One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

Reminiscing, actually. Talking over old times. You see Mr. McMurphy and I find we have something in common—we went to the same high school.”

“Uh—I personally believe, see”—he looks down at McMurphy’s fist on the chair arm beside him, with that big stiff thumb sticking straight up out of it like a cow prod—“that a carnival is a real good idea. Something to break the monotony.” “That’s right, Charley,” the doctor says, appreciating Cheswick’s support, “and not altogether without therapeutic value.” “Certainly not,” Cheswick says, looking happier now. “No. Lots of therapeutics in a carnival. You bet.” “It would b-b-be fun,” Billy Bibbit says. “Yeah, that too,” Cheswick says. “We could do it, Doctor Spivey, sure we could. Scanlon can do his human bomb act, and I can make a ring toss in Occupational Therapy.” “I’ll tell fortunes,” Martini says and squints at a spot above his head.

“I’m rather good at diagnosing pathologies from palm reading, myself,” Harding says. “Good, good,” Cheswick says and claps his hands. He’s never had anybody support anything he said before. “Myself,” McMurphy drawls, “I’d be honored to work a skillo wheel. Had a little experience …” “Oh, there are numerous possibilities,” the doctor says, sitting up straight in his chair and really warming to it. “Why, I’ve got a million ideas….” He talks full steam ahead for another five minutes. You can tell a lot of the ideas are ideas he’s already talked over with McMurphy. He describes games, booths, talks of selling tickets, then stops as suddenly as though the Nurse’s look had hit him right between the eyes. He blinks at her and asks, “What do you think of the idea, Miss Ratched? Of a carnival? Here, on the ward?”

“But I also believe that an idea like this should be discussed in staff meeting before a decision is reached. Wasn’t that your idea, Doctor?” “Of course. I merely thought, understand, I would feel out some of the men first. But certainly, a staff meeting first. Then we’ll continue our plans.”

“Yes, Mr. McMurphy?” “Not me, Doctor Spivey has. Doc, tell ‘em what you come up with about the hard-of-hearing guys and the radio.” The nurse’s head gives one little jerk, barely enough to see, but my heart is suddenly roaring. She puts the folio back in the basket, turns to the doctor.

He suggested the speaker might be turned up louder so the Chronics with auditory weaknesses could hear it. A very humane suggestion, I think.” McMurphy gives a modest wave of his hand, and the doctor nods at him and goes on. “But I told him I had received previous complaints from some of the younger men that the radio is already so loud it hinders conversation and reading. McMurphy said he hadn’t thought of this, but mentioned that it did seem a shame that those who wished to read couldn’t get off by themselves where it was quiet and leave the radio for those who wished to listen. I agreed with him that it did seem a shame and was ready to drop the matter when I happened to think of the old tub room where we store the tables during the ward meeting. We don’t use the room at all otherwise; there’s no longer a need for the hydrotherapy it was designed for, now that we have the new drugs. So how would the group like to have that room as a sort of second day room, a game room, shall we say?”

When it’s clear nobody’s going to talk till she does, her head turns again to the doctor. “It sounds like a fine plan, Doctor Spivey, and I appreciate Mr. McMurphy’s interest in the other patients, but I’m terribly afraid we don’t have the personnel to cover a second day room.” And is so certain that this should be the end of it she starts to open the folio again. But the doctor has thought this through more than she figured. “I thought of that too, Miss Ratched.

“Very good. Now. If that’s decided—I seem to have forgotten what we were planning to talk about this morning?” The nurse’s head gives that one little jerk again, and she bends over her basket, picks up a folio. She fumbles with the papers, and it looks like her hands are shaking. She draws out a paper, but once more, before she can start reading out of it, McMurphy is standing and holding up his hand and shifting from foot to foot, giving a long, thoughtful, “Saaaay,” and her fumbling stops, freezes as though the sound of his voice froze her just like her voice froze that black boy this morning. I get that giddy feeling inside me again when she freezes. I watch her close while McMurphy talks.

No more little jerk, just that terrible cold face, a calm smile stamped out of red plastic; a clean, smooth forehead, not a line in it to show weakness or worry; flat, wide, painted-on green eyes, painted on with an expression that says I can wait, I might lose a yard now and then but I can wait, and be patient and calm and confident, because I know there’s no real losing for me. I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped.

She’s too big to be beaten. She covers one whole side of the room like a Jap statue. There’s no moving her and no help against her. She’s lost a little battle here today, but it’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s been winning and that she’ll go on winning. We mustn’t let McMurphy get our hopes up any different,

She’ll go on winning, just like the Combine, because she has all the power of the Combine behind her. She don’t lose on her losses, but she wins on ours. To beat her you don’t have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she’s won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.

