Bromden And His Changing Mind Essay, Research Paper

Outline Thesis: In One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey, Chief Bromden is a character who hasto work his way back to being and acting like a real human after so many years of being dehumanized (Porter 49) into a machine created by the evil Nurse Ratched. I. Bromden in the beginning A. Dehumanized by Nurse Ratched 1. structured 2. forbids laughing 3. controlling B. The effect that the Nurse and the ward has on Bromden 1. could not smell 2. thinks of himself as little 3. hides in the fog 4. fears everything 5. sees himself as comic 6. hallucinatesII. Bromden in progress A. Gives up deaf and dumb B. Great turn – around C. Begins to smell things D. Regains his laugh E. Loosens upIII. Bromden at the end A. Bromden escapes B. Bromden is a hero C. McMurphy is death; Bromden strength D. Bromden becomes bigIV. Conclusion A. Modern world; machines destroy B. Nurse Ratched the machine C. Modern world is the combine Bromden and his Changing Mind In One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest by Ken Kesey, Chief Bromden is a character whohas to work his way back to being and acting like a real human after so many years of being dehumanized (Porter 49) into a machine created by the evil Nurse Ratched. Bromden begins tochange as soon as McMurphy tries to get the guys on the ward to open up and Bromden is the onewho gets the most out of Mr. McMurphy s therapy (97). Chief Bromden finally beats the evilnurse Miss Ratched by escaping from the institution. So Broken men – however frightened,beleaguered, splintered, and dehumanized – can be restored to manhood and wholeness (95). A six foot seven inch Indian named Chief Bromden pretense to be a deaf mute after hewatched his father, Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, get ruined by his white wife. Government agentsoften came to visit his father about his property. The agents would walk right past Bromden likehe was not even there. When people stopped reacting to Bromden, he stopped reacting to the people. At the Combine which was the name for the ward, Bromden underwent treatment for hismedical condition. The Combine split the patients into two categories, the Acutes and theChronics. The Acutes were the patients that had the ability to getting better while the Chronicshad no chance of getting better because of how serious their medical condition is. In the Combineeverybody definitely considers Bromden as a Chronic. While in there and everybody thinking heis a deaf mute, Bromden hear s information from other peoples conversations that he is notsuppose to hear. Throughout the novel Chief Bromden feels small and he is very easilyintimidated. Without the help of the newest guy on the ward, Randel Patrick McMurphy, hewould of never been able to gain up enough strength to feel good about himself again and escapethe ward like he did in the end of the novel. McMurphy helps Bromden tremendously plus everybody else that is on the ward. Heguides everybody to be human. McMurphy says Miss Ratched, the Nurse of the Combine, gainsher power by making others feel like they have less. She controls everything they do from whenthey wake up to when they go to bed. McMurphy rebels against Miss Ratched and tries to get theguys on the ward to stand up for themselves too. The patients on the ward are not aloud to laughloosely according to Miss Ratched. McMurphy says when a man loses his ability to laugh he is nota man anymore. Most of the patients on the ward are dehumanized by Nurse Ratched controllingand orderly attitude. In the novel Bromden shows the most change from McMurphy s help. Enough change to come back after escaping and retell the story. In the beginning of the novel Bromden was at the point where he was completelydehumanized by Nurse Ratched. Miss. Ratched was the main cause of his dehumanization, butnot the start of it. It began is his early childhood with the conflict between his father, the Indianchief, and his white mother that had control over his father. As it says in the Discovering AuthorsModules: Mrs. Bromden was a domineering women who cared little for her husband s Indianheritage and was instrumental in selling his land to the government. . Miss Ratched is in a wayjust like Bromden s mother. The way his mother wore down his father by making him feel smalland little is the same thing Nurse Ratched is doing to Bromden while on the ward (Wallace 8). After Bromden s father was dehumanized by his wife it is Bromden s turn, assuming fromDiscovering Authors Modules that this novel is a fictionalized account of his childhoodexperience (8). If the story Bromden told us about his early childhood background is true and sitis