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Examples Of Machinery In Chief Bromden

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Throughout the novel, there is a repeated metaphor of machinery and “The Combine”. Chief Bromden, the narrator, talks a lot about how society is just one big machine. The machine is controlling everyone and everything. The machine eventually turns other people into machines, leaving them with almost no humanity. The Chief installs this idea in the reader’s minds that all of the Chronics in the ward, the ones who are too far gone to fix, have been wired to act certain ways and are no longer human, simply machines. This whole idea of society controlling everyone and becoming machines is referred to as “The Combine” in Chief Bromden’s eyes. The way Bromden sees it, society is one big machine and the Combine will get everyone, eventually. At the beginning of the novel, the Chief is describing the difference between the Chronics and the Acutes. The Chief goes on to say, “Across from the Acutes are the culls of the Combine’s products, the Chronics” (Kesey 19). In this quote, Bromden is describing how the Chronics are already too far gone for fixing and that they are just the results of the “Combine” controlling them and turning them into machines. He then goes …show more content…

He describes how there are workers working on Old Blastic and how they are about to cut him open. At this point the Chief is scared that he is going to see a bunch of blood and guts. The Chief explains, “I expect to be sick, but there is no blood or innards falling out like I was looking to see---just a shower of rust and ashes, and now again a piece of wire or glass” (81). This quote is significant to the theme of machinery because in Bromden’s eyes all he sees coming out of this man is wires and machinery. No blood. This leads the Chief to become very restless and he feels he needs to go warn the others about The Combine. What is interesting about the Chief’s nightmare is that Blastic actually ends up dying at the end of the

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379 Words | 2 Pages

He keeps himself away from the Acutes and Chronics by pretending to be deaf and dumb (“One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” 6). The ironic thing about the story is that he [Bromden] is the narrator, telling the reader about everything hears. Bromden is a main character who does what he’s told when he’s told; “Stick a mop in my hand and motion to the spot they aim for me to clean today, and I go” (Kesey 3). If he’s caught slackin’, they’ll whack him in the back of the knees with a handle from whatever they’ve got in hand to get him moving. As the reader gets farther in the novel, they’ll notice how Bromden starts to do what McMurphy says

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574 Words | 3 Pages

Everyone in the hospital believes that he is deaf and dumb. When McMurphy begins to pull him out of the fog, he realizes the source of his charade: “it wasn’t me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.” As Bromden himself is demystified, so too is the truth behind what has oppressed him and hindered his

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759 Words | 4 Pages

He also felt that McMurphy was bigger than him, even though Bromden is about 6’7. Its only when Bromden starts hanging out with McMurphy is that he starts to feel his is big again and grows as a person in terms of self-confidence. By Bromden suffocating McMurphy, this shows that Bromden has truly grown in terms of self-confidence, because if this were to happen in the beginning of the novel Bromden would have just stood by and done nothing about what had happened to McMurphy. McMurphy has done what he set out to do from the beginning of his stay in the ward, which was given the men a sense of pride and confidence, which he has now given to Bromden. Bromden’s character has now developed opposite of Mcmurphy.

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970 Words | 4 Pages

Bromden uses the fog to hide and make himself invisible when he feels threatened or uneasy in any way. Bromden says, “Right and left there are other things happening just as bad—crazy, horrible things too goofy and outlandish to cry about and too much true to laugh about—but the fog is getting thick enough I don’t have to watch” (Kesey 87). The fog is his place of refuge when he feels the need for protection. When someone wakes him from the fog, they say he was just having a bad dream. Bromden feels pulled from the fog against his will forced to face reality again.

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733 Words | 3 Pages

Relationships with authority figures in our lives can be incredibly complex. This can be seen in the passage from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, between the narrator, Chief Bromden and Nurse Ratched. By using literary elements such as dehumanizing word choice, objectifying characterization, and an unreliable narrator , Kesey is able to convey the respecting yet fearful power dynamic in Chief's mind. Throughout the entire passage, the words chosen are used to make the Nurse seem like a monster, and an inhuman machine. Her finger and lips are a "funny orange", compared to a soldering iron, which is able to bring on extreme pain with just a touch.

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1427 Words | 6 Pages

In Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the main character and narrator, Chief Bromden, is noticeably stuck inside his own head as he acts deaf and dumb to escape the pressures of being a part of something. As the novel moves on, for someone who’s perception of living is to stay transparent and withdrawn totally inside himself the Chief takes a transformation from his delusional mind and gains strength physically and mentally, creating a journey towards freedom and finally, breaking free from the ward and from himself. Kesey uses the story of the transformation to unravel ideas about how the pressures of society can lead individuals to conform within themselves, resulting in them to feel weak and insignificant, separating

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907 Words | 4 Pages

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest theme essay Tristan Andrews In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the biggest enemy in the book is the "Combine." The Combine is the oppressive force that keeps society intact and send them to the hospital ward to be "fixed. " The whole book has a major emphasis on the combine and how it oppresses individuals into comforting to a mundane mechanized structure of life. It also tries to lesson the value of an individual person, trying to fix their personality to the way society wants it be, not who the person really is.

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1444 Words | 6 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.

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566 Words | 3 Pages

In contrast, the film did not include this scene. In the book, he thought his room was slipping away and falling down continually as if it was taking him for a ride in the hospital. As stated in the book, “and the whole floor goes to slipping down away from him standing in the door, lowering into the building like a platform in a grain elevator!” (Pg 66). This help builds Bromden’s character for the audience.

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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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734 Words | 3 Pages

Chief Bromden is a chronic, deaf half-Native American who has witnessed physical abuse and verbal torment from the aides for decades. This institution is monitored by the head of Nurse Ratched otherwise known as The Big Nurse. The nickname comes from the multiple patients living in the

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951 Words | 4 Pages

He is a physically large person but due to years of belittlement, Bromden succumbs to the societal pressures of the ward and loses himself. Everyone in the ward including himself believes he is nothing but weak and dumb. One of the biggest forms of oppression the authority in the ward imposed was dehumanization. Nurse Ratched's office resides behind a panel of glass that she uses as a barrier between her and the men of the ward but also to watch them and make sure they are following the rules. The men are subject to the treatment of a zoo animal and are robbed of their rights to privacy, they are all scared Nurse Ratched will catch them doing something wrong.

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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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