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 coul...

I believe the fog affects their memory some way it doesn’t affect mine. Even McMurphy doesn’t seem to know he’s been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he’s bothered by it. He’s making sure none of the staff sees him bothered by anything; he knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you’re not bothered. He keeps up his high-class manners around the nurses and the black boys in spite of anything they might say to him, in spite of every trick they pull to get him to lose his temper. A couple of times some stupid rule gets him mad, but he just makes himself act more polite and mannerly than ever till he begins to see how funny the whole thing is—the rules, the disapproving looks they use to enforce the rules, the ways of talking to you like you’re nothing but a three-year-old—and when he sees how funny it is he goes to laughing, and this aggravates them no end.

Just once he loses control and shows he’s mad, and then it’s not because of the black boys or the Big Nurse and something they did, but it’s because of the patients, and something they didn’t do. It happened at one of the group meetings.

During the meeting a few days before he asks if it wouldn’t be okay if they did the cleaning work at night, during TV time, and watched the games during the afternoon. The nurse tells him no, which is about what he expected. She tells him how the schedule has been set up for a delicately balanced reason that would be thrown into turmoil by the switch of routines. This doesn’t surprise him, coming from the nurse; what does surprise him is how the Acutes act when he asks them what they think of the idea. Nobody says a thing. They’re all sunk back out of sight in little pockets of fog. I can barely see them. “Now look here,” he tells them, but they don’t look. He’s been waiting for somebody to say something, answer his question. Nobody acts like they’ve heard it. “Look here, damn it,” he says when nobody moves, “there’s at least twelve of you guys I know of myself got a leetle personal interest who wins these games. Don’t you guys care to watch them?”

“Come on now, what is this crap. I thought you guys could vote on policy and that sort of thing. Isn’t that the way it is, Doc?” The doctor nods without looking up. “Okay then; now who wants to watch those games?” Cheswick shoves his hand higher and glares around. Scanlon shakes his head and then raises his hand, keeping his elbow on the arm of the chair. And nobody else. McMurphy can’t say a word. “If that’s settled, then,” the nurse says, “perhaps we should get on with the meeting.”

After the meeting McMurphy won’t say a word to any of them, he’s so mad and disgusted. It’s Billy Bibbit who goes up to him.

Nobody’ll play poker or blackjack with him for money any more—after the patients wouldn’t vote he got mad and skinned them so bad at cards that they’re all so in debt they’re scared to go any deeper—and they can’t play for cigarettes because the nurse has started making the men keep their cartons on the desk in the Nurses’ Station, where she doles them out one pack a day, says it’s for their health, but everybody knows it’s to keep McMurphy from winning them all at cards.

It’s so quiet you can hear that guy upstairs in Disturbed climbing the wall, giving out an occasional signal, loo loo looo, a bored, uninterested sound, like a baby yells to yell itself to sleep. “Thursday,” McMurphy says again. “Looooo,” yells that guy upstairs. “That’s Rawler,” Scanlon says, looking up at the ceiling. He don’t want to pay any attention to McMurphy. “Rawler the Squawler. He came through this ward a few years back. Wouldn’t keep still to suit Miss Ratched, you remember, Billy? Loo loo loo all the time till I thought I’d go nuts. What they should do with that whole bunch of dingbats up there is toss a couple of grenades in the dorm. They’re no use to anybody—” “And tomorrow is Friday,” McMurphy says. He won’t let Scanlon change the subject. “Yeah,” Cheswick says, scowling around the room “tomorrow is Friday.”

“The hell with that,” McMurphy says. “What Cheswick means is that the first Series game is gonna be played on TV tomorrow, and what are we gonna be doin’? Mopping up this damned nursery again.” “Yeah,” Cheswick says. “Ol’ Mother Ratched’s Therapeutic Nursery.”

Against the wall of the tub room I get a feeling like a spy; the mop handle in my hands is made of metal instead of wood (metal’s a better conductor) and it’s hollow; there’s plenty of room inside it to hide a miniature microphone. If the Big Nurse is hearing this, she’ll really get Cheswick. I take a hard ball of gum from my pocket and pick some fuzz off it and hold it in my mouth till it softens.

“It’s still a risk, my friend. She always has the capacity to make things worse for us. A baseball game isn’t worth the risk,” Harding says.

“Okay then,” McMurphy says, taking a look around him. I can see he’s getting more interested. I hope the Big Nurse isn’t hearing this; he’ll be up on Disturbed in an hour. “We need something heavier. How about a table?”

“Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin’ myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back. There’s liable to be crackin’ cement and flying steel. Get the women and kids someplace safe. Stand back….” “By golly, he might do it,” Cheswick mutters. “Sure, maybe he’ll talk it off the floor,” Fredrickson says. “More likely he’ll acquire a beautiful hernia,” Harding says. “Come now, McMurphy, quit acting like a fool; there’s no man can lift that thing.” “Stand back, sissies, you’re using my oxygen.” McMurphy shifts his feet a few times to get a good stance, and wipes his hands on his thighs again, then leans down and gets hold of the levers on each side of the panel. When he goes to straining, the guys go to hooting and kidding him.

He opens his eyes and looks around at us. One by one he looks at the guys—even at me—then he fishes in his pockets for all the IOUs he won the last few days at poker. He bends over the table and tries to sort them, but his hands are froze into red claws, and he can’t work the fingers. Finally he throws the whole bundle on the floor—probably forty or fifty dollars’ worth from each man—and turns to walk out of the tub room. He stops at the door and looks back at everybody standing around. “But I tried, though,” he says. “Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?” And walks out and leaves those stained pieces of paper on the floor for whoever wants to sort through them.

A VISITING DOCTOR covered with gray cobwebs on his yellow skull is addressing the resident boys in the staff room. I come sweeping past him. “Oh, and what’s this here.” He gives me a look like I’m some kind of bug. One of the residents points at his ears, signal that I’m deaf, and the visiting doctor goes on.

but I can’t hear what he says because of the crash of the cold, frothy stream coming down out of the rocks. I can smell the snow in the wind where it blows down off the peaks. I can see mole burrows humping along under the grass and buffalo weed. It’s a real nice place to stretch your legs and take it easy. You forget—if you don’t sit down and make the effort to think back—forget how it was at the old hospital. They didn’t have nice places like this on the walls for you to climb into. They didn’t have TV or swimming pools or chicken twice a month. They didn’t have nothing but walls and chairs, confinement jackets it took you hours of hard work to get out of.

IT’S GETTING HARD to locate my bed at night, have to crawl around on my hands and knees feeling underneath the springs till I find my gobs of gum stuck there. Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.

THERE’S A SHIPMENT of frozen parts come in downstairs—hearts and kidneys and brains and the like. I can hear them rumble into cold storage down the coal chute. A guy sitting in the room someplace I can’t see is talking about a guy up on Disturbed killing himself. Old Rawler. Cut both nuts off and bled to death, sitting right on the can in the latrine, half a dozen people in there with him didn’t know it till he fell off to the floor, dead. What makes people so impatient is what I can’t figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

I KNOW HOW THEY WORK IT, the fog machine. We had a whole platoon used to operate fog machines...

You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.

When they first used that fog machine on the ward, one they bought from Army Surplus and hid in the vents in the new place before we moved in, I kept looking at anything that appeared out of the fog as long and hard as I could, to keep track of it, just like I used to do when they fogged the airfields in Europe. Nobody’d be blowing a horn to show the way, there was no rope to hold to, so fixing my eyes on something was the only way I kept from getting lost. Sometimes I got lost in it anyway, got in too deep, trying to hide, and every time I did, it seemed like I always turned up at that same place, at that same metal door with the row of rivets like eyes and no number,

I’d wander for days in the fog, scared I’d never see another thing, then there’d be that door, opening to show me the mattress padding on the other side to stop out the sounds, the men standing in a line like zombies among shiny copper wires and tubes pulsing light, and the bright scrape of arcing electricity. I’d take my place in the line and wait my turn at the table. The table shaped like a cross, with shadows of a thousand murdered men printed on it, silhouette wrists and ankles running under leather straps sweated green with use, a silhouette neck and head running up to a silver band goes across the forehead. And a technician at the controls beside the table looking up from his dials and down the line and pointing at me with a rubber glove. “Wait, I know that big bastard there—better rabbit-punch him or call for some more help or something. He’s an awful case for thrashing around.”

So I used to try not to get in too deep, for fear I’d get lost and turn up at the Shock Shop door. I looked hard at anything that came into sight and hung on like a man in a blizzard hangs on a fence rail. But they kept making the fog thicker and thicker, and it seemed to me that, no matter how hard I tried, two or three times a month I found myself with that door opening in front of me to the acid smell of sparks and ozone. In spite of all I could do, it was getting tough to keep from getting lost.

Then I discovered something: I don’t have to end up at that door if I stay still when the fog comes over me and just keep quiet. The trouble was I’d been finding that door my own self because I got scared of being lost so long and went to hollering so they could track me. In a way, I was hollering for them to track me; I had figured that anything was better’n being lost for good, even the Shock Shop....

It’s my idea they’re doing it on account of McMurphy. They haven’t got him fixed with controls yet, and they’re dying to catch him off guard. They can see he’s due to be a problem; a half a dozen times already he’s roused Cheswick and Harding and some of the others to where it looked like they might actually stand up to one of the black boys—but always, just th...

