Flew Over the Cuckoo\'s Nest

¶ … Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

At the end of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Billy Bibbit commits suicide. In this response, you must argue whether or not Nurse Ratched purposefully goaded him to this action (in other words, she knew he was going to kill him self in doctor's office.) use textual evidence to support your case and discuss how your interpretation changes the ending in relation to the opposing interpretation.

In the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest it seems clear that Nurse Ratched purposefully goads Billy Bibbit to commit suicide. Bibbit is one of Randle McMurphy's greatest disciples. Even when the other inmates begin to resent McMurphy, because they feel as though he is 'milking' them for money, Bibbit holds true to his faith in McMurphy. Bibbit has been a virgin all of his life, because he is locked in a hopelessly enmeshed relationship with his mother. He gave up his one chance at a normal, sexual relationship with a woman when he cast off his fiancee, as a result of maternal pressure. When he is finally able to experience sexual pleasure with a prostitute named Candy Starr, as a result of McMurphy's actions, he feels both elated and guilty.

The reader is aware that Nurse Ratched is already trying to sway the men against McMurphy because of the way she points out during a group counseling session that McMurphy is not a saint and does things out of self-interest. She is an expert in manipulation because, rather than simply defaming McMurphy, she dispassionately says she is just trying to point out that he is not selfless, which Bibbit denies. By encouraging Bibbit to commit suicide by telling him that she will inform on him to his mother, Ratched knows that she is making Bibbit's worst fear come true.

Knowing that Ratched is willing to sacrifice a human being to win her power struggle with the inmate is a stunning condemnation of the system of mental health care in America, as opposed to the idea that the 'Big Nurse' merely acted incompetently. A more benign interpretation suggests that the way that inmates are treated, although misguided, is not the result of a morally bankrupt and utterly unredeemable system. It shows that Chief Bromden's fantasies about the hospital as a Combine are accurate, and rather than being insane, the Chief is all too sane.

Consider the Character of Chief Bromden and his path towards sanity. Trace his growth as a character by discussing the various stages he goes through. What are the key scenes and how do these scenes show him coming out of his defenses?

As a Native American, Chief Bromden is a living representation of the skewed measures of sanity in America. Surely any Native American who is happy and nonviolent must be insane, given the oppression Native Americans have endured over the course of their history. Bromden begins the novel utterly emotionally disconnected. He pretends to be deaf and dumb, so that he will be left alone by the patients and staff. He is the narrator of the novel, so the reader is privileged to understand how sane he really is, despite the fact he has been subjected to horrible electroshock treatments, which are administered more as punishments than as treatment.

Chief Bromden is diagnosed as paranoid, although he really seems to see things more clearly than anyone else on the ward, even McMurphy. The Chief does show some features of mental illness, however. He often sees things in a fog, and has trouble feeling emotionally connected to disturbing events at first. He begins the novel unable to laugh, smile, or remember much of his past, and he has very disturbing dreams. His watchfulness, however, makes him a good rather than an unreliable narrator, despite his mental problems.

Chief Bromden says that the hospital is not a place to make people saner, but to encourage people to conform and to fit into an insane world, which he calls the Combine. This is like a machine making whole grains into wheat on a farm. Bromden's first encounters with Randle McMurphy are key steps in his path back to sanity and regaining a sense of himself as an autonomous person, rather than as a subject of the Combine. For example, McMurphy is the first inmate to understand that the Chief is not really deaf, and when McMurphy brushes his teeth with soap, in defiance of ward rules, Bromden almost smiles for the first time in years. Later, for the first time the Chief realizes that he has free will when he votes for McMurphy's suggestion that the ward should watch baseball on TV. When McMurphy begins to arrange a fishing trip for the ward, Bromden suddenly remembers why he has chosen to assume a cover of deafness and dumbness -- when his tribe's land was being sold from under him as a boy, the white men that came acted as though he had not spoken a word. He finally speaks for the first time in years when McMurphy offers him a piece of gum.