One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Summary

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, took place in an mental hospital during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The narrator Chief Bromden was a patient of a metal hospital for ten years. In the beginning of the book Chief was dominated by his fear of the Combine. The combine was “a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity.” (SparkNotes Editors) For the majority of the story Chief pretended to be deaf and dumb to avoid attentions. The mental hospital divided the patients into two groups, the Acutes and the Chronics. The Acute was the group where patients can still be cured while Chronics was the group where patients were beyond saving. The hospital was ran by a woman called Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched ruled the hospital with absolute power and hided her woman side with her stiff side. Every day during group discussion Nurse Ratched often made acute patients shared their vulnerable secrets and exposing those secrets. With Nurse Ratched’s absolute power anyone that disobey her order will get electric shock treatment or lobotomy.

On his first day, McMurphy has already started to go against Nurse Ratched. During the first couple of day, conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched simply provided entertainment for many of the patient. However, as time goes on the patients started to rebel along with McMurphy. During the World Series, McMurphy and the Acutes wanted to watch the baseball game but Nurse Ratched refused due to the reason of majority rules. So McMurphy decided to watch the empty television and yelled out random commentaries. The Acutes was attracted by the commentaries and decided to watch the empty television with McMurphy. Even though Nurse Ratched ordered the patients to return to room, the Acutes and McMurphy stayed and disobeyed Nurse Ratched’s