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Chief Bromden In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's

1444 Words6 Pages

When our main protagonist, Chief Bromden is first introduced, he starts out in the fog; however, when McMurphy arrives, everything changes: “They haven’t really fogged the place full force all day today, not since McMurphy came in” (Kesey 75). The fog keeps everybody content or at least unwilling to stand up against the system, but McMurphy inspires them all to stand up for themselves. The fog is symbolic of the waste that our mechanized society has created, and how it pollutes our ability to live naturally: the combine. The fog that Bromden experiences is a representation of the lack of transparency by the Combine of the ward. The clearing of the fog occurs with McMurphy's rebellion and represents the newfound clarity that Bromden and the other patients acquire when McMurphy is around. Someone needs to rise up against the fog machine; however, everyone in the ward up until McMurphy's arrival has conformed to the rules and commands. After McMurphy arrives, Chief Bromden notices that his laughter is the first genuine laughter he has heard in years. The longer McMurphy is on the ward, the more the men begin to laugh. Laughter becomes a symbol and an active representation of the men’s freedom, even though they are basically imprisoned by the ward and by society. They can …show more content…

McMurphy leads Bromden out of the fog, but she lures him back in. The fog represents the state of mind that Ratched imposes on the patients with her strict, mind-numbing routines and humiliating treatment. Under the influence of the fog, the patients have no control over their bodies, they can not move or think clearly, and their vision is blurred: “You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself” (Kesey 103). These examples prove that Ratched is in complete

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Mack won and broke Nurse Ratched’s power one last time. Chief Bromden uses ‘fog’ as his escape from fear in the Cuckoo Nest. It was his escape from reality while he was in the military and it stuck with him for almost his entire time at the ward. “Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now, as bad as it is, you can slip back in and feel

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McMurphy is breaking down Bromden’s walls and shedding a light on his courage. The final notion that exhibited Bromden’s change from zero to hero was when he joined in and helped McMurphy fight the staff member for George. Like the other patients, he could have easily chosen to stand back and just wait for it to unfold, but instead decided to take action when he knew his fellow patient was uncomfortable. It landed him time in the Disturbed Ward and electroshock therapy. This action of standing up for the greater good displays Bromden’s heroic character, brought about by

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This line, spoken by Bromden, highlights the severe effects that the lobotomy had on McMurphy. Comparing him to a dummy helps the reader visualize the loss of spirit in McMurphy. Everything he stood for disappeared. His lobotomy, a procedure that severs the frontal lobe of the brain, erased McMurphy altogether leaving only a body behind. This is why the other patients

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With this in mind, she does not hesitate to exercise her power on the psych ward. Furthermore, Kesey characterizes Nurse Ratched as the antithesis to Randle McMurphy. In the Chief’s mind, he can “smell the machinery inside the way that you smell a motor” (Kesey 4). This statement further shows how the people of the asylum see her as a regent and connects her to the Combine. Nurse Ratched controls every aspect of the patients’ daily lives.

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Over the years, the enforcing of gun control laws has become a contentious issue that has gathered diverse opinions on whether or not this is an efficient policy that will decrease gun violence. This is exactly what proposition 63 strives to do, regulate the sales of ammunition and the people that can purchase it and require an extensive background for those who wish to obtain a firearm. The overall goal of this proposition is to attempt to reduce gun brutality in the United States, in order to create a safer community. If proposition 63 passes then the requirements to own a firearm or sale ammunition will become even stricter. However, it is essential to evaluate the economic impact this proposition will bring about.

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970 Words | 4 Pages

(Kesey 123). Bromden realized that McMurphy was trying to teach them that in order to survive, the patients needed to step out of their comfort zones and be free from safety. McMurphy realized that the fog was like a security blanket to Bromden and that he needed to get rid of it in order to gain his confidence back. He wanted Bromden to realize that he was more than just a patient in a mental institution. He wanted him to realize that his life had purpose.

