One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Character Analysis

The novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey has many themes, many ideas, many morals, and many characters. Throughout the story, as with any proper story, the characters develop. Each character develops in their own way and for different reasons. The biggest two characters in the story, who are the ones to influence the other characters to change the most, are the Big Nurse Ratched and McMurphy. Big Nurse runs the psych ward that McMurphy is placed into. McMurphy makes friends with all the guys on the ward, seeing as it’s the 50’s and the only females in the story are nurses, wives, and prostitutes so there are no females on the ward. McMurphy befriends all the guys and turns Big Nurse’s iron fist into practically nothing. Big Nurse

He’s a boisterous gambling man and he brought life to the men. The men were lifeless and lived every day as they were told. McMurphy came in and laughed and gambled and changed everyone. The narrator of the story, Chief Bromden went from pretending to be deaf and dumb to talking and laughing. Bromden is a very tall Native American and he’s been brought down by the oppression of the Native Americans. He watched his dad go from a powerful Chief to an alcoholic who had to give up his land. His mother was white. He was in the army during the war. He hallucinated a lot from the Electro-Shock Therapy (EST). He hallucinated he was in a fog and Nurse Ratched put him in the fog. McMurphy came in, saw he wasn’t deaf or dumb, and brought him out of his fog. He felt big and tough, so big and tough he actually escaped the facility in the end. As much as they changed the other patients, they changed each other as well. McMurphy went from a fun-loving guy to a seemingly stressed out guy. He was relaxed, he laughed and he had a good time. But he went kind of dark and got angry and violent. He strangled Nurse Ratched until she turned black and blue. She lived but had a long recovery. She couldn’t talk afterwards. McMurphy got sent to do EST. Toward the end, she lost her cool as well. They both blew their tops and faced the consequences. But in the end, Nurse Ratched got what she wanted, she lobotomized him and that finally broke