A second vote about this key conflict is proposed, and Bromden watches as all twenty Acutes raise their hands. Nurse Ratched responds that the proposal is defeated because McMurphy needs a majority and there are forty patients on the ward, and none of the Chronics voted. McMurphy is incensed, but finally persuades Bromden to raise his hand. Nurse Ratched says it’s too late.

"'What worries me, Billy,' she said- I could hear the change in her voice- 'is how your mother is going to take this.'" Speaker

The narrator of the novel, Chief Bromden, has successfully pretended to be deaf and mute for years in the ward, though his recalling of events as a narrator are largely lucid and appear sane despite the hallucinatory fog—which seems to be something that the ward and the world has done to him, rather than some problematic aspect of his psyche—that plagues him for a large portion of the book. Dale Harding is an eloquent, well-educated man, but because of his homosexuality he is so uncomfortable in society that he voluntarily puts himself in a mental institution. Through these and other characters in the psych ward, Kesey makes a deliberate point of challenging the reader to ask themselves about this theme.

This is symbolic of the waste that our mechanized society has created, and how it pollutes our ability to live naturally. Bromden literally feels as though he cannot see until the antithesis of mechanized control arrives to the ward: McMurphy, a man who looks to his instincts and natural desires for action.

This character is a middle-aged, former Army nurse whose principal tactic of control is emasculating her male patients. She successfully controls the ward by carefully selecting staff that will be submissive to her.

When Cheswick returns from Disturbed, he tells McMurphy while they are walking to the swimming pool that he understands, though he added that he wished it were different. Cheswick then does this key conflict.

"'But I tried though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?'" Speaker

It is when Randle McMurphy becomes a patient—and begins to treat other patients with dignity—that the cold categorization of the institution begins to be subverted: the fog lifts for Chief Bromden, the men joke and play, they go on outings. The climactic party scene illustrates how the men (sane or insane) still possess the same desires as a nominally “sane” person: to have fun, to be free, to be respected. McMurphy’s introduction of this theme to the patients transforms the ward—the men realize that they have sacrificed not just their rights but their very beings by electing to be committed to the institution.

When McMurphy smashes through this symbol, his excuse is that it was so clean he could not see it. By smashing it, he reminds the patients that although they cannot always see Ratched’s or society’s manipulation, it still operates on them.

This character is a homosexual, but the social pressure to be straight cripples him. He is married, but he prefers to commit himself to the hospital rather than face prejudice or the anger of his wife. After McMurphy is lobotomized, he checks himself out of the ward.

This key conflict causes Nurse Ratched to begin to give McMurphy electroshock treatment. McMurphy gets onto the cross-shaped table without help, and asks if he’ll receive a complimentary “crown of thorns.” Bromden watches McMurphy receive treatment, and out of instinct tries to escape and struggles against the aides trying to pin him down. During his own shock treatment, Bromden is inundated with childhood memories. When he wakes up, he is able to fight off the fog for the first time after having received shock therapy, and he knows that “this time [he] had them beat.”

"'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!'" Speaker

The novel makes it clear that many of these men are holding themselves back from living freely because they are terrified of how they will be received by the general population for their behaviors. Not fitting in because of sexual orientation, ethnic background, infantilization—no matter what it is, the men fear what makes them different and would rather hide from society than face its judgment of them. The judgments about what constitutes normal or abnormal behavior, about what is shameful and what is not, are decided by the few in positions of institutional power, but their influence and legitimacy gives their views—however wrong or right—the ability to become the definition of what is Normal in society. For most of these men, they simply cannot deal with not fitting into what is conventionally normal until McMurphy helps them to recognize their own internal dignity and self-worth, to reconnect with themselves in a way that is unaffected by society's perception of them in the expression of this theme.

McMurphy uses this symbol throughout the book as a way to feel comfort and camaraderie with the men. It comes to represent how the men are given the opportunity to actually own something and realize that they have the agency to decide how to use their money. It is also symbolic of the ongoing game between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched—how they keep raising the stakes in their continuous battle against one another for control.

