Student Question
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, what does Chief see at night?
Quick answer:
At night, Chief Bromden sees Randle McMurphy returned to the ward after being lobotomized. Chief, who is awake while most patients sleep, quietly greets McMurphy and discovers his friend’s incapacitated state. Unable to bear seeing McMurphy in such a condition, Chief smothers him as an act of mercy. He then escapes the hospital by throwing a large shower panel through a window, fulfilling McMurphy’s earlier plan.
The narrator of Ken Kesey's classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Brombden is the all-seeing conscience of the novel. Although he himself is quiet and unassuming despite his giant size, he quickly takes to the gregarious Randle McMurphy, who is faking insanity in order to serve out his prison sentence in the hospital. Brombden, too, is faking his inability to speak, but he finally confides this fact to McMurphy, and the two quickly become kindred spirits.
But McMurphy constantly stirs up trouble, and after he attacks Nurse Ratched following Billy Bibbit's suicide, McMurphy is given a lobotomy. He is returned to the ward in the middle of the night when most of the other patients are asleep, but the Chief is awake, and when he quietly greets his friend, he discovers his true condition. Unable to watch his friend exist in such a state, the Chief smothers McMurphy, and then gathers the massive shower panel in his arms and tosses it through the window and escapes--just as McMurphy had previously attempted.
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