One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Notes

Characters:

Sam /Mr. Bromden (main character)

  • quiet and cagey

    • makes people think they’re deaf and dumb

  • wears canvas shoes

  • half Indian

  • used to go hunting with his father (papa)

  • first time in an institute of psychology

  • been in the ward the longest

the black boys

  • wearing white suits

  • commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before they get caught

  • don’t think before they speak

  • eat Mr. Bromdens food when they are meant to bring it to him

Miz Ratched / Big Nurse:

  • chilling aura

  • orange lips and nails

  • foul smile

  • carries a woven wicker basket in the shape of a toolbox with a hemp handle

    • filled only with parts used in her job

  • wears rubber heels

  • spends the day at the nurses’ station desk looking out her window and making notes on what goes on in front of her.

  • her face is smooth, calculated, and precision made

  • two faced

    • “she’s so furious. She’s swelling up, swells till her back’s splitting out the white uniform and she’s let her arms section out long enough to wrap around the three of them five, six times. She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head. […] So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling to big a load”     pgs 4-5

R. P. McMurphy:

  • loud

  • redhead

  • talks down on patients

  • iron on his boot heels

  • big and beat up hands

  • talks like how bromdens father used to

    • voice loud and full of hell

  • laughs - first real laugh bromdens heard in years

  • wearing work-farm pants and shirt that are the colour of watered milk

  • neck and arms are the colour of oxblood leather from working in the fields

  • has a primer black motorcycle cap stuck in his hair

  • has a leather jacket over one arm

  • gray and dusty boots

  • hates farming

Cheswick:

  • seeing what is on McMurphys cards worsened his condition

Ellis:

  • came in as an acute but due to being overloaded in the “Shock Shop”

Ruckly

  • bald

  • front of his face had an oily purple bruise with two button sized plugs stitched above each eye

  • eyes are smoked up and gray

  • cold fingers

  • has a wife that he hates

    • at the mention of his wife he turns red and his veins clog up at one end

    • bubbles squeeze out the corner of his lips

    • makes a little whistling sound in his throat

  • passes out when he speaks

  • low choking noise that makes skin crawl when he speaks

  • became a chronic after being overloaded in different ways

    •  mistake with head installations

Colonel Matterson:

  • old

  • petrified cavalry soldier from WW1

  • lifts the skirts of passing nurses with his cane

  • teaches some kind of history

  • oldest chronic but has not been there longest

  • brought in by his wife

Setting:

  • Institute of Psychology

  • Dorms

  • Halls

  • Nurses’ station

    • glass

    • has a desk and a window

  • mop closet

  • day room

    • mixing jigsaw puzzles

  • Shaving room

    • patients are held down to be shaved against their will

    • prevent patients from screaming or speaking by gagging them

  • shock shop

  • seclusion

    • pee stinking mattress

  • shower room

Patient treatment

  • abused in the shaving room

  • fed egg with toast or cold, unsalted mush

  • forced to take pills causing them to dissociate

  • locked unconscious in the seclusion room for .5-1 hour

  • not much to do

Terms:

  • Acutes

    • patients doctors deem sick enough to be fixed

    • practice arm wrestling and card tricks where you add, subtract, and count down

    • move around a lot

    • tell jokes

  • Chronics

    • keep patients from walking around the streets

    • given a bad name but are good

    • divided into walkers, wheelers, and vegetables

      • walkers can get around if fed

      • wheelers

    • Chronics are “machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired”

    • youngest chronics are Ellis and Ruckly

    • Colonel Matterson is the oldest

  • Acutes can become chronics over time

  • chronics and acutes don’t generally mingle

  • chronics are

Ward Schedule:

  • 8:00 am - Ward doors open

  • mixing jigsaw puzzles in day room after breakfast

Quotes:

“they can’t tell so much about you if you got your eyes cover”    pg 4

“They should of knew better’n to group up and mumble together when she was due to ward” pg 4

Short forms

Literary devices:

  • imagery

    • pg 4-5

    • pg 6

    • pg 11