Essay About Billy Bibbit And Eyes Of A Mental Patient

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
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Dan Brucher
Book Report
Intermediate Comp
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Not too many books take you into the world of mental illness. One Flew Over the
Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey does. It is told through the eyes of a mental patient named
Chief Bromden. He is a northwest Indian, who is disturbed with hallucinations about
machines taking over the world he knows. The mental hospital is in Oregon; a Nurse
Ratched, has machine like control of everyone and everything in the ward. The only hint
of her humanity is the fact that she possesses
very large breasts, which she keeps tucked
away under her neat-as-a-pin white uniform. The Chief has been there the longer than
anyone except for Ratched. He uses this to his advantage by making the other people in
the ward think he is deaf and dumb.
Life in the ward is quiet until a new patient is admitted. His name is Radall
Patrick McMurphy and he is a redheaded brute who smells of sweat, work, dirt and dust.
He starts in by disrupting everything familiar in the ward, the silence, the admitting
showers, and the way the black boys bully the patients around. He quickly makes friends
with everyone including the Chronics who are vegetable like patients. McMurphy is a
gambling man who insist that he wanted to come to the ward for an easier life than the
one he had at work camp where he previously stayed. One of his first bets with the other
patients is to make Ratched lose control of the ward without giving her an excuse to
punish him. McMurphy leads the patients through numerous confrontations with the
staff. He soon learns he cant leave the hospital without Ratcheds approval, so he begins
to obey her rules.
By raising hopes he hasnt fulfilled, he leaves the patients worse off than before.
One becomes so depressed he drowns himself. McMurphy plans a fishing trip for the
ward and talks to Chief about it. The Chief speaks for the first time in years about the
Combine: his world of the machines, the government, his own mother, who destroy
freedom in favor of machine like conformity. He talks about how the Combine made his
father “small” in the mind and how it is making him “small” in the mind as well.
McMurphy makes another deal with Chief: if Chief can grow strong enough, mentally, to
lift the control panel, then McMurphy will let him go on the fishing trip for free. On the
trip away from Ratched the patients grow stronger and more capable, but the Chief
notices McMurphy has grown weaker from the hospital. McMurphy arranges a date for
Billy Bibbit with a prostitute to enable Billy to become a man. When an aide abuses a
patient in the shower, Chief and McMurphy come to his rescue and guaranteeing
themselves a trip for electroshock treatments. Chief realizes before the treatments that he
is strong enough to survive them and does. They all plan an escape for McMurphy the
night after the prostitute comes for Billy, but McMurphy is too weak to escape and is
caught. Billy is shamed by Ratched and commits suicide. McMurphy makes his last stand
against