Fact and fantasy alternate, but the reader has no difficulty distinguishing one from the other, and thus they successfully compliment one another. He did not want this. He was aiming at a narrator like Holden Caulfield Catcher in the Rye — who leaves the ground and lives and breathes in print. The Big Nurse is seen more clearly by the Chief than by anyone else, as that age-old ogre of tyranny and fear simply dressed in nice near white.
To do this, you need fantasy. You need to jar the reader from his comfortable seat inside convention. Thus the distortion or exaggeration in the novel is deliberate, and is created by manipulation of point-of-view. When these two are juxtaposed, each is better delineated. You are commenting using your WordPress. Which leads me to the question of: what constitutes reality? He acknowledges fluctuations in his emotional state and describes feelings of optimism or pessimism based on the things that go on around him.
He views the ward as a microcosm of the larger war being waged between the forces of the Combine embodied by Nurse Ratched and the underdogs individuals working to retain their freedom McMurphy. If he is describing them accurately, or at least perceiving them with some accuracy, then he is giving us a broad brush picture of the story that is fundamentally true.
I think this is a very interesting question. I feel as though has I have progressed through the novel, I find myself trusting Chief Bromden as a narrator more and more. I think that McMurphy specifically has had a tremendous impact on Chief Bromden and his experience in the asylum.
I think I saw this change most specifically when McMurphy noticed the fact that the Chief was not actually deaf or dumb. Personally, I think the presence of McMurphy in the asylum and the changes he is trying to instill are helping to make the Chief not only a more trustworthy narrator, but also perhaps a little less insane.
For most of the novel, I was under the impression he was quite cunning and was much saner than he led the others in the ward to believe. Diane Telgen. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Imagine being stuck in a mental hospital for twenty years where everyone thinks you are deaf and mute.
Chief Bromden, or Chief, has lived in a mental hospital for over twenty years. He was admitted to the hospital after serving in the Second World War. He is a six-foot seven-inch tall schizophrenic Indian who has convinced the whole ward that he is deaf and mute, and he is the narrator of the story.
He is not a very reliable narrator due to his schizophrenia, so some of the events are distorted. Throughout the story, Chief Bromden is reminded of events from his childhood, which reveal little bits and pieces about his character and his uncommon past. The ward he is on is controlled by the Big Nurse, who has emasculated everyone and has complete control over everything and everyone there. She requires everything to be done her way and like clockwork.
That all changes when Randle Patrick McMurphy arrives. McMurphy, mandated to the mental hospital by the courts, starts challenging the rules made by the Big Nurse as soon as he arrives, to help improve the lives of all of the patients on the ward. McMurphy also takes some of the patients on wacky adventures. For example, he convinces the Big Nurse to let him and a few other patients go on a fishing trip with his aunt.
Except, instead of his aunt, he hires a prostitute to take them in her place.
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