One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Part One Summary & Analysis

The book begins with the narrator, Chief Bromden, waking up early within the psychiatric ward in Oregon where he has spent the past ten years of his life. He tries to be quiet as he passes the aides who he believes have been committing illicit sexual activities in the night, but they sense him and because he pretends to be deaf and dumb, they point out a spot to be mopped nicknaming him “Chief Broom.” They speak hatefully and gossip about hospital secrets because they don’t believe Bromden can hear them. As a result, Bromden goes mostly unnoticed in the ward.

Nurse Ratched, also known as the “Big Nurse”, enters the ward. Bromden knows it’s her by the way the key turns, and cold air follows her inside. Her fingertips match the color of her lips, a “funny orange.” She’s carrying the same wicker bag she’s had since Bromden arrived on the ward. Inside the bag Bromden can’t see any makeup or feminine items. Bromden thinks that when she notices the aides gossiping in the hallway from the nurse’s station she’ll rip them to pieces. She doesn’t hold back, Bromden says she “blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside,” because no one pays any mind to deaf and dumb Bromden. But before she can get going, the other patients start to wake up and emerge.

Nurse Ratched composes herself. Bromden describes her face as being precisely made, like a doll, with everything seemingly working except for the odd color of her lips and fingernails and her irregularly large bosom, which she does her best to hide under her uniform.

Nurse Ratched proposes that to get a good start to Monday the aides should shave Bromden. He quickly hides in a mop closet. He tries to think back to where he grew up near the Columbia River and hunting birds with his father. But Bromden senses the aide, and soon enough they discover him in the closet and take him to the shaving room. Bromden doesn’t fight them because he knows that will just make it harder on him in the long run, but when he arrives and they put something on his temples he becomes hysterical and starts hallucinating a thick fog, cold snow coming down. Bromden can hear Nurse Ratched rushing towards him through the thick of it, and he’s pinned down and sedated.

Bromden promises that the story he is about to tell will burn him like a dog running scared in a thick fog: “about the hospital, and her, and the guys—and about McMurphy.” He says he’s been quiet for so many years that it will just come out of him like a flood, and no one will believe him, but it’s all true.

Bromden wakes in the dayroom as the fog is beginning to clear. He knows he wasn’t taken for shock therapy, but he mildly recalls being in Seclusion—but not for how long or when is the last time he ate. Bromden sees the ward door open, and wonders whether it will be a resident before the patients have had medication, or a visiting wife, or the Public Relations man who celebrates how ethical the treatment is in these psych ward facilities.

Instead, it’s a new admission: Randle McMurphy. He refuses the entry shower, claiming he received one already at the courthouse. The patients can only hear his loud voice, which reminds Bromden of his father’s once booming voice. McMurphy laughs, for no identifiable reason, and Bromden realizes it’s the first laugh he’s heard in years.

McMurphy introduces himself to everyone in the day room as a gambler and a fool, still laughing. He says he requested a transfer from the Pendleton Work Farm so that he could have more interesting days. McMurphy, a large, well-built redhead, wears farming work clothes and a black motorcycle cap. He inserts himself into a card game and says that the farm ruled him a psychopath after some scuffles he was in and he wasn’t going to argue with the court if it got him out of the hard work on the farm.

McMurphy scans the room, which Bromden then describes. It’s filled with Acutes (curables) and Chronics (vegetables). A logbook is kept by the nurse’s station so that if someone lets a secret slip in the day room, the man who tattles will be rewarded by getting to sleep in the next day. Bromden notes that not all of the Chronics are immobile (himself included). But also that they all didn’t arrive as Chronics: Ellis and Ruckly both came in as Acutes but became Chronics as the result of botched procedures. Bromden reveals he’s been on the ward the longest of anyone.

McMurphy realizes immediately he’s an Acute and walks over to some of the others. He asks Billy Bibitt who’s in charge so that he, himself, can take over. Billy says he supposes it’s Dale Harding, the president of the Patient’s Council who Bromden notes has effeminate good looks suited for the silver screen. McMurphy and Harding exchange joking words, trying to one-up each other, and Harding concedes his position as head to McMurphy. All of the Acutes have surrounded McMurphy in a way Bromden has never seen, curious about his story.

