FREE ESSAY ON BROMDEN AND HIS CHANGING MIND

BROMDEN AND HIS CHANGING MIND

Outline 
Thesis: In One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey, Chief Bromden is a character who
has to work his way back to being and acting like a real human after so many years of
being "dehumanized" (Porter 49) into a machine created by the evil Nurse Ratched. 
I. Bromden in the beginning A. Dehumanized by Nurse Ratched 1. structured 2. forbids
laughing 3. controlling B. The effect that the Nurse and the ward has on Bromden 1. could
not smell 2. thinks of himself as little 3. hides in the fog 4. fears everything 5. sees
himself as comic 6. hallucinates II. Bromden in progress A. Gives up deaf and dumb B.
Great turn - around C. Begins to smell things D. Regains his laugh E. Loosens up III.
Bromden at the end A. Bromden escapes B. Bromden is a hero C. McMurphy is death; Bromden
strength D. Bromden becomes big IV. Conclusion A. Modern world; machines destroy B. Nurse
Ratched the machine C. Modern world is the combine 
Bromden and his Changing Mind In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Chief
Bromden is a character who has to work his way back to being and acting like a real human
after so many years of being "dehumanized" (Porter 49) into a machine created by the evil
Nurse Ratched. Bromden begins to change as soon as McMurphy tries to get the guys on the
ward to open up and Bromden is the one who gets the most out of Mr. McMurphy's "therapy"
(97). Chief Bromden finally beats the evil nurse Miss Ratched by escaping from the
institution. So "Broken men - however frightened, beleaguered, splintered, and
dehumanized - can be restored to manhood and wholeness" (95). A six foot seven inch
Indian named Chief Bromden pretense to be a deaf mute after he watched his father, Chief
Tee Ah Millatoona, get ruined by his white wife. Government agents often came to visit
his father about his property. The agents would walk right past Bromden like he was not
even there. When people stopped reacting to Bromden, he stopped reacting to the people.
At the Combine which was the name for the ward, Bromden underwent treatment for his
medical condition. The Combine split the patients into two categories, the Acutes and the
Chronics. The Acutes were the patients that had the ability to getting better while the
Chronics had no chance of getting better because of how serious their medical condition
is. In the Combine everybody definitely considers Bromden as a Chronic. While in there
and everybody thinking he is a deaf mute, Bromden hear's information from other peoples
conversations that he is not suppose to hear. Throughout the novel Chief Bromden feels
small and he is very easily intimidated. Without the help of the newest guy on the ward,
Randel Patrick McMurphy, he would of never been able to gain up enough strength to feel
good about himself again and escape the ward like he did in the end of the novel.
McMurphy helps Bromden tremendously plus everybody else that is on the ward. He guides
everybody to be human. McMurphy says Miss Ratched, the Nurse of the Combine, gains her
power by making others feel like they have less. She controls everything they do from
when they wake up to when they go to bed. McMurphy rebels against Miss Ratched and tries
to get the guys on the ward to stand up for themselves too. The patients on the ward are
not aloud to laugh loosely according to Miss Ratched. McMurphy says when a man loses his
ability to laugh he is not a man anymore. Most of the patients on the ward are
dehumanized by Nurse Ratched controlling and orderly attitude. In the novel Bromden shows
the most change from McMurphy's help. Enough change to come back after escaping and
retell the story. In the beginning of the novel Bromden was at the point where he was
completely dehumanized by Nurse Ratched. Miss. Ratched was the main cause of his
dehumanization, but not the start of it. It began is his early childhood with the
conflict between his father, the Indian chief, and his white mother that had control over
his father. As it says in the Discovering Authors Modules: "Mrs. Bromden was a
domineering women who cared little for her husband's Indian heritage and was instrumental
in selling his land to the government.". Miss Ratched is in a way just like Bromden's
mother. The way his mother wore down his father by making him feel small and little is
the same thing Nurse Ratched is doing to Bromden while on the ward (Wallace 8). After
Bromden's father was dehumanized by his wife it is Bromden's turn, assuming from
Discovering Authors Modules that this "novel is a fictionalized account of his childhood
experience" (8). If the story Bromden told us about his early childhood background is
true and sit is parrallel to the plot of the novel then we can assume that Bromden is
going to get dehumanized by Nurse Ratched. So this is how Bromden starts out the novel,
dehumanized and feeling smaller and weaker. While Bromden is feeling dehumanized and
small Miss Ratched has the ward well structured and running smooth. She has everything
running on time and if something is out of place she will fix it right away because to
her there is no such thing as unorganized (Kesey 26). As Porter points out, since Miss
Ratched is an ex-army nurse she is used to the high demands on order. Her life was always
structured and she expects everybody and everything else to be the same way (48). With
structure there comes control, because structure is highly unlikely to exist without some
sort of control. If there was no control over the patients on the ward then there
definitely would be no structure because that is what the patients are there for, a
little structure in their lives. Throughout the beginning of the novel Bromden was always
complaining that Nurse Ratched has too much control over things. For example, in the
novel, Bromden says Nurse Ratched can speed up time or slow down time depending what she
