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1-Page Summary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Chief Bromden, a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital for ten years, suffers from paranoia and delusions. He is afraid of the Combine, which is this huge group that controls society and forces people to conform. Even though he’s six feet seven inches tall, Chief tries to go unnoticed because he pretends to be deaf and dumb.
There are two groups of mental patients in the ward: Acutes and Chronics. The Acutes can be cured, whereas the Chronics cannot. Nurse Ratched is a former army nurse who runs the ward with strict rules and regulations. She encourages the Acutes to attack each other’s weaknesses during group meetings, which often leads to them being lobotomized or given electroshock treatments even though both practices have fallen out of favor with medical professionals.
When McMurphy arrives at the ward, Bromden senses that he is a different kind of person. He has a swagger and an attitude toward women and gambling. The other patients tell him not to defy Nurse Ratched because she is all-powerful in their eyes. McMurphy makes the bet that he can make her lose her temper within a week’s time.
The patients at first enjoy McMurphy’s antics with Nurse Ratched, but soon they follow his lead and rebel. His plan hinges on a failed vote to change the television schedule so that the World Series is shown during cleaning time instead of other programs. He gets everyone to protest by sitting in front of the blank TV until they get their way. The nurse loses her temper and screams at them all. Bromden observes that an outsider would think they are crazy, including the nurse herself.
In Part II, McMurphy is feeling confident because he has made a stand against Nurse Ratched. He taunts her and the hospital staff without much concern for his safety anymore. Everyone expects him to be sent to the Disturbed ward this time, but Nurse Ratched keeps him in the regular ward instead. She thinks that if she can break his spirit now, then everyone will see that he’s no different from them after all. McMurphy eventually figures out that involuntarily committed patients are stuck at the hospital until they’re cured by their doctors—which could mean forever. When McMurphy realizes how little power he has in comparison with Nurse Ratched, he starts submitting himself to her authority again by doing what she wants him to do (like taking a shower). By this point though, it’s too late; McMurphy has unintentionally become a leader among all of the other patients who look up to him and admire his courage and bravery. They don’t understand why he suddenly stopped standing up for them when they need someone like him most of all. Cheswick drowns in the pool sometime later on as an apparent suicide, which only further confuses everyone else about whether or not there was something more behind those circumstances.
Cheswick’s death signals to McMurphy that he has unwittingly taken on the responsibility of rehabilitating the other patients. He also witnesses the harsh reality of electroshock therapy and becomes genuinely frightened by the power wielded by the staff. The weight of his obligation to the other patients and his fear for his own life begins to wear down his strength and sanity. Nevertheless, in Part III, McMurphy arranges a fishing trip for himself and ten other patients. He shows them how to defuse hostility from outside sources as they catch large fish without any help from him, which makes them feel powerful again like men used to be before society took their masculinity away with rules about what they can do or not do anymore. Also during this time period, Billy Bibbit loses his virginity after McMurphy sets up a date between him and Candy Starr (a prostitute) from Portland who comes into town because she wants her father’s approval but instead gets seduced by Billy.