McMurphy continues to refuse the aides who want to administer the admission protocol shower, rectal thermometer, and injection. McMurphy goes around the room and shakes all of the Chronics’ hands, to everyone’s surprise. Bromden is the last one, and he feels that McMurphy can tell he’s not deaf and dumb.

Nurse Ratched is calling for McMurphy (initially as McMurphy, her error) about his refusal to follow protocol. She discusses him with a nurse in the station, and compares him to a former patient, Maxwell Taber, who she says was a manipulator (which is how she sees McMurphy). Taber arrived disobedient, but Nurse Ratched says that was only for “a while.”

Bromden relates how strictly Nurse Ratched runs her ward. He believes that she’s part of a larger conglomerate of the outside world called The Combine. She intimidates the doctors into doing what she wants, and she has carefully recruited three daytime black aides who are filled with hate. With her staff, the day’s events run like clockwork. No one is to dispute their medication, like Maxwell Taber did, who was later pinned down by the aides and taken to the Disturbed ward for shock therapy. Taber was eventually sent to enough shock treatments that he becomes obedient enough to be discharged. The staff views him as a successful case.

Bromden believes that the psych ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s purpose is to correct the mistakes that the neighborhoods, schools, and churches made so that the person, the “product,” can go back into society “better than new.”

The group meeting takes place and Nurse Ratched brings up what they had discussed on Friday: Harding’s relationship with his wife. Nurse Ratched goes into detail about overheard conversations Harding has had concerning his wife’s breasts, and Harding closes his eyes. McMurphy makes a crass joke, and this almost flusters Nurse Ratched—some of the Acutes try not to smile. Nurse Ratched turns her attention to McMurphy and reads out his long rap sheet, including a charge of rape of a fifteen year old, which McMurphy refutes, saying the girl said she was seventeen and it was consensual and he brags about how often they had sex. She hands McMurphy’s folder to Doctor Spivey who notes McMurphy has no previously documented mental illness. Spivey reads a note from the doctor at the work farm that suggests McMurphy is feigning psychosis to get out of having to do physical labor. McMurphy stands up and asks the doctor if he looks like a sane mane. The doctor tries not to laugh.

Doctor Spivey introduces the Therapeutic Community rules, which include airing grievances in the safe space of group sessions, and running meetings democratically where votes are taken by the patients to decide on problems that need solving. Bromden says he’s heard these rules a million times. The doctor compares it to a small world within the larger world. Bromden recalls one time when the doctor was giving this speech and Nurse Ratched asked if anyone would like to start, and a bunch of Acutes started confessing dark secrets until Pete Bancini, an old Chronic, stood up and began claiming, in a moment of rare clarity, that he was “tired” and “born dead.” None of the aides could calm him down. He was eventually sedated.

By the time it’s two p.m. the group meeting is still in session and the patients are “tearing into poor Harding.” When the session ends, everyone looks ashamed of how they talked about Harding, after spending so long drilling him with questions about why he can’t please his wife, or what do they think he believes is wrong with him, or why he insists she’s always been faithful, the other Acutes now sheepishly avoid him. McMurphy looks puzzled by the end and asks Harding if this is usually how the meetings go; he calls them a “pecking party.” McMurphy talks loud enough that the other Acutes can hear. He says that the patients acted like chickens pecking at a wounded chicken, and a pecking party can wipe out the entire flock if you aren’t careful. McMurphy says that Nurse Ratched is the first to peck, and she’s pecking at Harding—and the rest of the men’s—balls. He says she’s a “ball-cutter.”

Harding agrees, after some convincing, that McMurphy is right, just that no one has ever dared to say it before. Harding says that Dr. Spivey is like the rest of the men, submissive to Nurse Ratched. She can’t be fired because the doctor doesn’t have the power, it’s the supervisor’s power and the supervisor is a woman and an old friend of Nurse Ratched because they were both nurses together in the Army. Harding claims that they’re all victims of a “matriarchy.” He suggests that the doctor is addicted to opiates and says that Nurse Ratched is a master of insinuation, which ultimately condemns people, like Harding.