wanted to do (Kesey 73). He also says that she is controlling a fog machine when she sits
behind the window at her control panel and sometimes it could last hours on end (75). So
with all the control she has over the ward the patients really feel pressured to do what
ever she says. The one thing that Nurse Ratched has control of that really hurts the
Combine is laughter. As Porter says, everybody sees Miss Ratched as a machine and not as
a human. They think she is dehumanized herself along with them. To Bromden the tip of
each "finger was the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a sodering
iron" (Kesey 4) (49). Bromden and all the other patients on the ward are not thought of
as human beings. Miss Ratched thinks of them as just objects or pieces of machinery, so
she treated them like pieces of machinery. With structure and control a playing a big
part in the daily lives of the men on the ward, Miss Ratched does not see how the
pressure of her control and wanting a structured environment had an negative mental
effect on the patients. Bromden does not have that free laugh. As with McMurphy,
Bromden's "therapist" he had a laugh with no resistance. Porter says, "The inability to
laugh therefore is a gauge of the combine's pressure ..." (97). The patients on the ward
never just laugh loosely because they feel the pressure of Nurse Ratched when she is
sitting behind the glass window of her office looking at them. With the resistance to
laugh Bromden also could not smell the usual things that normal men can smell. All that
he could smell was the oil from the machines and the heated machinery (Porter 30). He
could not only smell the machines, he often hallucinated allot about them also. Sometimes
he would see machines in his room at night when everybody else was asleep. The chief is a
"comic character" who literally sees "microphones in the broom handles, wires in the
walls, and pernicious devices in the electric shavers" (Wallace 8). Bromden at this point
is not human. Leeds says "the Combine, committed as it is to the supremacy of technology
over humanity, extends its influence by dehumanizing men and making them machines" (20).
The pressure from Nurse Ratched dehumanized Bromden to where now he begins to see and
smell things that a normal human being would not. The final effect that Miss Ratched has
on Bromden is his fear of everything. Kesey tries to get the reader to notice real quick
that they are dealing with a scared and intimidated character. He also wants to produces
the impression of a mind that works oddly Kesey opens up the novel with Bromden saying
"They're out there" (3). All these problems that Bromden has comes from Miss Ratched. If
she was not so structured and hung up on control Bromden would not be this weak and
dehumanized. In order for Bromden to gain his strength back from Nurse Ratched's
dehumanization, he has to overcome her control. One way to break the control is learning
how to laugh. When McMurphy and Bromden were up stairs waiting for there shock treatment
McMurphy offered Bromden a piece of gum and he took it then started to laugh. Ronald
Wallace said in Discovering Authors Modules said "The chief must regain his laugh before
he can regain his speech, and his first words to McMurphy when he has stopped laughing
are 'thank you.' Having recovered his comic sense Bromden recovers his health" (9). At
this point Bromden begins to show signs of sanity because he gives up the deaf and dumb
role (Fish 17). As soon as Bromden regains his comic sense and gives up his deaf and dumb
role everything else seems to fall right in place. He begins to smell things a man should
smell. Tanner say's Bromden begins to smell different odors. "... not until McMurphy came
was there 'the man smell of dust and dirt from open fields, and sweat, and work'(98)."
Bromden is determined not to let Nurse Ratched destroy him with her "soul-destroying
method" (ken@hotmail.com 1). Bromden recognizes a picture that he never saw on the wards
wall of a fisherman on a mountain stream. He begins imagining the smells that the
fisherman would smell (31). The things he is smelling now compared to hot oiled machines
are more natural and relaxing. Tanner states that "This reawaked sensitivity to the world
of nature, his home environment, is a positive sign that Bromden is developing a
resistance to the machine world of the hospital." (32) which means that Bromden is now
beginning to resist Nurse Ratched's control she has over him. Now that Bromden is
creating a resistance to Nurse Ratched he is finding out there is more to life than just
the institution, and McMurphy tries to show him this by taking some guys on the ward,
plus Bromden, on a fishing trip. On their way they stooped at a gas station and two
attendants gave McMurphy a hard time about showing up with a bunch of loonies. The
patients in the car got depressed because they know what is going on. McMurphy sees in
the car that the guys are getting pretty much ashamed for themselves and wanting to say
screw it all and go home. From Discovering Authors Modules Ronald Wallace explained that
when McMurphy saw this he helps the inmates gain more pride by freighting the attendants.
He tells the attendants what the inmates are in for, describing it with great detail
hoping to frighten the attendants into thinking they are so nuts they could flip out and
kill them any second. "McMurphy gives him the example of standing up to and occasionally
beating the apparently all-powerful Combine" (Macky 4712). Between the black boys and the
other patience on the ward Bromden gets picked on right in front of his face just as the
two attendants picked on them when they were in the car. McMurphy gave him one example of
standing up to that kind of punishment. So no matter how much Bromden was dehumanized by
all the punishment the Combine had given him, he did not let that ruin his whole life.
