And lordalmighty, look at the size of that foot of yours; big as a flatcar!" I looked down and saw how my foot was bigger than I"d ever remembered it, like McMurphy's just saying it had blowed it twice its size." McMurphy is so powerful in all he says and does, that when he tells Chief it looks like he is growing, Chief really thinks he is.
I believe that the turning point for Chief in the novel is when he begins to contemplate whether or not he wants to be portrayed as "deaf and dumb". For instance, on page 178, "I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wondered if I could ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: 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." Chief, for the first time in fifteen years, wants to talk. .
When Chief did begin to talk, and McMurphy gave him the opportunity, which he seized, to go on the fishing trip, he began to see that life had more to offer than he thought, and that it might be worth living. For example, "I noticed vaguely that I was getting so's I could see some good in the life around me. McMurphy was teaching me. I was feeling better than I"d remembered .
feeling since I was a kid, when everything was good and the land was still singing kid's poetry to me." Chief begins to see himself as a bigger person, someone strong and sturdy. He notices his arms and chest becoming large again, and his shoulders broadening, just the way they used to be. .
It seems as though the stronger Chief becomes, the weaker McMurphy gets. I began to notice this around page 230, when Chief has to throw one of the black boys off McMurphy to help him from getting beat up. His growing strength was also apparent when he came out of the shock therapy treatment faster than he ever had, and McMurphy was given three additional shock treatments.