parrallel to the plot of the novel then we can assume that Bromden is going to get dehumanizedby Nurse Ratched. So this is how Bromden starts out the novel, dehumanized and feeling smallerand weaker.While Bromden is feeling dehumanized and small Miss Ratched has the ward wellstructured and running smooth. She has everything running on time and if something is out ofplace she will fix it right away because to her there is no such thing as unorganized (Kesey 26). AsPorter points out, since Miss Ratched is an ex-army nurse she is used to the high demands onorder. Her life was always structured and she expects everybody and everything else to be thesame way (48). With structure there comes control, because structure is highly unlikely to existwithout some sort of control. If there was no control over the patients on the ward then theredefinitely would be no structure because that is what the patients are there for, a little structure intheir lives. Throughout the beginning of the novel Bromden was always complaining that NurseRatched has too much control over things. For example, in the novel, Bromden says NurseRatched can speed up time or slow down time depending what she wanted to do (Kesey 73). Healso says that she is controlling a fog machine when she sits behind the window at her controlpanel and sometimes it could last hours on end (75). So with all the control she has over the wardthe patients really feel pressured to do what ever she says. The one thing that Nurse Ratched has control of that really hurts the Combine is laughter. As Porter says, everybody sees Miss Ratched as a machine and not as a human. They think she isdehumanized herself along with them. To Bromden the tip of each finger was the same color asher lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a sodering iron (Kesey 4) (49). Bromden and all the otherpatients on the ward are not thought of as human beings. Miss Ratched thinks of them as justobjects or pieces of machinery, so she treated them like pieces of machinery. With structure and control a playing a big part in the daily lives of the men on the ward,Miss Ratched does not see how the pressure of her control and wanting a structured environmenthad an negative mental effect on the patients. Bromden does not have that free laugh. As withMcMurphy, Bromden s therapist he had a laugh with no resistance. Porter says, The inabilityto laugh therefore is a gauge of the combine s pressure … (97). The patients on the ward neverjust laugh loosely because they feel the pressure of Nurse Ratched when she is sitting behind theglass window of her office looking at them. With the resistance to laugh Bromden also could notsmell the usual things that normal men can smell. All that he could smell was the oil from themachines and the heated machinery (Porter 30). He could not only smell the machines, he oftenhallucinated allot about them also. Sometimes he would see machines in his room at night wheneverybody else was asleep. The chief is a comic character who literally sees microphones in thebroom handles, wires in the walls, and pernicious devices in the electric shavers (Wallace 8). Bromden at this point is not human. Leeds says the Combine, committed as it is to thesupremacy of technology over humanity, extends its influence by dehumanizing men and makingthem machines (20). The pressure from Nurse Ratched dehumanized Bromden to where nowhe begins to see and smell things that a normal human being would not. The final effect that Miss Ratched has on Bromden is his fear of everything. Kesey tries toget the reader to notice real quick that they are dealing with a scared and intimidated character. Healso wants to produces the impression of a mind that works oddly Kesey opens up the novel withBromden saying They re out there (3). All these problems that Bromden has comes from MissRatched. If she was not so structured and hung up on control Bromden would not be this weakand dehumanized. In order for Bromden to gain his strength back from Nurse Ratched s dehumanization, hehas to overcome her control. One way to break the control is learning how to laugh. WhenMcMurphy and Bromden were up stairs waiting for there shock treatment McMurphy offeredBromden a piece of gum and he took it then started to laugh. Ronald Wallace said in DiscoveringAuthors Modules said The chief must regain his laugh before he can regain his speech, and hisfirst words to McMurphy when he has stopped laughing are thank you. Having recovered his

