# data[].attributes.body
McMurphy is interred at the hospital for "diagnosis and possible treatment," reads Nurse Ratched, who continues: "Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest — for Rape."

# data[].attributes.body
A key moment would be the first time McMurphy is present in the novel walking into the ward. This character builds the book and that is just the beginning of such a powerful character. His attitude and description brings on a new feeling to the setting. Such a dominant character. Leading from his presence he purposely bothers Nurse Ratched.

I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.

We are given this brainteaser from Chief Bromden in Part I. The reader has already gotten a glimpse of Bromden’s paranoia, from the novel’s opening lines, as well as a sense that he is not seeing things from an everyday perspective. For example, Bromden describes Nurse Ratched transforming into a huge machine, and he has to be sedated when the aides try to shave him and he starts screaming “Air Raid.” Up until this point he has not addressed the reader directly; it is as though we are overhearing his private thoughts. But in this passage he asserts himself as not only the narrator but the author of the story. We learn here that he has an important story to tell, even though it is going to be difficult. The ugly and violent images that he has already shown us, he warns us, are just a taste of what is to come

# data[].attributes.body
Microcosm- a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger:

# data[].attributes.body
Epigraph:  a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

# data[].attributes.body
Epigraph : One way to think the meaning of the epigraph from the title is that there are two distinct groups presented: the geese that fly east and the geese that fly west. These groups are going in opposite directions, kind of like the patients versus Nurse Ratched and her hospital staff minions. The goose that flies over the cuckoo’s nest would be McMurphy, because he’s the one who ends up crazy (or cuckoo) in the end because of his lobotomy. Notice how one goose also escapes and is plucked from the "cuckoo’s nest," or the asylum. That one goose would be Chief. But Chief didn’t find out how to escape alone; McMurphy played the savior, teaching Chief how to escape from the ward.

Symbolism : The fog that constantly surrounds Chief and the patients on the ward is, Chief claims, "made" by Nurse Ratched. Because we know that Chief is schizophrenic and sees things that are not literally there, we recognize that the fog may be medicinally induced and is a fog of the mind rather than a literal fog. It keeps the patients from rising up in rebellion against Nurse Ratched, but it also keeps them satisfied with their lives and prevents them from ever thinking about anything real. It both helps them to live this way and prevents them from ever trying to improve their situations. As Chief says, the men hide behind the fog because it is comfortable.

# data[].attributes.body
Key moment

Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for Bibbit’s death, which McMurphy doesn’t take so well. In fact, he’s so angry that he shatters the glass over the nurse’s station for a second time. Then, in one of the biggest scenes in the novel, McMurphy tears Nurse Ratched's shirt off and reveals her breasts. Why’s this move so important? Well, McMurphy has proved that the Big Nurse is "only" a woman: in the 1960s women were considered the "weaker sex" by men, and therefore less powerful than men on the ward. McMurphy also mangles Nurse Ratched physically, choking her badly.

# data[].attributes.body
#1
“I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”In this quotation from the first section of the novel, Chief Bromden addresses the reader directly. He is telling the story of McMurphy and the hospital after his own escape, and now has the ability to look back upon these events in order to narrate them. We have already been introduced to Chief’s delusions and know that he is a psychiatric  patient, but the tone of this passage illustrates that Chief is not really insane. His ability to perceive that what he is about to relate may sound like “ranting and raving” and his admission that it is still difficult to have a “clear mind” demonstrate his self-awareness and powers of observation. Most importantly, Chief’s insistence that what he’s going to tell us is “the truth even if it didn’t happen” underscores one of the novel’s major themes about perception. Many of the things that Chief relates throughout the novel are not literally true, but nonetheless they are full of truth, whether on a symbolic or metaphorical level. Chief’s ability to identify the difference highlights his reliability as a narrator. At the same time, it brings us into the world of the novel, which requires our willingness to explore altered perceptions of reality.

Key quote #2 :

One side of the room younger patients, known as Acutes because the doctors figure them still sick enough to be fixed, practice arm wrestling and card tricks where you add and subtract and count down so many and it's a certain card. Billy Bibbit tries to learn to roll a tailor-made cigarette, and Martini walks around, discovering things under the tables and chairs. The Acutes move around a lot. They tell jokes to each other and snicker in their fists (nobody ever dares let loose and laugh, the whole staff'd be in with notebooks and a lot of questions) and they write letters with yellow, runty, chewed pencils.

[…]

Across the room from the Acutes are the culls of the Combine's product, the Chronics. Not in the hospital, these, to get fixed, but just to keep them from walking around the streets giving the product a bad name. Chronics are in for good, the staff concedes. Chronics are divided into Walkers like me, can still get around if you keep them fed, and Wheelers and Vegetables. What the Chronics are—or most of us—are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot. (1.3.2-5)

Patients identify themselves, and each other, according to whether their condition is considered curable or incurable, so they see their mental illness is their defining characteristic.
This is a common representation of society in a nutshell. Because of how they are labeled is how they get treated and looked upon.

more_vert

Epigraph: a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

Paola Ruiz

3d

Epigraph:  a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

more_vert

# data[].attributes.body
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kesey, uses the asylum as a microcosm of the world and the patients inability to get well under Big Nurse's rule to say that mothering and sheltering in society is what truly holds people back from being able to stand up for themselves.