Harding says that the world belongs to the strong and the strong destroy the weak. It’s natural law. They are rabbits and they have to accept that they’re rabbits, and see that the wolf is strong. The rabbit knows to hide from the wolf in order to survive—to not challenge it. Harding says everyone is in the ward because they’re a rabbit, and the nurse is a wolf. Harding says he was born a rabbit. Cheswick is the first to say he’s not a rabbit. McMurphy suggests that the men just shouldn’t answer Nurse Ratched’s questions but McMurphy learns what The Shock Shop is: where men are sent by Nurse Ratched for electrotherapy if they don’t behave. Harding points to Bromden sweeping in a corner and says that Bromden is now just a cleaning machine after taking so much electroshock.

McMurphy encourages the men to start voting on anything. He says that the most unsettling thing for him walking into the ward was that he hasn’t heard anyone laugh. He claims without laughter you start to lose your “footing,” and if a man lets a woman dominate him and hold him down until he can’t laugh anymore then he’ll lose his edge and she’ll start to think she’s stronger.

Harding continues with this line of thinking and asserts that the only way to show dominance over a woman is with their only weapon—not laughter, but their penises. Sex is their weapon, but they can’t use it against the nurse who they see as icy. McMurphy makes a bet that he can make Nurse Ratched lose her temper by the end of his first week. McMurphy says he conned his way out of the work farm, he can handle beating Nurse Ratched at her own game.

Bromden believes that Nurse Ratched has the power to set the clock at any speed to alter time to either super fast or super slow. Bromden says the time-control only stops when the fog machine comes on, and you get lost in it. Bromden notes that the ward hasn’t been completely fogged up today, since McMurphy arrived.

Music is constantly playing loudly overheard, and McMurphy doesn’t like it. He’s playing blackjack for cigarettes with the other patients. McMurphy nearly gets up to beat up one of the aides if he doesn’t turn it down but Harding says that’s the kind of behavior that will get him shock treatment. Bromden, as if in a trance, watches McMurphy while he plays blackjack with the patients—winning tremendously, then giving them back their confidence by letting them win all their losses back by the end—and laughing all the while.

McMurphy is given a bed next to Bromden, and as they are preparing for sleep he talks to Bromden. Bromden doesn’t take his nightly medication for the first time in years. McMurphy says that one of the aides is coming and Bromden better get into bed. Geever comes in and ties Bromden down to the bed with a sheet. McMurphy tells Bromden he thought he was deaf because Bromden reacted to McMurphy’s warning about the aide.

That night Bromden suffers from a nightmare/hallucination where the hospital is a slaughterhouse and Old Blastic is attached to a hook on the ceiling by the staff and gutted, but only rust and ash pour out. He dies. Mr. Turkle, the night aide, wakes Bromden up from his nightmare. Bromden sees that Old Blastic is covered with a sheet and being carried out on a stretcher after passing away in the night.

The ward wakes up to the sounds of McMurphy singing in the shower. Everyone’s shocked to hear singing on the ward—which they haven’t in years. McMurphy asks one of the aides for toothpaste, and when they refuse because it’s against policy to give it to him this early, he brushes his teeth with soap. Bromden tries to hide his smile as he mops in the same place he did the day before, because McMurphy’s use of humor to upset those with authority reminds him of his father.

Nurse Ratched arrives and prepares to punish McMurphy when she learns of his behavior, but he exits the bathroom with just a towel around his waist, which she says is not allowed. McMurphy claims someone took his clothes, and Ratched orders the aides to go find his uniform. Washington comes back with an outfit and McMurphy strips his towel away, showing that all along he’s been wearing a pair of black satin boxer shorts with white whales on them. Nurse Ratched is furious but tries her best to regain control over herself and maintain order in the ward.

McMurphy is especially cocky after his mild victory with Nurse Ratched. He spends the morning playing blackjack again with IOUs instead of cigarettes. The music is bothering him, and he gets up to ask Nurse Ratched to turn it down. Nurse Ratched justifies the music by saying that there are Chronic patients who rely on the radio because it’s all they can do but listen. McMurphy suggests they take the card game elsewhere, to the meeting room. She says he can take up his suggestions with the rest of the staff at another time, but she’s sure they’ll all agree with her because they don’t have enough staff to cover two rooms. McMurphy restrains himself with great effort and returns to blackjack.

