What is reality? The novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey, explores living in a mental institution through the mind of a patient. As the reader begins the novel, they would naturally think that a patient found in a mental hospital would be insane. As Kesey introduces you to the patients, and you see the institution in their eyes, you believe that they are really normal people, and society is insane. The main character, Chief Bromden is a half Indian man, who is considered schizophrenic. Randall McMurray, the newest patient in the ward, causes many difficult situations for the Nurse. Nurse Ratched is the authority figure for the patients and likes everything to be run her way.
A man who is known as Chief Bromden, the main character, starts as seeming to be a shy, weak man. This is shown in the first chapter on page three, when a caretaker of the institution talks of him while he is present, "Big enough to eat apples off my head an' he mine me like a baby." Chief Bromden is in the hospital because he is schizophrenic, and is considered deaf and dumb, because he never talks or acknowledges people. At the end of the novel, McMurray becomes a vegetable because of all of the shock treatments he had received. Bromden displays that he is caring by smothering him with a pillow, because he knows that McMurray would not want to live like that. One of the reasons that people find him shy is that he would much rather be quiet, and observe his surroundings. Page 26-27 (Bromden thinking of Nurse Ratched).
"I've watched her get more skillful over the years. Practice has steadied and strengthened. .
her until she wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hair-like wires, too small .
for anybody's eye but mine; I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful.
robot, tend her network with mechanical skill, know every second which wire runs where .
and just what current to send up to get the results she wants".
