Journal #9: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Section 1: Knowledge and Understanding (Outside of Class Response)

“Before noontime they’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t got it turned up full; it’s not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but for the time being I’m interested in this new man (42)”

The “fog machine” mentioned in this passage is a recurring feature and appears somewhat frequently throughout the early chapters of the book. As to this point in the book, it is not quite certain to the audience whether this fog machine is a literal thing that the institution switches on and off, or merely just another figment of Chief’s imagination. Whether intentional or not, this “fog machine” is almost always connected to the feeling of lost or despair from the Chief’s point of perspective. It also seems to possess a not tranquilizing, but deadening power over Chief.

Right now, she’s got the fog machine switched on, and it’s rolling in so fast I can’t see a thing but her face, rolling in thicker and thicker, and I feel as hopeless and dead as I felt happy a minute ago, when she gave that little jerk—even more hopeless than ever before, on account of I know now there is no real help against her or her Combine. McMurphy can’t help any more than I could. Nobody can help. And the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in (101). Reading this passage, I could almost imagine Chief trying to describe the fog, but when he realizes he is getting pulled under, he starts this uncontrollable rambling before completely submitting to the. This reminds me in a way of how person who has fallen into the water might call out flail wildly before finally losing the will to fight and is completely dragged under the murky depths of the water. Another time, Chief talks about the lost of control and lost of perception of time once the “fog machine” was “turned on”, About the only time we get any let-up from this time control is in the fog; then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everything else (71).

By this point in the story, it seems evident to me that whenever the “fog machine” is “switched on”, Chief seems to lose focus of himself and fade into a trance that he cannot break however hard he fights. In the quote above, he explains how one day he will decide to “quit straining (42)” and submit completely to the fog similar to some of the other members of the mental institution.  It could almost be said that the fog represents Chief’s escape from reality in his times of despair. He locks himself into this mental fog, considering it a safe hiding pace from reality.  

These mentions of the “fog” are applicable to the daily lives of many people. It is human nature to run away from fear and into our own mental “fog”. We hide in it to escape from our problems to avoid the pain of failure that follows. Yet if we do not reemerge to face our fears, we will drift deeper and further into this escape from this numbness and eventually “let [ourselves] go completely (42)”.

Section 2: (Outside of Class Response)

Through the unique perspective and narration of the character Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey weaves a tale of the intrusion of newcomer McMurphy into the dull lives of the mental institution patients. The book is essentially a glimpse into Chief’s mind as a narrator to this story and an observer to the events he narrates. Although the author rarely directly describes Chief as a character, many of Chief’s characteristics are revealed through Kesey’s portrayal of Chief’s personal voice in this non-sequential and almost rambling manner, which adds an element of interest to the story.

I’m the last one. Still strapped in the chair in the corner. McMurphy stops when he gets to me and hooks his thumbs in his pockets again and leans back to laugh, like he sees something funnier about me than about anybody else. All of a sudden I was scared he was laughing because he knew the way I was sitting there with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them, staring straight ahead as though I couldn’t hear a thing, was all an act.

“Hooeee,” he said, “look what we got here.”

I remember all this part real clear. I remember the way he closed one eye and tipped his head back and looked down across that healing wine-colored scar on his nose, laughing at me. I thought at first that he was laughing because of how funny it looked, an Indian’s face and black, oily Indian’s hair on somebody like me. I thought maybe he was laughing at how weak I looked. But then’s when I remember thinking that he was laughing because he wasn’t fooled for one minute by my deaf-and- dumb act; it didn’t make any difference how cagey the act was, he was onto me and was laughing and winking to let me know it (26).

Throughout the first part of the story, many of the characters have developed their individual traits, from the rowdy McMurphy to the unstable Billy. Yet Chief, who is supposedly the main character, is shown to have very little defining characteristics other than the “big deaf Indian” that the others see and describe him as.

Although there are rarely any direct references to Chief as a character, from these little snippets of thoughts from Chief’s mind, the author is able to cleverly reveal Chief as an intelligent and insightful character. In the passage above, it is shown that Chief’s disabilities were “all an act”, a cover that allows him to observe the other patients and the on goings around him.

Kesey also focuses on very fine details in Chief’s narrations, such as the specific description of McMurphy’s “wine-colored scar” in the passage above. The fact that Kesey drops these subtle descriptions into random parts of the story really brings out the element of realism, and allows the audience to feel as if they are viewing these events through an living, breathing, person. 

Kesey’s use of unique perspective and fine details, aided by a somewhat warped imagination on Chief’s part, provides a fascinating narrative to the story.

Section 3: (In Class Response) 

Consider Bromden both as a character and a symbol. What conclusions can we come to at this point in the novel? Refer to specific circumstances in your response.

In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the character Chief is an intelligent and thoughtful character under the disguise of a “big deaf Indian”. He represents the loss of identity, like a blind man wandering through his mental fog, uncertain of where the line lies between reality and his own imagination. Similar to the other characters in the story, Chief is subjected to the control of Big Nurse in every aspect of his life, hiding in shadows on every occasion to avoid standing out among the other characters. ”And later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I’d take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was. There’d be my face in the mirror, dark and hard with big, high cheekbones like the cheek underneath them had been hacked out with a hatchet, eyes all black and hard and mean-looking, just like Papa’s eyes or the eyes of all those tough, mean-looking Indians you see on TV, and I’d think, That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn’t even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever have been me. How can McMurphy be what he is (139)?” As time goes on, he is so used to fading in with the rest of the patients, he loses sense of his own identity and instead becomes what other want to see – a big deaf Indian.