Later that day, McMurphy has his admission interview with Dr. Spivey, and when McMurphy returns they are both laughing. At the group meeting afterward, Dr. Spivey says that McMurphy’s suggested a plan to fix the music problem: it will be turned up louder for the Chronics, and the others can go play cards in another room. Spivey says this will work fine because the Chronics don’t require much supervision. Nurse Ratched is furious, but has to keep from losing her temper.

McMurphy starts a game of Monopoly that has been going on for three days with Cheswick, Martini, and Harding. McMurphy adds pennies to the game to raise the stakes so it’s more of a gamble. Bromden notes that McMurphy is making a very conscious effort not to lose his temper with staff, and that he doesn’t seem affected by the fog.

McMurphy does lose control once at the other patients for acting “too chicken-shit,” when none of them would stand up for an amendment to allow them to watch the World Series on television (something for which McMurphy had been taking bets). McMurphy proposes to Nurse Ratched that the men be allowed to watch the games, even though it deviates from the schedule—instead they would do their cleaning chores in the evening and watch TV in the afternoon. Nurse Ratched refuses. McMurphy calls a vote, but only Cheswick will raise his hand, and McMurphy is disgusted.

McMurphy doesn’t mention the World Series again until the day before the Series begins as they are playing cards. As they talk about the Series, they hear someone screaming upstairs, and Scanlon says that’s Rawler the Squawler, who Nurse Ratched permanently sent to the Disturbed ward. But McMurphy won’t let Scanlon change the subject and brings it back to the World Series. McMurphy asks who will vote for him when he brings it up again, and is in disbelief when only half agree. He says he hasn’t missed a World Series in years and he’d sooner kick down the door and escape than miss one. Fredrickson mockingly asks how McMurphy would escape, and McMurphy responds that he’d break the mesh on the window. Cheswick says it’s special-made, and won’t break. McMurphy decides he would move the giant control panel and crawl out behind it, but everyone agrees that it’s far too heavy for one man to lift. McMurphy bets them all he can lift it, and though they all know it’s impossible, McMurphy tries so hard that his hands are bloodied and for a fleeting second they think he might do it. He walks away angrily claiming he tried, “I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?”

Bromden recalls the old hospital where there was no television, swimming pools or chicken served twice a month. He thinks about how when the Public Relations man comes through and gives tours of the hospital, he says how far they’ve come and that no one would want to escape form a place this nice. Bromden is finding it more and more difficult to see in the fog, but he believes the fog makes him feel safe. He thinks that McMurphy doesn’t understand that he’s pulling all of them out of the fog, and in doing so making them easier “to get at”. Bromden hears a shuffle from upstairs into the lobby, and he learns from listening to the aides that Rawler the Squawler cut off his testicles and bled to death.

The group meeting begins and Bromden feels the fog starting to thicken in the room, which he believes Nurse Ratched turned on because she’s going to do something to McMurphy. Bromden can vaguely hear what’s going on in the meeting: talking about Billy Bibbit’s stutter and his issues with women and his mother. Bromden feels afraid of how lost he feels in the fog and in his hallucination he sees the men start to fly past him. He figures this is what it must feel like to be dead or a vegetable. Then he hears McMurphy talk and starts to feel like he’s drifting out of the fog—he wishes McMurphy would leave him alone.

McMurphy proposes another vote about watching the World Series, and Bromden watches as all twenty Acutes raise their hands. Nurse Ratched responds that the proposal is defeated because McMurphy needs a majority and there are forty patients on the ward, and none of the Chronics voted. McMurphy is incensed, but finally persuades Bromden to raise his hand. Nurse Ratched says it’s too late.

When it’s time for afternoon chores, McMurphy says it’s game-time and he sits down in front of the TV and turns it on. Ratched cuts off the power, but McMurphy stays seated and the other Acutes pull up chairs and join him in front of the blank TV. Nurse Ratched yells at them all to get back to work and screams at them for breaking the rules. McMurphy wins his bet about making Ratched lose control. Bromden says anyone looking in would think the whole room was filled with lunatics.