Bromden's Biography

1970

On One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

There are three main reasons why Ken Kesey (left) chose to present the history of the chief in the manner he does.

Reason one is to build suspense.  There is suspense in the battle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratchet to be sure, but the suspense surrounding the chief, and his background, assures a tightness of tension in the novel.  This tension surrounding the chief is necessary to make the novel complete.  The information about the chief must be controlled to make his rebirth by McMurphy more important.

Thus a second reason: the steady gathering of information on the chief’s background helps keep focus on Bromden.  This focus would fail if the background was known from page one, for then the story would focus overly on McMurphy and his battle of wits with ratchet, and the conversion of Bromden to McMurphy’s minion would be weakened.  He would seem to change too rapidly.

This is reason three: Chief Bromden is a very sick man when he first presents himself.  He is withdrawn.  He has lost his memory of the past to shock treatments, recalling only flashes when they relate to the actions surrounding him, as when he associates the hospital aid with the hunting dogs in the opening pages.  (PP. 12)  A fog obliterates his other memories, but as McMurphy influences his mind, this fog gradually lifts and his memory gradually returns.  This add to the character’s realism what would be lost if his background was presented as a set of statistics right at the beginning.  It also emphases his recovery, for by the time he leaves he has accepted his past and is ready to face the opponents to his way of life.

As a footnote to Cuckoo, I find the very last line interesting.  “I been away a long time.”  (PP. 272)  He says it as if he means he had been away from his home a long time, but he also means he has been away from life a long time.  Even deeper, it could mean he has been away from the asylum a long time too; long enough to tell his story freely.  Long enough to know he doesn’t need it.