Reviewed by Fiona

Summary of one flew over the cuckoos’ nest

Chief Bromden is an inmate in a mental hospital. He’s an Indian and part of the „Chronicles“ because he has been there for some years. There are also some „Acutes“ and some „Gherkin“ (they are called gherkin because they only vegetate).

The leader of the whole ward is called Big Nurse. She guides her patients in a strict way, and she covers this behaviour under a mask of comprehension and goodness. So, all the patients accept the „Big Nurse“.

The Indian who tells the story imagines that there is a kind of fog, in which he can hide and not be discovered by the others.

No one takes any notice of him and no one realises that he can’t speak nor hear. In the book, different from the movie, we get to know that he only simulates his deaf and dumbness already at the beginning. He has some privileges because of this.

He’s called Chief Broom because he helps cleaning the ward. While he’s cleaning he can listen to the discussions between the doctors and other members of the staff.

One day Mc Murphy, a strong Irishman with red hair, who only comes to the mental hospital to have a nicer stay than in prison, brings disorder to the ward.

He makes it clear from the beginning that he doesn’t want to accept the rules of the establishment. He immediately gets into trouble with the „Big Nurse“, Miss Ratched, and he likes to provoke her.

He changes everything on the ward. For example he changes the rules, so that the men can play basketball and play cards.

During the daily discussion, which Miss Ratched likes to lead, Murphy motivates the intimidated inmates to be more self-confident.

After some time he realises that the Chief just pretends to be deaf and dumb, and they become friends. Murphy helps the Chief to get out of his self-inflicted fog, encouraging him to get stronger and realise his potential.

Murphy organises an excursion on a boat and invites everybody to take part. The men become happier and get more self-confident. The „Big Nurse“ is angry and tries to make his life hell, but Murphy doesn’t make any compromises and continues being a rebel.

Because of the repeated troubles she has with Murphy, Big Nurse sends Murphy to a ward where he gets electroshock treatment. But Murphy returns and doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

During the daily discussions he abstains more and more from criticising the “Big Nurse”, but he still encourages the men to think about their personal qualities. Most of them came to the hospital voluntarily, because they didn’t stand life outside the protecting walls of the institution. And Murphy gives them back their courage.

The men explain to Murphy that he can change anything in this hospital by rebelling. They convince him to try an escape. But this ends in chaos and at the end Murphy sleeps late on the day of his escape and misses the opportunity.

Miss Ratched can finally convince the doctors to send Murphy to undergo lobotomy.

After this operation Murphy isn’t what he was. He has become a “gherkin” himself. So the Chief kills him because he doesn’t want Murphy to have to live that way.

The Chief succeeds in his own escape, and after it he tells us this story.

The message of the book

The topic of Ken Kesey’ s book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” isn’t the exposure of the daily routine in a mental hospital, as we would think at first. It’s rather about the fight of an individual against a totalitarian system. It shows us how people who are different are treated by inhuman regulations. It’s a system with rules and regulations which prohibit any individual way of life and which only admits conformist models of behaviour.

The book encourages the reader, not to try to be as the system wants them to be. It urges them to be who they really are, to stand up for themselves and to stand by their friends.

The mental hospital in the novel serves as a repair-shop of the society and as bizarrely and grotesquely Bromden describes it, as effective it seems to be for the society.

People who are different often scare us, because they can’t and don’t want to accept the rules of society.

The author shows us also how different the definition of what is normal or abnormal can be. People who are represented as crazy in the novel seem to be quite OK when you are reading the book.

The author doesn’t want to say that every person who’s different has to go to a mental hospital. He wants to show us how hard a person has to fight against intolerance. The way Bromden describes the mental hospital as a machine, this is exactly what Kesey wants to criticize. He describes all this as machinery, which does everything that is demanded by society. It makes people conform to the given social standards while it pretends to cure them.

It’s not only the hospital which works like a piece of machinery, it’s the whole of society. And if there’s a broken piece in the machinery, it has to be repaired immediately.

The most important characters in the novel

Mc Murphy:

He’s an Irishman with curly orange hair. He’s sunburned and has tattoos on his shoulder. Murphy is a 35 year old man. He has never been married. I think this is because he loves women too much. Murphy is already known by the police because he has often had fights and has often been arrested for some offences. His last arrest was for the seduction of a 15 year old girl. Murphy likes to live and enjoy his life. He has always wanted to win in every situation. He isn’t ready to accept rules. He’s completely different from the normal standards of society. In the novel he’s a rebel who fights against the rules of societies.

He’s arrested and sent to hospital but he’s like a man at liberty. It seems to be paradox but his freedom is in his soul and in his spirit, as well as in his character. Nothing and no one can destroy this liberty, not even the hospital.

Nurse Ratched

She’s the Big Nurse in the mental hospital. She leads the ward in a strict way. She covers her brutal way by pretending to be understanding and good. She soon realises that the new patient, Mc Murphy, is a kind of danger for her. He doesn’t accept her and her treatments.

Ratched stands for no sex, no pleasure, no sexuality, for the intention of dominating other people’s lives and deaths, by her way of leading her patients. She has a plan and this plan is her definition of “normality”. She wants to create a product called ‘human being’.

Chief Bromden

He’s a half- Indian man. He’s the narrator of the story of Mc Murphy. He’s a big and strong man. He seems to be deaf and dumb, but it’s only a deception. He isn’t really deaf nor dumb. Murphy early realises that Bromden can hear and speak. They become friends and they seem to understand each other. Bromden also sees his father in Murphy’s personality.

When he sees Murphy as a ruined man after the lobotomy, he has to kill him because he can’t stand Murphy to be a dead man who is still alive. So he kills him and tells the story of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

A little insight into the book

This short text is situated at the beginning of the novel (page 24, line 2 until 11) and I chose it because it shows us “Murphy, the rebel” – how he fights against the system’s rules and how he wants to live as an individual.

“…everything in its own good time, Mr McMurry. I’m sorry to interrupt you and Mr Bromden, but you do understand: everyone … must follow the rules.”

He tips his head back and gives that wink that she isn’t fooling him any more than I did, that he’s onto her. He looks up at her with one eye for a minute.

“Ya know, ma’am,” he says, “ya know – that is the ex-act thing somebody always tells me about the rules …”

He grins. They both smile back and forth at each other, sizing each other up.

“… just when they figure I’m about to do the dead opposite.”

Then he lets go my hand.

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