comic sense Bromden recovers his health (9). At this point Bromden begins to show signs ofsanity because he gives up the deaf and dumb role (Fish 17). As soon as Bromden regains hiscomic sense and gives up his deaf and dumb role everything else seems to fall right in place. Hebegins to smell things a man should smell. Tanner say s Bromden begins to smell different odors. … not until McMurphy came was there the man smell of dust and dirt from open fields, andsweat, and work (98). Bromden is determined not to let Nurse Ratched destroy him with her soul-destroying method ([email protected] 1). Bromden recognizes a picture that he never sawon the wards wall of a fisherman on a mountain stream. He begins imagining the smells that thefisherman would smell (31). The things he is smelling now compared to hot oiled machines aremore natural and relaxing. Tanner states that This reawaked sensitivity to the world of nature, hishome environment, is a positive sign that Bromden is developing a resistance to the machine worldof the hospital. (32) which means that Bromden is now beginning to resist Nurse Ratched scontrol she has over him. Now that Bromden is creating a resistance to Nurse Ratched he is finding out there is moreto life than just the institution, and McMurphy tries to show him this by taking some guys on theward, plus Bromden, on a fishing trip. On their way they stooped at a gas station and twoattendants gave McMurphy a hard time about showing up with a bunch of loonies. The patients inthe car got depressed because they know what is going on. McMurphy sees in the car that theguys are getting pretty much ashamed for themselves and wanting to say screw it all and go home. From Discovering Authors Modules Ronald Wallace explained that when McMurphy saw this hehelps the inmates gain more pride by freighting the attendants. He tells the attendants what theinmates are in for, describing it with great detail hoping to frighten the attendants into thinking theyare so nuts they could flip out and kill them any second. McMurphy gives him the example ofstanding up to and occasionally beating the apparently all-powerful Combine (Macky 4712). Between the black boys and the other patience on the ward Bromden gets picked on right in frontof his face just as the two attendants picked on them when they were in the car. McMurphy gavehim one example of standing up to that kind of punishment. So no matter how much Bromdenwas dehumanized by all the punishment the Combine had given him, he did not let that ruin hiswhole life. Even though he was considered a chronic which meant there was no help for himmentally he is improving as a human being from McMurphy s help. McMurphy is helpingBromden to improve by giving him a little pride for himself. The end of Bromden therapy (Porter 97) McMurphy has brought Bromden back tostrength again. The guys on the ward were getting checked and cleaned for crabs (Kesey 260). One of the patients on the ward named George was scared to get cleaned by one of the black aids. McMurphy told the aid just to forget about him and move on to the next guy. When the aidrefuses McMurphy starts a fight with him. One of the black aids pin McMurphy down to the floor(261). Right now Bromden sees himself in a different light then he did before. He begins seeingthis when McMurphy is pinned on the floor by one of the black aids (McCreadie 505). Bromdenjoins in the fight to help McMurphy defeat the black boys. After more of the aids got the situationunder control, McMurphy and Bromden were sent up stairs to receive shock therapy. After theshock therapy McMurphy through a party for the patients just so they would have some fun beforehe escapes the next morning. When morning came McMurphy forgot to leave because he fellasleep and later on he finds out that one of the patients had killed themselves (Kesey 304). NurseRatched blames his death on the whole ward making everybody fell like it was their fault by themplaying God (304). McMurphy gets so angry that he breaks down her door and ripped her shirtoff so her big breast would be shown (305). Nurse Ratched then orders for McMurphy to have alobotomy. The next time the patients see McMurphy is when he is brain dead. At this pointBromden is fully back to strength again. It is symbolically represented when Bromden tries to putMcMurphy s hat on and it does not fit because he has grown to full size. Peter Fish said at theend of the book the chief has switched places with McMurphy (17). This means McMurphy isnow becoming weak and he is beginning to lose against the Big Nurse while Bromden is makingprogress. McMurphy ultimately loses against Nurse Ratched when she gave him a lobotomy. When Bromden saw this he felt that since McMurphy helped him out by teaching him to becomemore of a human being, he would help him out and not let hum sit there in bed for the rest of hislife and suffer. So Bromden smothered McMurphy with his own pillow. Ronald Wallace said