Chief Bromden

McMurphy is not afraid of the Combine. He looked at the Big Nurse in the eye and smiled. I think he decided then that he would play her game.

The Shock Shop is what I hear the black boys call it. I been there a lot of times before. They send you there to be fixed. The combine always finds a reason to fix you. Sometimes you are sent there for not taking medication. Some Chronics go daily. More than usual, the Big Nurse sends you there when you don't obey the rules. The rules are important to her. Every thing must go as she says. They say it is going to help, but the Acutes like Taber, Ruckly, and Ellis have gone there and it ruined them. Ellis spends his days nailed to the day room wall. It is one of the Combine's tools to fix our minds. The black boys give you something to bite down on and the wretched nurses put the head band on you and send electricity through your head. Any of the ward that gets sent there will come back different. Harding says that after you've had it once you won't ask for it again.

We are all a part of the machine. Whether you know it or want to, you are. I been sent to the ward to be fixed and put back into the machine and I’m not going to let that happen. That means being deaf and dumb for my life I will do it. I been invisible so long I am used to it. I can watch and listen. I remain outside the Combine and won’t be rewired. I been holding onto what I know for a long time and I thought to tell McMurphy. McMurphy listened, but is much bigger than I am. He fights it rather than hides from it. He don’t back down against the Big Nurse or the black boys. He isn’t afraid to stand up to them. McMurphy has made the fog clear and I wanted to help him, but I failed. They picked at his brain and rewired him. He was a bigger man than me, I couldn’t fight it, I only hid. I needed to be big and do what I knew he would do. I was sure that he wouldn’t let his name be out for the Big Nurse to use it as an example of what happens when you try to mess with the rules. I mashed a pillow into his face and shut his lids. After I was finally able to be big enough to leave. I ripped the panel from the tub room and threw it into the window. I ran for miles before stopping. I was flying and I was free.

My name is Chief Bromden. My papa was Chief Tee Ah Millatoona meaning The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain. I lived with my papa until I was a man and went to war. I been on the ward since the Second World War. After the war I was brought into the ward because they think I was paranoid. But they only know what I let them know. I like being invisible. They think I am deaf and dumb, but that is what I want them to think. I didn’t just start acting this way. They thought it themselves and I didn't correct them. They call me Chief Broom because the aides have me sweep the halls most of the time, but it don’t bother me. I get to be alone and I get to hear things. The black boys, the aides, and the Big Nurse think I don't understand and don't often hide things when around me. The Big Nurse is more often than not her cold self when by me, making sure to doll up when around the Acutes. She is a wretched woman that takes pleasure making us small. After McMurphy came she had to fight for a top spot. Not just with the patients either. The Big Nurse was battling him and not winning which is something I been waiting to see. With him around the fog begins to clear and I begin to see again. She may be able to make the others small, but she won’t be able to make me small any longer. I am strong. The Big Nurse can’t hurt me anymore. For once, I’m free.

I been here longer than the others but the Big Nurse was here before me. I been watching her over the years getting more and more skillful. She likes her ward ran like a well oiled machine, all the pieces moving the way she wants by her command. She is in control of the patients, the black boys, the other nurses, and the doctors just by glaring at them. Everything under her authority. Every wire in her network is her ran with precision and is unchanging. Any change—no matter how small— she gets put on. Every thing has a certain second in which it runs. She is the head of the ward and the ward is just another factory for the Combine to fix the wires in people like me so we can be put back into their machine. The Big Nurse knows this and with her doll smile crinkled between her ears, walks down the halls with a sick pleasure watching them get fixed up as good as new to go back into society.

Timeline of Historic and Literature based points

— The last piece of legislation President John F.

McMurphy helps me feel big. He shows me I don't have to hide.

I've learned how to be a man again. For the last 10 years I have lived in a ward where the nurses do not encourage being a big man. I spent 10 years feeling small, and stuck in fog. After I met McMurphy, I learned how to become independent again. I am a big man; I am not deaf, mute, or dumb. I am not surrounded by fog. I am not invisible. Because I can laugh, and talk, and listen, and stand up for myself, I am a man again. McMurphy taught me how to beat the system, and how to regain my size. It has been the most important thing I have learned in my life.

I now understand that I am in control. For so much of my life I have felt small and insignificant. I have lived my life in a fog; I put myself in this fog to become invisible. Invisible to the society that constantly hurt me. After meeting McMurphy, and after figuring out that I am able to laugh, and that I am able to be a man, I now realize that I am in control. Ever since breaking the window and leaving the ward, I have understood this. I have been gone a long time now. And now I understand that I will never be in a fog again. I am the one in control; I have free will. Even though the world wants me to fit into the Combine, and society wants to fix me a certain way, I am in control.

I already met the person that helped me figure out how to become big again: McMurphy… but he’s gone. If I got the chance to meet anybody would want to meet President Eisenhower. The head of the combine. I do not have any desire to do this, but now that I’ve been gone for a long time, I think I am big enough to handle it. I would want him to tell me why he allowed the Combine to take our land. I would want him to see Nurse Ratched, and see how she is trying to fix the flaws of the Acutes and ignoring the rest. Maybe like it was on the fishing trip. Just two men able to talk and laugh, because when I laugh I feel like I am in control.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.