One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Summary | Part 1 Summary

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest begins on a Monday morning. The morning cleaning crew at the mental hospital, the black boys, are finishing up their cleaning duties, hating every moment of their miserable jobs, the early hour, and the start of a new week of the mindless, vile drudgery of cleaning up after the mentally ill. The narrator is "Chief Broom," one of the inmates at the mental hospital. The Chief is a massive Native American man, who pretends to be deaf and mute. After some harassment by the cleaning crew, he is given a mop and told to get to work cleaning a spot.

Soon after he begins to mop, Nurse Ratched appears. She is the head nurse at the hospital, and when she catches the young black men talking in a group instead of cleaning, she begins to fly into a rage. The men are spared her wrath by the other inmates, who begin to enter the hallway. She gives them nothing more than a curt reprimand and goes to her office. Before she leaves however, she tells the men to shave the Chief before breakfast. Chief Broom panics and tries to hide himself in the broom cupboard. He knows that when he is shaved before breakfast, he doesn't have the strength to fight the attendants, who are apt to switch the electric shaver for one of "their machines." One of the attendants finds him in the closet, and takes him to get shaved. As hard as the Chief tries to struggle against the fear that grips him, panic begins to close in, and the Chief screams and struggles to get away; finally he is tranquilized by Nurse Ratched.

As a result of his outburst, the Chief is locked in solitary confinement and is not the first one to see the new Admission, as he usually is. All the same, when he hears the new arrival speaking, he realizes that this is not the usual sad, scared mental case. McMurphy comes into the ward alert and chipper, mouthing off to the wardens and nurses, and chatting breezily with the other patients. He introduces himself to everybody, and tells his story to anyone who wants to listen. He'd been working on a farm, a prison work camp, when he'd gotten into some trouble for fighting and womanizing, and ended up being declared a psychopath by the court.

The day room of the hospital ward is divided into two sides, the Acutes and the Chronics. The Acutes are those who still have a hope of being "cured," and the Chronics are those whose brains have been altered beyond repair through shock therapy and tranquilizers. McMurphy glances around the room and heads for the Acutes' side. He inquires laughingly as to who the biggest loony in the whole place is. He first asks Billy Bibbit, a thin, nervous young man with a speech impediment, who, stuttering, points him to Harding, the president of the Patient's Council and the only patient with a college diploma.

The two men engage in an argument of witty banter to settle the question of who is the biggest "bull goose loony" in the hospital; McMurphy comes out the winner, Harding admits defeat, and the ice is broken. The men have never seen anyone like McMurphy in the hospital. Once he has finished introducing himself to the Acutes, he makes his way over to the Chronics. He introduces himself personally to each man, explaining as he goes that he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of poker and that he has been persecuted mercilessly by the law as a result.

He finally gets to Chief Broom, who is a Chronic, and stops in front of him. Staring at him, McMurphy erupts into exuberant laughter. He gives the Chief a wink, as if to tell him that he isn't fooled by the deaf and dumb act, and reaches out to shake the large Indian's hand. Billy explains that his name is in fact Chief Bromden, and that his father was chief of an Indian tribe; everyone calls him Chief Broom because the aides always have him sweeping or mopping.

Just then, Nurse Ratched enters. She reprimands McMurphy for not allowing the aides to bathe him, and reminds him of the rules they must all abide by. McMurphy does not fight her, but gives her one of his wide, open smiles, and a wink similar to the one he gave the Chief, as though he knows her secret.

At exactly 1:00 p.m., the Group Meeting begins. They begin where they left off at the last meeting, with Harding's sexual issues with his wife. Nurse Ratched reminds them that they'd been talking about Harding's feelings of inadequacy and his fears that other men were staring at his wife's ample breasts when they were out together. McMurphy takes the opportunity to make a snide comment and becomes the focus of the meeting. He explains with a deadpan sincerity that his previous doctor had diagnosed him as a psychopath due to his overzealous sexual habits. By the time he is through telling his story, even the doctor is trying hard to hide his laughter. Nurse Ratched is livid, but tries to calmly steer the conversation back to Harding. At 2:00, the meeting is over, and the men all look sheepish at having spent the past hour poring over the most intimate details of their friend's life. They leave, eager to get away from Harding, who has been the subject of the day's criticism. Only Harding and McMurphy are left, and McMurphy sits for a while, thinking, before going over and sitting down in front of the shell-shocked Harding. McMurphy explains to him what a pecking party is, drawing an obvious parallel to the tone of the meeting. He explains that when one chicken gets a nick, the others see the blood and begin to tear the wounded chicken to death for no apparent reason. In the process they all get bloodied, and the whole flock becomes the target of another flock; in that way, entire species of animals are wiped out. Harding maintains that the meeting is for their own benefit, and that Nurse Ratched wants only what is best for each of them. McMurphy brushes aside his theory, calling her a ball-cutter, a bitch, and a buzzard. Harding finally relents, agreeing that she is much worse than what McMurphy has accused her of. The men all concur, but don't see any way of changing the situation. McMurphy bets them all $5 that by the end of the week he will be able to ruffle the feathers of the icy Nurse Ratched.

