• To what extent could the narrator of the novel be considered unreliable?
The narrator known as Chief could be considered unreliable because on page 69 Harding says that he heard Chief received over two hundred shock treatments. These shock treatments may have down a great deal of damage to his mind. Multiple times throughout the novel Chief mentions that a fog is forming over his mind and all around him. One example of chief mentioning the fog and how no one else can see it is on page 128. Chief also imagines the fog followed by hallucinations of air raids and many other things including the name of the book goes flying through his head on page 284-287.
• Analyze the author’s treatment and characterization of the secondary characters in
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Both of these generalizations of women are very negative which probably has to do with society as a whole at the time this novel was written. The women in the story are either dedicated to dominating the men around them or trying to please men but almost in a servant kind of way. At the beginning of the book on page 60 Harding is taken apart at a meeting and afterwards Mcmurphy criticizes him for taking that abuse and says nurse Ratched is a ball cutter which the beginning of this view that nurse ratched being a cruel and manipulative person. Harding is the first to tell Mcmurphy “we are victims of a matriarchy here” on page 63. Though this whole book may seem negative towards women, the author includes equality aimed remarks. One example of one of these equality aimed remarks is this statement from Mcmurphy on page 60 “No, that nurse ain’t some kinda monster chicken buddy, what she is is a ball-cutter. I’ve seen a thousand of ‘em, old and young, men and women.” This quote from Mcmurphy shows the author isn’t completely against women but that there are horrible people like nurse Ratched of both sexes. The novel seems to be a battle between masculinity and feminism or the civilizing of society nurse Ratched attempts to and the freedom of the more natural and wild