One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Character Analysis

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Every person has a right to a different way of mental processes, a right to express their beliefs in ways they believe is morally and ethically right; however, we see in novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, that the patients of the mental ward are stripped of their rights and beliefs and labeled as outcast and troublemaker. Kesey tells the story about how individuals who were locked up in an asylum because they were different, grow and conquer the authoritarian figure, Nurse Ratchet, through the eyes and ears of the narrator, Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden, or “Chief Broom”, is the son of Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, which means “the pine that stands the tallest on the mountain, and a white woman …show more content…
Chief Bromden is often surrounded by a hallucinating fog which is a result from his medicated state and his desire to hide from those who control him. Moreover, we see that Chief Bromden is the key to helping us understand the symbols of the metal hospital through his descriptions of the oppressed and the oppressors, in and out of his medicated state. For example, he notices that there is a higher power above Nurse Ratchet, which symbolizes society, whom he calls the “Combine”. When he speaks to McMurphy for the very first time, he says “they (the Combine) start as quick as they see you’re gonna be big and go to working and installing their filthy machinery when you’re little, and keep on and one and on till you’re fixed!” This shows that he believes that the Combine is like a big machine and while everyone is a part of that machine, those in the mental ward are the broken pieces that are either thrown away or sent to be fixed. This shows that Chief Bromden is actually one of the most dangerous patience in the ward because he has the ability to be “cagey” and …show more content…
He grows in confidence through McMurphy and even risks his own safety and the secret of him not being deaf and mute by protecting and supporting McMurphy multiple times. After realizing that he is not a helpless, weak victim, he begins to “grow taller” and larger and when MrMurphy begins to fight with the black aides, he picks the one hanging on McMurphy’s back and “[throws] him in the shower” (275). We see that as he grows in confidence, his strength that was once stripped from him, returns and the black aid who once caused him to shrink in fear, is only a being “full of tubes” because he “didn’t weight more’n ten or fifteen