, dismemberment, death, and human emptying".
• 1975: Randolph, New York and Alton, Oklahoma removed the book from all of their public schools.
• 1977: Schools in Westport, Maine removed it from required reading lists.
• 1978: Freemont High School in St. Anthony, Idaho banned it and fired the teacher who assigned information technology.
• 1982: Merrimack, New Hampshire High School challenged it.
• 1986: Aberdeen Washington Loftier school challenged it in Honors English classes.
• 2000: Placentia Unified School Commune (Yorba Linda, California) challenged it. Parents said the teachers could "choose the all-time books, merely they keep choosing this garbage over and over again".^[xiv]

Adaptations [edit]

The novel was adapted into a 1963 play, starring Kirk Douglas (who purchased the rights to produce it for the stage and motility pictures) as McMurphy and Gene Wilder equally Billy Bibbit. A picture show adaptation, starring Jack Nicholson and co-produced by Michael Douglas, was released in 1975. The motion-picture show won five Academy Awards.

The characters of Nurse Ratched and Chief Bromden announced every bit recurring characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time, where they are portrayed by Ingrid Torrance and Peter Marcin.

Netflix and Ryan Murphy produced a prequel series titled Ratched which follows Sarah Paulson as a younger version of Nurse Ratched.^[xv] The offset of the 2-season social club was released on September 18, 2020.

Editions [edit]

Print

• ISBN 0-606-04239-three (prebound, 1962)
• ISBN 0-451-16396-6 (mass market paperback, 1963)
• ISBN 0-fourteen-004312-8 (paperback, 1977, reprint)
• ISBN 0-xiv-023601-v (hardcover, 1996)
• ISBN 1-55651-685-1 (paperback, 1988)
• ISBN 0-453-00815-i (audio cassette, 1993, abridged)
• ISBN 0-fourteen-028334-X (paperback, 1999)
• ISBN 0-8220-7154-one (east-book, 1999)
• ISBN 0-7645-8662-9 (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 0-7910-6339-nine (library bounden, 2001)
• ISBN 0-14-118122-ii (paperback, 2002)
• ISBN 0-7910-7118-9 (paperback)
• ISBN 0-330-23564-viii (paperback)
• ISBN 0-14-118788-3 (paperback, 2005)
• ISBN 0-14-303690-4 (hardcover, 2005)
• ISBN 0-329-06383-9 (hardcover)
• ISBN 978-0-451-16396-7 (softcover)
• ISBN 978-1-59887-052-7 (audio CD, 2006, abridged/read past Kesey; includes Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview with writer)
• ISBN 978-0-670-02323-3 (hardcover, 2012)
• ISBN 978-0-143-12951-6 (softcover, 2016)
• Photos of the first edition One Flew Over the Cuckoo'due south Nest

Audiobooks

• 1998: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (read past Tom Parker), Blackstone Audio, ISBN 978-0786112784
• 2007 (Audible): Ane Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (read past the author)
• 2012 (Audible): One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (read by John C. Reilly)

See also [edit]

• Rosenhan experiment
• Sluggish schizophrenia
• Political abuse of psychiatry
• Anti-psychiatry
• Matriarchy

References [edit]

1. ^ "The Covers of Paul Salary". tumblr.com. Archived from the original on August ane, 2015. Retrieved June fifteen, 2015.
2. ^ Strodder, Chris (2007). The Encyclopedia of Sixties Cool. Santa Monica Press. p. 26. ISBN9781595809865.
3. ^ "We Are Still Flying Over the Cuckoo'south Nest". Psychiatric Times. Vol 31 No 7. 31 (7). July 2014. Retrieved October ix, 2020.
4. ^ "An Analysis of Individualism in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'".
5. ^ "Time 100 Best English-linguistic communication Novels from 1923 to 2005". Time. Oct 16, 2005. Archived from the original on October 19, 2005.
6. ^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. Apr 2003, Retrieved August 23, 2017
7. ^ "America's Civil Rights Timeline". International Civil Rights Centre & Museum. 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
8. ^ Stroman, Duane (2003). The Disability Rights Motility: From Deinstitutionalization to Self-determination. University Press of America.
9. ^ Scherl, D.J.; Macht, L.B. (September 1979). "Deinstitutionalization in the absenteeism of consensus". Infirmary and Community Psychiatry. 30 (9): 599–604. doi:x.1176/ps.30.nine.599. PMID 223959.
10. ^ Mitchell & Snyder, p. 174 harvnb mistake: no target: CITEREFMitchellSnyder (aid)
11. ^ Huffman, Bennett (May 17, 2002). "Ken Kesey (1935–2001)". The Literary Encyclopedia . Retrieved March 10, 2009.
12. ^ "Ken Kesey Biography". Oregon History Project. 2015. Retrieved June fifteen, 2015.
13. ^ ^{a b} "Life in a Loony Bin". Fourth dimension. Feb 16, 1962. Archived from the original on Oct 18, 2007. Retrieved March 10, 2009.
14. ^ "Banned & Challenged Classics". American Library Association. 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
15. ^ Goldberg, Lesley (September 6, 2017). "'I Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' Prequel From Ryan Murphy Scores 2-Season Order at Netflix". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved September 6, 2017.

Further reading [edit]

• Horst, L. (1996). Bitches, Twitches, and Eunuchs: Sex Role Failure and Extravaganza in Pratt, J, Ane Flew Over the Cuckoo'southward Nest: Text and Criticism. Penguin Books. ^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Porter, 1000. Chiliad. (1989). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ascent to Heroism. Boston: Twayne. ^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Safer, E. (1988). The Contemporary American Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Bly, Nellie (1887). Ten Days in a Mad-Business firm. ^{[ ISBN missing ]}

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Bromden

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