One Flew over the cuckoos nest

Question 1

Tone

Answer 1

cynical and allegorical

Question 2

Setting

Answer 2

1950s, mental hospital in Oregon

Question 3

Protagonist

Answer 3

Randal P. McMurphy

Question 4

Chief Bromden

Answer 4

The narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Chief Bromden is the son of the chief of the Columbia Indians and a white woman. He suffers from paranoia and hallucinations, has received multiple electroshock treatments, and has been in the hospital for ten years, longer than any other patient in the ward. Bromden sees modern society as a huge, oppressive conglomeration that he calls the Combine and the hospital as a place meant to fix people who do not conform. Bromden chronicles the story of the mental ward while developing his perceptual abilities and regaining a sense of himself as an individual.

Question 5

Randal McMurphy

Answer 5

The novel’s protagonist. Randle McMurphy is a big, redheaded gambler, a con man, and a backroom boxer. His body is heavily scarred and tattooed, and he has a fresh scar across the bridge of his nose. He was sentenced to six months at a prison work farm, and when he was diagnosed as a psychopath—for “too much fighting and fucking”—he did not protest because he thought the hospital would be more comfortable than the work farm. McMurphy serves as the unlikely Christ figure in the novel—the dominant force challenging the establishment and the ultimate savior of the victimized patients.

Question 6

Nurse Ratched

Answer 6

The head of the hospital ward. Nurse Ratched, the novel’s antagonist, is a middle-aged former army nurse. She rules her ward with an iron hand and masks her humanity and femininity behind a stiff, patronizing facade. She selects her staff for their submissiveness, and she weakens her patients through a psychologically manipulative program designed to destroy their self-esteem. Ratched’s emasculating, mechanical ways slowly drain all traces of humanity from her patients.

Question 7

Dale Harding

Answer 7

An acerbic, college-educated patient and president of the Patients’ Council. Harding helps McMurphy understand the realities of the hospital. Although he is married, Harding is a homosexual. He has difficulty dealing with the overwhelming social prejudice against homosexuals, so he hides in the hospital voluntarily. Harding’s development and the reemergence of his individual self signal the success of McMurphy’s battle against Ratched, especially when Harding checks himself out of the ward and paves the way for the other cured patients to leave.

Question 8

Billy Bibbit

Answer 8

A shy patient. Billy has a bad stutter and seems much younger than his thirty-one years. Billy Bibbit is dominated by his mother, one of Nurse Ratched’s close friends. Billy is voluntarily in the hospital, as he is afraid of the outside world.

Question 9

Dr. Spivey

Answer 9

A mild-mannered doctor who may be addicted to opiates. Nurse Ratched chose Doctor Spivey as the doctor for her ward because he is as easily cowed and dominated as the patients. With McMurphy’s arrival, he, like the patients, begins to assert himself. He often supports McMurphy’s unusual plans for the ward, such as holding a carnival.

Question 10

Charles Cheswick

Answer 10

The first patient to support McMurphy’s rebellion against Nurse Ratched’s power. Cheswick, a man of much talk and little action, drowns in the pool—possibly a suicide—after McMurphy does not support Cheswick when Cheswick takes a stand against Nurse Ratched. Cheswick’s death is significant in that it awakens McMurphy to the extent of his influence and the mistake of his decision to conform.

Question 11

Warren, Washington, Williams, and Geever

Answer 11

Hospital aides. Warren, Washington, and Williams are Nurse Ratched’s daytime aides; Geever is the nighttime aide. Nurse Ratched hired them because they are filled with hatred and will submit to her wishes completely.

Question 12

Candy Starr

Answer 12

A beautiful, carefree prostitute from Portland. Candy Starr accompanies McMurphy and the other patients on the fishing trip, and then comes to the ward for a late-night party that McMurphy arranges.

Question 13

George Sorenson

Answer 13

A hospital patient, a big Swede, and a former seaman. McMurphy recruits George Sorenson to be captain for the fishing excursion. He is nicknamed “Rub-a-Dub George” by the aides because he has an intense phobia toward dirtiness. McMurphy’s defense of George leads McMurphy to his first electroshock treatment.

Question 14

Pete Bancini

Answer 14

A hospital patient who suffered brain damage when he was born. Pete Bancini continually declares that he is tired, and at one point he tells the other patients that he was born dead.

Question 15

Martini

Answer 15

Another hospital patient. Martini lives in a world of delusional hallucinations, but McMurphy includes him in the board and card games with the other patients.

Question 16

Old Blastic

Answer 16

A patient who is a vegetable. Bromden has a prophetic dream about a mechanical slaughterhouse in which Old Blastic is murdered. He wakes up to discover that Old Blastic died in the night.

Question 17

Ellis

Answer 17

A patient who was once an Acute. Ellis’s excessive electroshock therapy transformed him into a Chronic. In the daytime, he is nailed to the wall. He frequently urinates on himself.

Question 18

The lifeguard

Answer 18

A patient and a former football player. The lifeguard was committed to the ward eight years ago. He often experiences hallucinations. The lifeguard reveals a key fact to McMurphy—that committed patients can leave only when Nurse Ratched permits—which changes McMurphy’s initial rebelliousness into temporary conformity.

Question 19

Sandy Gilfillian

Answer 19

A prostitute who knows McMurphy.

Question 20

Ruckly

Answer 20

A Chronic patient. Ruckly, like Ellis, was once an Acute, but was transformed into a Chronic due to a botched lobotomy.

Question 21

Scalon

Answer 21

The only Acute besides McMurphy who was involuntarily committed to the hospital. Scanlon has fantasies of blowing things up.

Question 22

Sefelt and Frederickson

Answer 22

Epileptic patients. Sefelt hates to take his medications because they make his teeth fall out, so he gives them to Frederickson, who likes to take Sefelt’s dose in addition to his own. Although Sefelt and Frederickson require more medical care than some of the other nonmedicated patients, they still do not receive much care or attention by the staff, who are much more concerned with making the disorderly patients orderly.

Question 23

Mr. Turkle

Answer 23

The black nighttime orderly for Nurse Ratched’s ward. Mr. Turkle is kind to Bromden, untying the sheets that confine him to his bed at night, and he goes along with the nighttime ward party.

Question 24

Maxwell Taber

Answer 24

A former patient who stayed in Nurse Ratched’s ward before McMurphy arrived. When Maxwell Taber questioned the nurse’s authority, she punished him with electroshock therapy. After the treatments made him completely docile, he was allowed to leave the hospital. He is considered a successful cure by the hospital staff.

Question 25

Chief Tee Ah Millatoona

Answer 25

Chief Bromden’s father, also known as The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain, is chief of the Columbia Indians. He married a Caucasian woman and took her last name. She made him feel small and drove him to alcoholism. The chief’s marriage and submission to a white woman makes an important statement about the oppression of the natural order by modern society and also reflects white society’s encroachment on Native Americans.

Question 26

Public relations

Answer 26

A fat, bald bureaucrat who wears a girdle. Public Relation leads tours of the ward, pointing out that it is nice and pleasant.

Question 27

Nurse Pilbow

Answer 27

A strict Catholic with a prominent birthmark on her face that she attempts to scrub away. Nurse Pilbow is afraid of the patients’ sexuality.

Question 28

Rawler

Answer 28

A patient on the Disturbed ward. Rawler commits suicide by cutting off his testicles. This actual castration symbolizes the psychological emasculation to which the patients are routinely subjected.