One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Paradox 1 key example

Readers may stumble over this last line when they first read it. How can something be the truth "even if it didn't happen?" However, Bromden means what he says. This passage emphasizes his status not only as a storyteller but also as a storyteller who is himself a character in the story. He lived on the mental ward and pretended to be unable to hear or speak for 10 years. He kept everything he saw, heard, and felt bottled up inside, and he is now ready to let it out. Naturally, what comes out will be subjective, not objective, because he was on the ground in the hospital. He pleads with readers to take it as true anyway because it is true to him.

Kesey's novel aimed to shed light on the conditions endured by patients in American mental hospitals in the mid-20th century. Prevailing ideas about these hospitals had less to do with the dignity of the patients and more to do with the inconvenience mentally ill people posed to society. Institutions purported to "treat" mental illness, but they largely tried to instill obedience and compliance rather than addressing any underlying conditions that made it difficult for patients to get along socially. Kesey saw mental health institutions as enforcers of the status quo. For example, the hospital has no interest in helping Harding with the homophobia that has made him hate himself. By emphasizing Bromden's subjective experience as truth, Kesey elevated patients' stories, offered them a sense of dignity, and exposed some of the trauma they endured in these deeply flawed institutions. Just because someone is unable to recall events exactly as they happened, the novel suggests, does not mean that their story isn't real and worth telling.