This character appears young, but is actually thirty-one. He is completely dominated by his mother (a close friend of Nurse Ratched), and committed himself to the hospital voluntarily because he couldn’t handle the outside world. After he loses his virginity to Candy Starr in the nighttime ward party, he is initially proud. But when Nurse Ratched threatens to tell his mother, he slits his own throat and dies.

However, when Nurse Ratched threatens to tell Billy’s mother about what he’s done, he falls into hysterics. He starts stuttering, crying, and begging her to not say anything to his mother and then he begins to blame Candy, McMurphy, and Harding, saying that they all forced him to have sex. Nurse Ratched sends Billy to Dr. Spivey’s office to cool off and think while she deals with the rest of the patients. But once in the office, Billy does this key conflict.

"'You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.'" Speaker

Chief Bromden sees this theme as a taming force against human nature: it devastated his homeland and, in doing so, stripped him of his human nature. Kesey suggests with this theme that the taming of nature goes hand in hand with the taming of man. While Kesey focuses his attention in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to the psychiatric ward, and the way it runs like a factory, the novel also suggests that the ward functions as a metaphor for the world at large, which grounds down its people into mindless drones, disconnected from themselves and from nature.

Randle McMurphy makes a bet that he can lift this symbol, an object that is so large and heavy that no one believes he can actually do it—but they are all committed to seeing him try. Though he fails, and walks away with bloodied hands, there is a sense of victory in his fighting against the insurmountable. This object symbolizes The Combine and the rules of the ward that seem too big to move or change. Chief Bromden is groomed by McMurphy to get his old strength back, and at the book’s end is able to throw the symbol out of the window and escape the ward. In other words, Bromden uses a symbol of his own oppression in the ward to free himself from it, and from The Combine in general.

A gambling, thirty-five year old womanizer, this character was transferred to the ward after potentially faking psychosis, because he believed the ward would be more comfortable than the work farm he had sentenced to work at. He is shocked by the emasculating control that Nurse Ratched has over the men, and becomes a radical, subversive force of change that inspires the men to challenge Ratched.

After Nurse Ratched has McMurphy given a lobotomy, the men don’t believe that it’s him at first; he’s a complete vegetable. Bromden was sure that McMurphy would never have his name attached to a body stored like that in the day room for the next twenty or thirty years just so Nurse Ratched could use him as “an example of what can happen if you buck the system.” That night, Bromden does this key conflict before doing what secondary conflict?

"IT¨S BEEN AWAY A LONG TIME."

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey draws a clear connection between the men’s sexuality and their freedom—their very ability to be “men.” Nurse Ratched uses this theme throughout the novel in order to strip the men on the ward of their freedom. She sometimes employs physical force (such as shock treatment), drugs (personality altering pills), but also uses simple intimidation and other tactics to ensure that the men are always under a strict, unchanging schedule and that they are acting in a submissive, despondent way that makes them easier to control. When McMurphy arrives at the ward, he immediately identifies that she is a “ball-breaker.” Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, then, operate in direct opposition of one another throughout the novel: Ratched the force of this theme, McMurphy its opposite, bragging about his many sexual conquests and challenging the other men to show some balls.

This symbol is explicitly associated with crucifixion. It is shaped like a cross, with straps across the wrists and over the head. Moreover, it performs a function similar to the public crucifixions of Roman times. Ellis, Ruckly, and Taber—Acutes whose lives were destroyed by this symbol—serve as public examples of what happens to those who rebel against the ruling powers. Ellis makes the reference explicit: he is actually nailed to the wall. This foreshadows that McMurphy, who is associated with Christ images, will be sacrificed.

This character is half Indian, 6’7" patient who has been on the ward the longest. Pretends to be deaf and dumb for the majority of his commitment. Hallucinates a thick fog that begins to wane with McMurphy’s arrival. He also begins to think more about his past, in which his Native American family was forced to sell their land to make way for a hydroelectric dam. He escapes the ward at the novel’s end after suffocating a lobotomized McMurphy.