In fact, everyone at the hospital, from the "black boys" who do the dirty work to the student nurses and Doctor Spivey, seem cowed and even imprisoned by the domineering personality of the Big Nurse. Enter the lone (I'm tempted here to say cowboy or samurai) convict, Randle McMurphy, who got committed from a prison work farm thinking it would be an easier time in a hospital, not knowing the seriousness of what he's in for. He's a big guy exuding machismo, but more importantly, he doesn't like authority and in fact led a prison revolt in a communist p.o.w. camp some years before in Korea. No sooner does he enter the ward than he begins subverting the Big Nurse's all-encompassing domination, leading a kind of revolt.
It would be easy to focus on the "good vs. evil" aspects of this novel, as so many others have done, but that would be glossing over the real substance of the story. What we have in the ward are two extremes, McMurphy's take-the-bull-by-the-horns approach to life, and everyone else's running from life like fearful little rabbits. McMurphy's bound to get himself into more trouble than is good for someone, but the others are likely to sink out of sight, to disappear from life. Indeed, no one but McMurphy is able to laugh, until well into the story.
The Chief, as sharp a narrator as he is, has insulated himself not only by playing his role as a deaf-mute, but by hiding in his "fog." He literally sees fog creeping through the ward during stressful times, though he doesn't seem to make the connection of cause and effect. He thinks the Nurse has a fog machine like the one he saw in the military, and chooses to roll in fog to play with their minds and control them. He hears the sounds of machinery in the walls, listening to their every noise--which may not be entirely far from the truth, some hospitals have been known to have microphones--and playing other tricks on them. (Life in a paramilitary institutional setting will do this to you.) He sees everyone as having had devices installed in them to control their behavior, and he believes society, the "Combine" as he calls it, demands this. But things start changing with McMurphy on the ward: "When nothing else is going on, you usually got the fog or the time control to contend with, but today something's happened: there hasn't been any of these things worked on us all day, not since shaving. This afternoon everything is matching up. When the swing shift comes on duty the clock says four-thirty, just like it should" (71-72).
One cannot discuss this novel without mention of the barbarism it depicts. The "care" provided by the staff of the hospital is nothing short of horrendous and will do anything but help the patients to return to society. The Chief, for example, has undergone EST, electro-shock therapy. He doesn't remember how often this has happened, but we are given an indication by the number of wads of gum stuck under his bed. One night an orderly cleans hundreds of them off the bottom of his bed, wondering where he got them all over the years. Later, when the Chief for the first time fights off the effects of the EST and comes to consciousness shortly afterwards, the nurse in the Disturbed Ward gives him a piece of gum, telling him that she remembers that's what he likes. Though the characters and their motivations may be exaggerated in this novel, it's not far from the truth. In many ways this novel could also be seen as an indictment of mental health care. "Treatments" like EST too often are really punishments for bothering some authority figure, and (on a side note) what scares me is that as of this writing these methods are coming back into vogue yet again, as always, with more "refinements." Make no mistake, this is simple electrocution. It is not therapy, it is injury. And in the novel, the Big Nurse spends her every day looking for a reason to use it against those in her care.
As McMurphy unfortunately finds out, the Big Nurse has many tools at her disposal, including lobotomy (essentially a death sentence) and the refusal to allow a commitment's release, not to mention her endless belittling of her patients. What follows is a war of wills, but what is most important is not the outcome for either of them, but for the rest of the ward's humanity, their will to live. The Chief, though his fog doesn't vanish miraculously, begins to reason more and see chinks in the armor of his captors:
Even McMurphy doesn't seem to know he's been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he's bothered by it. He's making sure none of the staff sees him bothered by anything; he knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered (104).
One could argue that the Big Nurse isn't given a fair shake and shown to be human, and in fact if you've seen the movie adaptation of this novel, she was allowed a little more empathy in that version of the story. However, I prefer her being depicted one-sided, as a force of nature. The story isn't about her, it's about the mental patients, and their learning that to run and hide from life is futile. Not everyone finds a happy ending. Two patients commit suicide, and McMurphy meets his end. But the Chief stuns everyone, and other patients get the guts to leave. Dr. Spivey grows some balls, and the Big Nurse and her doling out of pain is fought to at least a draw. Perhaps she represents entropy more than anything, and the patients need to fight their way free, as free as is humanly possible from certain decay, and to live as human beings. To hide away from life is to die, but as the novel shows, it's never too late to change your mind.
All contents, except where otherwise noted, are copyright Andrew Lee Hunn.