I hear the Big Nurse pick up the phone and call the doctor to tell him we’re just about ready for the meeting, and tell him perhaps he’d best keep an hour free this afternoon for a staff meeting. “The reason being,” she tells him, “I think it is past time to have a discussion of the subject of Patient Randle McMurphy and whether he should be on this ward or not.” She listens a minute, then tells him, “I don’t think it’s wise to let him go on upsetting the patients the way he has the last few days.” That’s why she’s fogging the ward for the meeting. She don’t usually do that. But now she’s going to do something with McMurphy today, probably ship him to Disturbed.

His voice gets dim; then the Big Nurse’s voice comes cutting from the left. “Can you recall, Billy, when you first had speech trouble? When did you first stutter, do you remember?”

I never seen it this thick before, thick to where I can’t get down to the floor and get on my feet if I wanted to and walk around. That’s why I’m so scared; I feel I’m going to float off someplace for good this time. I see a Chronic float into sight a little below me. It’s old Colonel Matterson, reading from the wrinkled scripture of that long yellow-hand. I look close at him because I figure it’s the last time I’ll ever see him. His face is enormous, almost more than I can bear. Every hair and wrinkle of him is big, as though I was looking at him with one of those microscopes. I see him so clear I see his whole life. The face is sixty years of southwest Army camps, rutted by iron-rimmed caisson wheels, worn to the bone by thousands of feet on two-day marches.

He pauses and peers up at me again to make sure I’m getting it, and I want to yell out to him Yes, I see: Mexico is like the walnut; it’s brown and hard and you feel it with your eye and it feels like the walnut! You’re making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You’re not crazy the way they think. Yes … I see …

I can see all that, and be hurt by it, the way I was hurt by seeing things in the Army, in the war. The way I was hurt by seeing what happened to Papa and the tribe. I thought I’d got over seeing those things and fretting over them. There’s no sense in it. There’s nothing to be done.

“And even when I pr-proposed, I flubbed it. I said ‘Huh-honey, will you muh-muh-muh-muh-muh … till the girl broke out l-laughing.” Nurse’s voice, I can’t see where it comes from: “Your mother has spoken to me about this girl, Billy. Apparently she was quite a bit beneath you. What would you speculate it was about her that frightened you so, Billy?” “I was in luh-love with her.” I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can.

What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razor-blade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness till what little dignity you got left is gone and you shrink up to nothing from humiliation, I can’t do anything about that, either.

I’m further off than I’ve ever been. This is what it’s like to be dead. I guess this is what it’s like to be a Vegetable; you lose yourself in the fog. You don’t move. They feed your body till it finally stops eating; then they burn it. It’s not so bad. There’s no pain. I don’t feel much of anything other than a touch of chill I figure will pass in time.

I see my commanding officer pinning notices on the bulletin board, what we’re to wear today. I see the US Department of Interior bearing down on our little tribe with a gravel-crushing machine.

hear whispers, black boys. Look there that old fool Broom, slipped off to sleep. Tha’s right, Chief Broom, tha’s right. You sleep an’ keep outta trouble. Yasss.

That’s that McMurphy. He’s far away. He’s still trying to pull people out of the fog. Why don’t he leave me be? “… remember that vote we had a day or so back—about the TV time? Well, today’s Friday and I thought I might just bring it up again, just to see if anybody else has picked up a little guts.” “Mr. McMurphy, the purpose of this meeting is therapy, group therapy, and I’m not certain these petty grievances—”

“Yeah, yeah, the hell with that, we’ve heard it before. Me and some of the rest of the guys decided—” “One moment, Mr. McMurphy, let me pose a question to the group: do any of you feel that Mr. McMurphy is perhaps imposing his personal desires on some of you too much? I’ve been thinking you might be happier if he were moved to a different ward.” Nobody says anything for a minute. Then someone says, “Let him vote, why dontcha? Why ya want to ship him to Disturbed just for bringing up a vote? What’s so wrong with changing time?”

“Let’s let him have the vote, Miss Ratched.” “Very well. But I think this is ample evidence of how much he is upsetting some of you patients. What is it you are proposing, Mr. McMurphy?” “I’m proposing a revote on watching the TV in the afternoon.” “You’re certain one more vote will satisfy you? We have more important things—” “It’ll satisfy me. I just’d kind of like to see which of these birds has any guts and which doesn’t.” “It’s that kind of talk, Doctor Spivey, that makes me wonder if the patients wouldn’t be more content if Mr. McMurphy were moved.” “Let him call the vote, why dontcha?”

First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years. Nobody says anything. I can feel how stunned everybody is, the patients as well as the staff.