Even though he was considered a chronic which meant there was no help for him mentally he
is improving as a human being from McMurphy's help. McMurphy is helping Bromden to
improve by giving him a little pride for himself. The end of Bromden "therapy" (Porter
97) McMurphy has brought Bromden back to strength again. The guys on the ward were
getting checked and cleaned for crabs (Kesey 260). One of the patients on the ward named
George was scared to get cleaned by one of the black aids. McMurphy told the aid just to
forget about him and move on to the next guy. When the aid refuses McMurphy starts a
fight with him. One of the black aids pin McMurphy down to the floor (261). Right now
Bromden sees himself in a different light then he did before. He begins seeing this when
McMurphy is pinned on the floor by one of the black aids (McCreadie 505). Bromden joins
in the fight to help McMurphy defeat the black boys. After more of the aids got the
situation under control, McMurphy and Bromden were sent up stairs to receive shock
therapy. After the shock therapy McMurphy through a party for the patients just so they
would have some fun before he escapes the next morning. When morning came McMurphy forgot
to leave because he fell asleep and later on he finds out that one of the patients had
killed themselves (Kesey 304). Nurse Ratched blames his death on the whole ward making
everybody fell like it was their fault by them playing God (304). McMurphy gets so angry
that he breaks down her door and ripped her shirt off so her big breast would be shown
(305). Nurse Ratched then orders for McMurphy to have a lobotomy. The next time the
patients see McMurphy is when he is brain dead. At this point Bromden is fully back to
strength again. It is symbolically represented when Bromden tries to put McMurphy's hat
on and it does not fit because he has grown to full size. Peter Fish said at the end of
the book the chief has switched places with McMurphy (17). This means McMurphy is now
becoming weak and he is beginning to lose against the Big Nurse while Bromden is making
progress. McMurphy ultimately loses against Nurse Ratched when she gave him a lobotomy.
When Bromden saw this he felt that since McMurphy helped him out by teaching him to
become more of a human being, he would help him out and not let hum sit there in bed for
the rest of his life and suffer. So Bromden smothered McMurphy with his own pillow.
Ronald Wallace said in Discovering Authors Modules that Bromden is "comic, and he is also
a hero. "I kept getting this notion that I wanted to sign the list. And the more he
talked about fishing for Chinook salmonthe more I wanted to go. I knew it was a fool
thing to want; if I signed up it'd be the same as coming right out and telling everybody
I wasn't deaf. If I'd been hearing all this talk about boats and fishing it'd show I'd
been hearing everything else that'd been said in confidence around me for the past ten
years. And if the Big Nurse found out about that, that I'd heard all the scheming and
treachery that had gone on when she didn't think anybody was listening, she'd hunt me
down with an electric saw, fix me where she knew I was deaf and dumb. Bad as I wanted to
go, it still made me smile a little to think about it: I had to keep on acting deaf if I
wanted to hear at all" (Kesey 197). The quote from the novel above proves since Bromden
has written the novel, it is Bromden himself who exposes his own comedy. The plot traces
Bromdens growth toward the kind of comic perspective that enables him to write such a
novel. When he can turn the combine into a comedy, he has defeated it." In the novel
during the fishing trip Bromden wanted to go, but he had no way of signing up because he
did not want to give up his deaf and dumb role. Bromden learns to look at his life as a
"comic fiction" and then to "transform that fiction into art." After Bromden had
smothered McMurphy he lifted the control panel which McMurphy tried to lift previously in
story. When he picks up the control panel he is overcoming the control that the ward had
on him. He is taking all that control they had over him for so many years and he is
throwing it out of the window. When Bromden escapes he does not see the dog that has
always been around the window, but only the footsteps. Leeds explains that when Bromden
escapes, he is associated with the geese that were flying overhead. The dog that was not
there, but only the footsteps was associated with McMurphy. He says this means that when
Bromden escapes he is really flying over the cuckoo's nest following in McMurphy's
footsteps (29). So by the end of the story it is evident that Bromden did overcome the
control, gained his strength, and returned to his true size. From when McMurphy arrives
at the Combine, to when Bromden makes his escape he is changing all the time. He is
changing for the better. He started out as a machine that just respond to stimuli in the
ward, then he slowly progressed until he had enough strength to make his escape. Bromden
defines the combine as a modal of the world. Miss Ratched wants to robotize the men in
the ward so when they leave they are an example to society (Leeds 20). So no matter how
bad Bromden got dehumanized he succeeded to come back strong. "In the modern world,
machines destroy nature, efficiency comes before beauty and robot-like cooperation is
more valued then the individual freedom" (15). This is the same thing Nurse Ratched is
trying to do to the Combine. She wants everything to run how it is suppose to first, then
if there is free time that comes last. People today are the same way. They want
everything to run perfect with no error. That is why people now build robots to do the
work for us because they realized that people aren't perfect. Now since the robots are
now getting all the jobs allot of people are out of work which means they are now low on
money. Without money you can't do anything in this world because nothing is for free.