One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Chapters 1-5
Chapters 1-5
The chapter opens with the narration of Chief Bromden, a large half-Indian patient that is selectively mute. The aides of the mental hospital mockingly name him Broom Bromden, and he confesses to the reader early on that everyone in the hospital believes him to be deaf and dumb. It is evident that Bromden is an unreliable narrator, his descriptions of wires running through the walls and the sounds of machinery are fantastical. Nurse Ratched is described as a perfect machine with a fault in the form of a large bosom. On the instructions of nurse Ratched, Bromden is taken for shaving, the experience is terrifying, and he describes being consumed in a fog with alarms blaring for an air raid.
After the disastrous experience of the shave, Bromden awakens strapped to a chair. He is drugged heavily and unable to move, but his description of the events around him seems more lucid. As he sits in the day room, he hears the entrance of a new patient. That new admission is RP McMurphy, who claims to have been sent to the mental hospital from the work-farm on account of being a psychopath. McMurphy is a red-haired, confident, and broad man with iron-heeled steps that reminds Bromden of his father. McMurphy sets himself apart from the other new admissions immediately. He is loud where others are quiet and confident where others are scared. He easily takes charge and denies the instructions of the orderlies. He finds his way into the Day Room and lets loose a hearty laugh that Bromden believes to be the first true laugh he had heard in several years.
The day room is divided into two by Acutes and Chronics. The Acutes are the patients that can be cured, while the Chronics are Vegetables. Bromden has been admitted the longest, but Nurse Ratched has worked in the hospital longer than even him. McMurphy introduces himself to the Acutes; his attitude and confidence make the others uncomfortable until he banters playfully with Harding, the president of the patient's council. McMurphy doesn't abide by the distinction of Acutes and Chronics, one that is enforced by the hospital staff. He goes through the Chronics section, shaking all their hands and passing remarks until he reaches Bromden. Bromden believes that McMurphy sees through his act of being deaf and dumb because of how he winks at him. Nurse Ratched appears and instructs him to obey the orderlies. She explains that rules are the same for everyone, while McMurphy happily explains that the opposite has always been true for him.
Nurse Ratched runs the ward with an iron fist, which is why it is always thoroughly cleaned and organised. Bromden believes that she adjusts the patients and the world outside in service to the all-powerful organisation, The Combine. To fix the broken people and send them back to The Combine, Nurse Ratched ensures that the whole ward runs like clockwork. She achieves this with the help of a carefully recruited staff of submissive individuals. The most loyal and cruel of her staff members are the three black orderlies.
The staff and the patients prepare for the group meeting. Despite being just the head nurse of the ward, Nurse Ratched seems to command more authority than the doctor of the ward, Dr. Spivey, a small man who sits out of the way in the group meetings and lets the nurse lead them. The nurse begins by raising the implied sexual issues of Harding, and his wife, a woman of extraordinary feminine beauty. Nurse Ratched also introduces McMurphy, and the doctor notes that McMurphy's prior physician had remarked that McMurphy might be trying to get out of the arduous labour of the work-farm by pretending to be a psychopath. In the course of reading his file, the doctor also reveals that McMurphy had been honoured with a military award for escaping a Communist prison run by the Chinese during the war, and lastly, that he stood accused of statutory rape.
The doctor explains the Therapeutic Community Rules that are employed by the hospital for treatment in which the group functions as a model of society, and the patients are required to cooperate and fit into the group to the best of their ability. It encourages the patients to find the faults within each other's outlook and to report the same so that it could be remedied through therapy. The doctor compares the governance of the group with that of a democracy, where decisions are made with the help of votes, and everyone is welcome to make suggestions about changes they would like made. By the end of the session, Harding is visibly shrunken and agitated while the rest of the patients avoid looking in his direction as they are all ashamed of what they had all said. McMurphy confronts Harding about the nature of the group meeting. McMurphy claims that Nurse Ratched is to blame for the hostile environment of the ward. At first, Harding is defensive of the nurse and even compares her to a mother and an angel of mercy. However, McMurphy presses him, and Harding concedes that Nurse Ratched is indeed a horrid creature that is part of a matriarchy that controls the ward beyond the power of the doctor. Here, the uncooperative patients are sent off for Electroshock Therapy, and Harding explains how Bromden was reduced to a cleaning machine after several sessions in the Shock Shop. McMurphy places a bet with the rest of the patients that he would find a way to ruin the composure and control of Nurse Ratched within a week.
Analysis
The use of vulgar and disturbing language in the opening of the novel is a deliberate choice made by the author, Ken Kesey, to defy the conventions of literature and society. The competence of the staff at the hospital is immediately brought into focus by how they treat Bromden and fail to realise that he can hear and speak. McMurphy is an anti-hero that represents the ideals of American masculinity. His interactions with Ratched generally involve his attempts to make her uncomfortable with his sexuality while she attempts to emasculate him. Nurse Ratched is seen to be an emasculating power. McMurphy labels her a 'ball cutter' and also points out the lack of laughter among the men, which is another form of emasculation. The depiction of a cold central authority in Nurse Ratched represents the disillusionment of the American people about the nature and intentions of their government, especially after the second world war, a central tenet of the Beat Generation literary movement.
