One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Sitting in front of the screen, the patients sneak glances at Ratched. She and the rest of the staff make their way down the hall for a special, previously scheduled meeting to discuss McMurphy’s status. At an aide’s request, Bromden goes with them since he usually cleans the staff room during meetings. He fears they will suspect that he is not deaf since he raised his hand to vote earlier. As he cleans, Bromden hallucinates a green, poisonous slime that is a byproduct of the staff meeting.

Spivey opens the meeting, prepared to defer to Ratched, but she remains silent. Spivey invites the staff to comment on McMurphy’s behavior. Vying for Ratched’s approval, an intern questions whether McMurphy is insane, while another refers to him as a dangerous psychopath. The staff are just coming to an agreement that McMurphy, whom they have diagnosed with a negative Oedipal complex, should be sent to the Disturbed ward, when Ratched speaks up. She contradicts them, suggesting that McMurphy is not an exceptional case and that sending him away would only make him a “martyr” in the eyes of the patients. Instead, she plans to keep him in the ward and expose him as a self-interested “braggart and a blowhard” (137).

His bet won, McMurphy continues to annoy Ratched and the staff over the next week. McMurphy’s seeming immunity to Ratched’s methods inspires Bromden to reflect on how external forces shaped his own identity even before his admission to the hospital.

Over the next few days, Bromden’s perception continue to sharpen, and the fog clears. One night, he wakes up and looks out the window of the hospital as if for the first time. He sees a dog rolling around happily and a flock of geese passing in front of moon. After a few minutes, the birthmarked nurse and one of the aides lead Bromden back to bed.

Under McMurphy’s influence, the group meetings evolve into a time for the patients to complain about ward policy. McMurphy is puzzled to see that Ratched takes no direct action against him.

The next week, on Wednesday, the patients go swimming as they do each week. Bromden overhears McMurphy telling the lifeguard that he prefers life in the hospital to life in prison. The lifeguard, who was admitted to the hospital eight years earlier, points out that those who go to prison have a release date, whereas those committed to a psychiatric hospital are stuck inside until the staff see fit to release them.

After realizing that Ratched has the power to determine his release date from the hospital, McMurphy begins to follow the rules and perform assigned tasks with care. During the next meeting, when Cheswick makes a complaint, McMurphy remains silent rather than back him up. Cheswick’s subsequent outburst results in a temporary transfer to the disturbed ward. When he returns, Cheswick apologizes to McMurphy. His return coincides with another pool day, during which Cheswick drowns himself.

One day, an epileptic patient named Sefelt has a seizure while waiting in line for lunch. A nearby aide summons Ratched, who observes aloud that Sefelt did not take his medicine, which would have prevented the seizure. She knows, but does not say aloud, that Sefelt, who dislikes the medicine’s side effects, gives his medicine to Fredrickson, another patient with epilepsy. Fredrickson takes a double dose to reduce his chances of having a seizure. McMurphy asks why Sefelt doesn’t take the medicine, and Fredrickson explains the undesirable side effects, including rotting gums: “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Fredrickson summarizes (154).

On another day, Bromden accompanies the acute patients on a trip to the library, which he finds disorienting. While there, Harding receives a surprise visit from his wife, whom he introduces to McMurphy. While Harding tells her about McMurphy’s exploits, his hands move actively, but he hides them in embarrassment. After Harding fails to meet her request for a cigarette, she chides, “You never do have enough, do you?” (157), and Harding wonders if she is speaking figuratively. She complains of frequent visits from his friends with “limp little wrists that flip so nice” (158). Throughout her visit with Harding, the two show no affection, and Harding corrects her grammar. After she leaves, Harding asks McMurphy’s opinion of her. He compliments her breasts. When Harding reiterates his question, McMurphy bursts out angrily, telling Harding and the other patients to stop “bugging” him with their concerns. That evening, McMurphy apologizes to Harding. He complains of bad dreams in which he sees nothing but faces.

A while later, in the game room, a patient named Martini sits behind the control panel, once intended for hydrotherapy, and pretends to pilot a plane in battle. His lively performance amuses the others, who are playing cards nearby. Martini pauses to ask McMurphy whether he saw the planes. McMurphy is adamant that he didn’t see anything.

Three weeks after voting to watch the baseball game, the patients go to a nearby building for routine X-rays. While they wait in line, Harding tells McMurphy about electroshock therapy, which occurs in an adjacent room, as well as lobotomy. When McMurphy expresses his bewilderment at the hospital’s overall operations, they discuss the extent to which blame can be assigned to Ratched. Some blame her almost entirely, but McMurphy senses that larger forces are at work. McMurphy accuses the others of using him to resist Ratched, though he is fully aware of the risk that his commitment in the hospital could be extended. Harding reveals that hardly any of the acute patients are committed, or required to stay, in the hospital. Instead, he, Billy, and the others choose to remain because they are too scared to face the outside world.

Bromden notices that McMurphy now appears reinvigorated in his resistance to Ratched. In the next group meeting, Ratched announces that the privilege of using a separate game room will be revoked as punishment for the patients’ behavior three weeks earlier. As the meeting ends, McMurphy nonchalantly makes his way to the nurse’s station, where he breaks the glass to retrieve one of his cigarettes. He apologizes to Ratched, saying that the window was so clean he didn’t see it.