One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey's classic novel of the 1960's details the life within a mental institution from the point of view of a half-Indian patient called Chief Bromden. Most of the story revolves around the competition for power between Big Nurse and Randle Patrick McMurphy, a lustful, brawling, life-loving inmate who comes into the ward at the beginning of the story. McMurphy is highly intelligent and employs many tactics to strengthen the patients against the powerful hospital bureaucracy. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the transformation that McMurphy effects in the ward to empower the weak against the strong, particularly in the case of patient Bromden.

Bromden has pretended for years that he cannot speak or hear. This adaptive behavior allows him to observe all the hospital happenings from the vantage point of a harmless individual who simply pushes a broom when told. He is extremely astute in his assessments of individuals, their true motives, and their effects upon one another, although his way of explaining it reflects a somewhat distorted reality. He views life as a big machine and all the people playing their mechanical parts within a larger whole.

Bromden is very surprised by McMurphy's behavior. He seems not to know how to act like a patient. He talks loud. He sounds big, and he talks down to the hospital employees (p. 10). He successfully eludes the aides who wish to use a rectal thermometer on him, and his handshake upo

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son and any rule. One of his most skillful moves is to remain so sensitive to the emotional needs of the patients that he sets up one bet so that he can lose on purpose in order for the others to win back some of their IOU's. He sensed a growing resentment that all their money was going to him, so he intuitively picked a time to even the score a bit and let the others win when he said he could lift an impossibly heavy, large, metal panel. His uncanny sense of timing quickly returned him to the good graces of his constituents. Another skillful maneuver was the engagement of hospital staff into personally rewarding relationships with him. This was possible to do because the staff was also disgruntled with the total domination of Big Nurse but never had the courage to resist. McMurphy determines that Dr. Spivey is frustrated with his lack of power and sets out to arrange circumstances so that his true power as the facility doctor can be expressed more often. Dr. Spivey agrees to sanction the use of a second day room for games (gambling) away from the constant deafening music that is piped into the first day room. Dr. Spivey also becomes enthusiastic about a carnival for the ward and near the end of the story an outrageous fis

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