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1736 Words | 7 Pages

McMurphy successfully tears away not just Ratched’s clothes, but also any shred of sway and fear she had over the patients; her control effectively gone: “. . . he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swinging around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again” (305). . McMurphy’s fate is sealed by this action however, and is taken away to receive a lobotomy. Many of the patients leave the ward as a result.

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1144 Words | 5 Pages

During one of his more lucid states while awake in the middle of the night, Bromden recounts, “I know how they work it, the fog machine. We had a whole platoon used to operate fog machines overseas. Whenever intelligence figured there might be a bombing attack, or if the generals had something secret they wanted to pull...they fogged the field” (Kesey 130). Then after a detailed explanation of his past life in the battlefield, Bromden is thinking about the fog machine and states, “Then I discovered something: I don’t have to end up at that door if I stay still when the fog comes over me and just keep quiet.

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1005 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the narrator, Chief Bromden, has a slight mystery surrounding him, like several of the other characters. That is, what mental illness is Chief in the ward for exactly? The answer might seem like the obvious post traumatic stress disorder, but is it really? While he does have the necessary traumatic experience for PTSD to occur, he doesn’t necessarily show all the symptoms. In fact he shows just as many symptoms for depersonalization/derealization disorder and schizophrenia as he does PTSD.

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512 Words | 3 Pages

Overall, this novel connected to the ever-prominent aspect of mental health, and is the center of the story’s development. However, there were many aspects within the novel that went without explanation with the topic of mental health. On page fourteen of the novel, the narrator, Chief Bromden, explains that there was a constant fog that was present within the wards with, “When the fog clears to where I can see, I’m sitting in the day room. They didn’t take me to the Shock Shop this time.” While “fogging” as Bromden explains in the novel never occurred in mental hospitals at any period of time, many other forms of treatment did.

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1459 Words | 6 Pages

This silence is literally and figuratively represented through Chief Bromden, a longtime patient of a psychiatric ward during the 1960s in the United States. Bromden, along with all the other patients in the ward, religiously abide by the rules and regulations enforced by the ward administration, particularly Nurse Ratched, a strict and abusive manipulator who does anything in order to maintain her power. This power dynamic quickly evolves

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755 Words | 4 Pages

The question of sanity becomes apparent when McMurphy, a confident gambler, who might have faked psychosis in order to get out of the work farm, is assigned to the mental hospital. He quickly stirs up tension in the ward for Nurse Ratched by encouraging the men to have fun and rebel against her rules. Brodmen appears to be sane for the most part, despite his hallucinations of a fog, which seems to be the result of something both the ward and the world has done to him. He is able to think logically and though others believe him to be deaf and dumb, he uses this to his advantage. Chief states, “They don't bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb.

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1050 Words | 5 Pages

The fog begins to appear when Nurse Ratched gains full control and power over the men. However, they “haven’t really fogged the place full force all day, not since McMurphy came in” (78). Bromden’s hallucinations incorporate a thick fog that begins to fade only with McMurphy’s arrival to the ward. The fog represents an escape from reality for Bromden as well as the “pollution” the mechanical nature of society has developed. Bromden physically cannot see through the fog without the help of McMurphy: the beacon of hope that follows his natural impulses.

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1288 Words | 6 Pages

His rebellious and free mind makes the patients open their eyes and see how the have been suppressed. His appearance is a breath of fresh air and a look into the outside world for the patients. This clearly weakens Nurse Ratched’s powers, and she sees him as a large threat. One way or another, McMurphy tends to instigate changes of scenery. He manages to move everyone away from her music and watchful eye into the old tube room.

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427 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel,One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey utilizes the motif of fog in order to provide a symbolic representation of Chief’s escape from reality to one's own comfort zone, ultimately suggesting that society perceives others on the basis of social standards. Just as the fog is said to be a place of tranquility, in the novel the fog symbolises Chief’s escape from reality. As Chief is about to go to bed after talking with Public relations he says “Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That's what McMurphy can't understand, us wanting to be safe.

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