One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Essay by anamartinezHigh School, 12th gradeA+, February 2014

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

It all starts one morning when Chief Bromden, also known as Chief Broom, a confused half Indian man who claims to be deaf and dumb so everybody ignores him. Bromden regularly suffers from hallucinations. The institution he is placed in is controlled and managed by Nurse Ratched, also known as the Big Nurse, a cold and strict woman who was a former Army nurse. She maintains order by having absolute control over everyone including the patients. She uses manipulation to keep the men in line. Whenever they become violent, she sends them into a special treatment. The Big Nurse is close to being the head of the hospital. Therefore, it is almost impossible for her to get fired. Until one afternoon, Randall Patrick McMurphy arrives to the ward. He is a professional gambler who had just left a farm work at Pendleton as part of his sentence for rape.

Although, he is clearly lucid at the hospital only to avoid all the work details. Others on the ward include Dale Harding, the president of the patient's council, and Billy Bibbit, a thirty year old who seems young. Nurse Ratched immediately assures that McMurphy is a manipulator. While Nurse Ratched was examining Harding's difficulties with his wife, McMurphy was confessing to everyone he was a master at gambling, who got his way into the hospital in an attempt to get an easier jail sentence. He explained his arrest for rape, declaring that the girl was of legal age. Afterward, McMurphy confronts Harding about the way the patients obey everything Ratched says. Harding admits that everyone even Dr. Spivey, the main doctor of the ward, is frightened by the Big Nurse. Things aren't exactly the way McMurphy thought they would be. However, he persuades the men to strike against the...