One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”

still hear the sound of the falls on the Columbia, always will—always—hear the whoop of Charley Bear Belly stabbed himself a big chinook, hear the slap of fish in the water, laughing naked kids on the bank, the women at the racks…from a long time ago.)

The glass came apart like water splashing, and the nurse threw her hands to her ears. He got one of the cartons of cigarettes with his name on it and took out a pack, then put it back and turned to where the Big Nurse was sitting like a chalk statue and very tenderly went to brushing the slivers of glass off her head and shoulders.

After that, McMurphy had things his way for a good long while.

The nurse was biding her time till another idea come to her that would put her on top again. She knew she’d lost one big round and was losing another, but she wasn’t in any hurry.

So, with basketball season obviously over, McMurphy decided fishing was the thing.

I was kind of amazed that I’d remembered that. It was the first time in what seemed to me centuries that I’d been able to remember much about my childhood. It fascinated me to discover I could still do it.

At first I started getting real mad. I thought he was making fun of me like other people had.

“‘When you chew it in the morning,’” he sang in a whisper, “‘will it be too hard to bite?’”

But the more I thought about it the funnier it seemed to me. I tried to stop it but I could feel I was about to laugh—not at McM...

This question’s got me goin’, won’t somebody set me right; does the Spearmint lose its flavor on...

“Juicy Fruit is the best I can do for you at the moment, Chief. Package I won off Scanlon pitchin’ pennies.”

He fought it a long time till my mother made him too little to fight anymore and he gave up.”

They can’t have somebody as big as Papa running around unless he’s one of them. You can see that.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t of broke that window. They see you’re big, now. Now they got to bust you.”

“Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power.

Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become.

He winked at Billy and squeezed the girl’s head in the crook of his arm. “No. Two o’clock Saturday night. Slip up and knock on that same window you was at this morning. I’ll talk the night aide into letting you in.”

The Big Nurse had her next maneuver under way the day after the fishing trip.

What pushed him to keep up a full head of steam when everybody else on the ward had always been content to drift along playing pinochle and reading last year’s magazines?

Or how come a seasoned con like this—an old pro, a carnival artist, a dedicated odds-watcher gambling man—would risk doubling his stay in the nuthouse by making more and more an enemy out of the woman who had the say-so as to who got discharged and who didn’t?

“No, Billy, I wasn’t implying anything. I was simply observing that Mr. McMurphy isn’t one to run a risk without a reason. You would agree to that, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t all of you agree to that?”

That’s the arm of an ex-football-playing Indian if I ever saw one.

“Better set her back where she came from, buddy, so nobody’ll know. Mustn’t let anybody know yet.”

Tha’s right, Geo’ge now spread those cheeks.”

Army nurses, trying to run an Army hospital. They are a little sick themselves.

“These are those knockout pills, aren’t they?”

similar to part one

“I’m sorry if I got you into something, Chief,”

I won’t cry or yell. Not with McMurphy here.

…wonder how McMurphy made me big again.

How many hours have I been out? It’s fogging a little, but I won’t slip off and hide in it. No…never again…

I saw an aide coming up the hall with a tray for me and knew this time I had them beat.

She saw that McMurphy was growing bigger than ever while he was upstairs where the guys couldn’t see the dent she was making on him, growing almost into a legend.

She figured the guys could see for themselves then that he could be as vulnerable as the next man.

“I was suggesting—that we consider an operation. Very simple, really. And we’ve had a history of past successes eliminating aggressive tendencies in certain hostile cases—”

“Allah be merciful.”

first mention of another religion invoked

“I’d be scared,” McMurphy said, “that just about the time I was getting my jollies she’d reach around behind me with a thermometer and take my temperature!”

“Just lie there under you with a dreadful concentration on her face, and tell you—oh Jesus, listen—tell you what your pulse was!”

“Or even worse, just lie there and be able to calculate your pulse and temperature both—sans instruments!”

“Billy, this girl could not have pulled you in here forcibly.” She shook her head. “Understand, I would like to believe something else—for your poor mother’s sake.”

“He cut his throat,”

Billy

“First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives—gambling with human lives—as if you thought yourself to be a God!”

screaming when he grabbed for her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front, screaming again when the two nippled circles started from her chest and swelled out and out, bigger than anybody had ever even imagined, warm and pink in the light—only at the last, after the officials realized that the three black boys weren’t going to do anything but stand and watch and they would have to beat him off without their help, doctors and supervisors and nurses prying those heavy red fingers out of the white flesh of her throat as if they were her neck bones, jerking him backward off of her with a loud heave of breath, only then did he show any sign that he might be anything other than a sane, willful, dogged man performing a hard duty that finally just had to be done, like it or not.

I didn’t want to leave just yet, because she seemed to be too sure; she seemed to be waiting for one more round, and I wanted to be there in case it came off. And one morning, after McMurphy’d been gone three weeks, she made her last play.

MCMURPHY, RANDLE P. POST-OPERATIVE. And below this was written in ink, LOBOTOMY.

“Aaah, what’s the old bitch tryin’ to put over on us anyhow, for crap sakes. That ain’t him.” “Nothing like him,” Martini said. “How stupid she think we are?”

“Sure,” I said, “they can do tattoos. But the arms, huh? The arms? They couldn’t do those. His arms were big!”

I moved to pick up the pillow, and the eyes fastened on the movement and followed me as I stood up and crossed the few feet between the beds.

“Take it easy, Chief,” he said. “Take it easy. It’s okay.” “Shut up,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.” It was quite a while; then I heard him hiss again and ask, “Is it finished?” I told him yeah.

“Christ,” he said then, “she’ll know. You realize that, don’t you? Sure, nobody’ll be able to prove anything—anybody coulda kicked off in post-operative like he was, happens all the time—but her, she’ll know.”