They play cards until 9:30, when the lights go out and it's time for bed in the ward. As they play cards, McMurphy wins every man's cigarettes, and then allows each one to win back at least some of their ration of cigarettes before the night is out.

The next morning, McMurphy is up even before the Chief, who is always the first patient out of bed. He is singing, a sound, like his booming laugh, that hasn't been heard before in the ward. The men all stare wonderingly at each other; why haven't the wardens stopped his racket? This man is different from the others, they know, but exactly what makes him different they haven't yet fully understood.

When Nurse Ratched comes in, McMurphy is singing in the hallway, wearing only his cap and a towel around his loins. She is shocked by the sight of his almost naked body, and when she tells him that he can't be walking around the ward in a towel, he promptly begins to remove the towel. She becomes further flustered, and he tells her casually that his clothes had been stolen in the middle of the night. She is at boiling point, but manages to contain herself enough to ask one of the wardens to bring a new set of clothes for him. The other patients begin to stream in, and with a supreme effort, she brings back the mask of a smile to her stone cold face.

That morning at breakfast McMurphy is more boisterous than ever, believing Nurse Ratched to be even easier to get a rise out of than he'd expected. However, during the course of the morning, she matches him by out-rationalizing him over the volume of the radio, which he'd asked her to turn down so that the men could play cards more comfortably. He retaliates however, by convincing the doctor, during his private therapy session, that there should be two rooms, one for the elderly, and one for the younger card players, with corresponding levels of music. For an instant, there is defeat in her eyes. It is only an instant, though, and she quickly rallies, taking control of the situation once again.

The next few days are occupied by a marathon Monopoly game, and the Chief describes them as days that are filled with fog. He describes how sometimes Nurse Ratched speeds up time, and somehow slows it down. McMurphy is collecting bets for the World Series. The next day at a group meeting he calls for a vote as to whether they can change the TV channel so as to be able to watch the game. Nurse Ratched is against the idea, but McMurphy puts the vote to the men anyway. Unable to bring themselves to run the risk of incurring the wrath of the nurse, only Cheswick votes in favor of the channel change. McMurphy is horrified by the men's complacency, and for days won't speak to any of them. Nurse Ratched has scored a large point.

When he finally begins to speak again, he is surly and speaks only of busting himself and Cheswick out to watch the game. The other men taunt him, asking him how he'll do it. He tells them defiantly that he could break the windows of the ward with a chair and climb out. Cheswick tells him that the windows are break-proof, and would certainly not break with a chair or even a table. After a few more negated suggestions, McMurphy's bright eyes settle on a huge metal control panel. The men all laugh at McMurphy thinking he would be able to lift something so heavy. McMurphy accepts the challenge, and begins to take bets. When all the men have bet against him, he walks over, plants his feet firmly in front of the panel, and begins to try to lift. For a few intense moments, as McMurphy's hands are being ripped to shreds, and his veins look as though they will certainly pop out of his neck, they hear the sound of cement cracking, and it seems as if he may actually lift the panel from the floor. Finally, with a gasp, McMurphy staggers back from the massive panel. He silently throws the money he has lost in the bet on the floor. As he leaves the room, he turns to glare at them, commenting gruffly to the gawking men, "But I tried, though. Goddamnit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"

The following day, the day before the World Series is to start, McMurphy requests a re-vote at the group meeting. Nurse Ratched finally agrees, and one by one, each man raises his hand. Everyone has been deeply affected by McMurphy's display the previous day, each one moved to at least try to win this one small battle against the nurse. Nurse Ratched smiles a small but triumphant smile. There are only 20 votes for the channel change, and 40 men. This does not constitute a majority, she explains. McMurphy explodes, outraged that she would count the Chronics, who are all but vegetables, as part of the vote. He knows that he has been beat, and the men dejectedly lower their hands. Nurse Ratched closes the meeting, but then McMurphy comes alive. He goes from one Chronic to the other, trying to find some flicker of recognition in their eyes, enough at least to get just one of them to raise a hand. Finally he gets to the Chief, and almost inadvertently, the massive hand raises high into the air. The men begin to hoot and holler, but Nurse Ratched says, with infinite calm, that the vote had already been closed.

The following day, when the time for the game to start draws near, McMurphy puts away his cleaning supplies, turns on the television, and sits down on the couch. The whole ward is watching Nurse Ratched's reaction, and her neck begins to turn a deep red. She slowly, and with as much calm as she can muster, goes over and turns off the television. She orders McMurphy back to work, but he just sits there, staring at a blank television screen. Suddenly, Harding too puts down his cleaning supplies. He pulls up a chair next to McMurphy and stares intently at the blank screen. The other men begin to do the same thing, simply staring at the blank screen, in silent protest, amid the shrill orders of Nurse Ratched to get back to work.