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Stream of Consciousness
Part One
Explanation and Analysis:
The style of the novel is descriptive, but often the richest descriptions are not of objective reality. Instead, Bromden makes liberal use of figurative language to convey his own subjective experience of life in the mental hospital. One example occurs in Part One, when Washington gets in trouble for failing to provide McMurphy with a uniform:
I can see how if he don’t get a move on she might freeze him and shatter him all to hell by just looking; all the hate and fury and frustration she was planning to use on McMurphy is beaming out down the hall at the black boy, and he can feel it blast against him like a blizzard wind, slowing him more than ever. He has to lean into it, pulling his arms around him. Frost forms in his hair and eyebrows. He leans farther forward, but his steps are getting slower; he’ll never make it.
This passage is highly evocative. Bromden first imagines that Nurse Ratched has superpowers and can turn someone to breakable ice just by staring at them. He swears that Washington can feel Nurse Ratched's fury "blast against him like a blizzard wind," and that the blast slows Washington in his path toward the nurse. Bromden seems nervous for Washington. If he doesn't hurry up and answer Nurse Ratched's summons, he risks annihilation. At the same time, she makes it extremely difficult to move toward her by sending out gales of hate that he must "lean into" like a bad storm. Bromden even claims that Washington's hair and eyebrows frost over.
It is clear to the reader that all of the details are coming from Bromden's imagination. The nurse does not actually have superpowers, and the temperature surely does not drop such that frost settles on Washington's hair and eyebrows. Still, the imagery is effective. The reader can imagine the physical strain of pushing through a blizzard. The nurse's wrath and power turn from abstract concepts into a storm that threatens both to blow a person away and to destroy them if they stop trudging into it. The concreteness of Bromden's language may be grounded in delusion, but it nonetheless conveys to the reader more of the real power dynamics in the hospital than a literal, more objective description might. Bromden claims that his story is the truth, even if it didn't happen. Through figurative language about things that didn't happen, Bromden manages to drive home the true feeling of his life on the ward.
Related Themes:
