one flew

A detailed Summary of one flew


Chief Bromden, the half-Indian narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, has been a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital for fifteen years. During this time, he has pretended to be deaf and dumb. When he was a child, three government officials came to see his father about buying the tribe's land so they could build a hydroelectric dam. Bromden, ten years old at the time, was home alone. When he tried to speak to them, they acted as if he weren't there, sowing the seeds for his withdrawal into himself. Bromden's white mother joined forces with some of the members of the tribe to pressure Bromden's father to sell the land. Bromden, like his father, is a big man who came to feel small and helpless.

In the hospital, Bromden and several other male mental patients are under the domination of Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who rules her ward with an iron hand. Like Bromden's mother, Ratched is a castrating female with a keen skill in making men ineffectual and weak. She uses subtle manipulation to keep the more docile patients under control. During the daily group meetings, she encourages the patients to attack each other in their weakest places. With the more rebellious patients, she resorts to electro-shock treatment an


When Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the Pendleton Work Camp, Bromden senses that something is different about this new patient. McMurphy waltzes into the ward and introduces himself to every patient as a gambling man with a zest for women and cards. After his first experience with the excruciating routine of the Group Meeting, McMurphy tells the patients that Nurse Ratched is a genuine "ball-cutter." The other patients tell him that there is no defying Nurse Ratched, because, in their eyes, she is an all-powerful force. True to his nature as a gambling man, McMurphy makes a bet with the other patients that he can make Ratched lose her temper.

McMurphy learns that involuntarily-committed patients cannot leave the hospital without staff approval. Therefore, he cannot leave at the end of his original six-month sentence, but only when Nurse Ratched says he can. He begins to submit to her authority. However, by this time, he has become the leader for the other patients. Their sanity, their claim to manhood lies in the balance. Cheswick, dismayed by McMurphy's surrender, commits suicide.

When the other patients sense that McMurphy is weakening, they urge him to escape. He tells them he will

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 815
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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