inDiscovering Authors Modules that Bromden is comic, and he is also a hero. I kept getting this notion that I wanted to sign the list. And the more he talked about fishing for Chinook salmonthe more I wanted to go. I knew it was a fool thing to want; if I signed up it d be the same as coming right out and telling everybody I wasn t deaf. If I d been hearing all this talk about boats and fishing it d show I d been hearing everything else that d been said in confidence around me for the past ten years. And if the Big Nurse found out about that, that I d heard all the scheming and treachery that had gone on when she didn t think anybody was listening, she d hunt me down with an electric saw, fix me where she knew I was deaf and dumb. Bad as I wanted to go, it still made me smile a little to think about it: I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all (Kesey 197).The quote from the novel above proves since Bromden has written the novel, it is Bromdenhimself who exposes his own comedy. The plot traces Bromdens growth toward the kind ofcomic perspective that enables him to write such a novel. When he can turn the combine into acomedy, he has defeated it. In the novel during the fishing trip Bromden wanted to go, but hehad no way of signing up because he did not want to give up his deaf and dumb role. Bromdenlearns to look at his life as a comic fiction and then to transform that fiction into art. AfterBromden had smothered McMurphy he lifted the control panel which McMurphy tried to liftpreviously in story. When he picks up the control panel he is overcoming the control that the wardhad on him. He is taking all that control they had over him for so many years and he is throwing itout of the window. When Bromden escapes he does not see the dog that has always been aroundthe window, but only the footsteps. Leeds explains that when Bromden escapes, he is associatedwith the geese that were flying overhead. The dog that was not there, but only the footsteps wasassociated with McMurphy. He says this means that when Bromden escapes he is really flyingover the cuckoo s nest following in McMurphy s footsteps (29). So by the end of the story it isevident that Bromden did overcome the control, gained his strength, and returned to his true size. From when McMurphy arrives at the Combine, to when Bromden makes his escape he ischanging all the time. He is changing for the better. He started out as a machine that just respondto stimuli in the ward, then he slowly progressed until he had enough strength to make his escape.Bromden defines the combine as a modal of the world. Miss Ratched wants to robotize the menin the ward so when they leave they are an example to society (Leeds 20). So no matter how badBromden got dehumanized he succeeded to come back strong. In the modern world, machines destroy nature, efficiency comes before beautyand robot-like cooperation is more valued then the individual freedom (15). This is the samething Nurse Ratched is trying to do to the Combine. She wants everything to run how it issuppose to first, then if there is free time that comes last. People today are the same way. Theywant everything to run perfect with no error. That is why people now build robots to do the workfor us because they realized that people aren t perfect. Now since the robots are now getting allthe jobs allot of people are out of work which means they are now low on money. Without moneyyou can t do anything in this world because nothing is for free. Bromden and his Changing Mind byDennis Flagg American LiteratureDecember 22, 1998

Fish, Peter. Barron s Book Notes. New York: Barron s Educational Series, 1984. [email protected]. Reviews. Amazon.com 1998. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0453008151/greatsouthernresA/002-164 2554-7688452> (10 Jan., 1999) Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest. New York: Penguin Books USA, 1996.Leeds, Barry H. Ken Kesey. New York: Frederick ungar Publishing, 1981.Macky Peter W. One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest Magill 4710-4713Magill, Frank N. ed. Masterplots. New York: Salem Press, 1996.McCreadie, Marsha One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest: Some Reasons For One Happy Adaptation Pratt 500-508Pratt John C. ed. One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest.. New York: Penguin Books USA, 1996.Porter, M Gilbert. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Boston: G.K. Hall&Company, 1989Tanner, Stephen L. Ken Kesey. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983.Wallace, Ronald. Ken(Elton) Kesey: Criticism Discovering Authors Modules 1998. galenet.gale.complalacp/neta…arch.html&r=1&f=L3;1;+ 1258-14 .ID> (18 Nov.,1998)