"Cliff Notes - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENE 10

A few days later we see McMurphy continuing to plot his war against the Big Nurse. The patients are playing Monopoly, which, given their mental confusion, becomes a hectic and, for the reader, very funny game. Martini, for example, sees more pieces on the board than actually exist, places hotels on properties where hotels don't belong, and rolls imaginary dice. Yet here, too, McMurphy shows a relaxed generosity, counting out Martini's moves so that Martini invariably lands on the single property he owns. Again, we see it's sometimes necessary to bend the rules to help people.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENE 11

McMurphy has emerged victorious from the battle of the toothpaste and the battle of the card room. Now begins the battle of the World Series, which becomes the focus for the rest of Part I. In this scene we see that the hospital is beginning to wear McMurphy down, and the reason is not just the Nurse or the staff, but the patients, too, for they lack McMurphy's courage.

McMurphy has planned to watch the World Series even though the games won't be shown during the ward's scheduled television time. The Nurse, of course, says he can't watch the Series, a refusal that doesn't surprise McMurphy one bit. What does surprise him is the patients' complete agreement with her. Rules must always be followed. During the group meeting, only Cheswick, a would-be rebel happy at last to have an ally, backs McMurphy up.

McMurphy is disgusted at the patients' cowardice. Billy Bibbit attempts to explain it but can't. We learn that Nurse Ratched has spoiled McMurphy's black-jack games by first stopping the patients from playing for money, then by locking away the cigarettes they'd been betting with instead. The routine that McMurphy disrupted is reasserting itself.

When McMurphy mentions the World Series again, Harding makes fun of him, so angering McMurphy that he starts discussing ways of breaking out of the hospital. The strong-windows can't be broken with wooden chairs or tables; a bed is too big to be used. Only the control panel in the tub room would work, and at 400 pounds it's too heavy to be lifted. But McMurphy is mad enough to give it a try, and he makes a bet he'll succeed. He strains; for a second the doubters fall quiet as it seems he might win. But he isn't strong enough; he loses his bet, winning only the satisfaction of knowing he made the attempt. Here is another example of foreshadowing: later in the book we'll see another bet involving this control panel (which is a symbol of the Combine's power), and another try at using it to gain freedom.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENE 12

This brief scene points up the contrast between the world of nature and the wilderness (which is associated with the Chief's childhood and with McMurphy), and the drab, regulated world of the hospital. As the Chief sweeps the staff room, where a visiting doctor talks to the residents, he stares at a painting hanging on the wall. It shows a wilderness scene: a fisherman (just as the Chief's tribe were fishermen), an aspen grove, white mountain peaks, a world so alluring that the Chief imagines he can enter it and from an aspen-shaded perch stare back at the hospital behind him. This art work is one of the improvements that makes the hospital a better place than the old one. "Why, a man that would want to run away from a place as nice as this, why there'd be something wrong with him," says the public relations man. But how much of an improvement is it really? The painting is still merely a painting, an artificial vision of a free and beautiful world to soothe people locked in an ugly one. Indeed, at the end of the scene, even the visiting doctor seems lost and unhappy, hugging himself as if for him, too, the world of the painting, however unreal, was preferable to the world of the hospital.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENES 13 AND 14

The first of these two short scenes reminds us that it is always easier not to be brave; the Chief knows there is safety hiding in the fog, a fact that McMurphy hasn't yet realized. But the second scene undercuts the Chief's faith in the safety the fog provides: against the Combine, safety is always temporary. Old Rawler, the Disturbed patient we heard in scene eleven, has killed himself by cutting off his testicles. In effect, he's done the job the Combine had already begun. The Chief wonders why he took the trouble: "All the guy had to do was wait."

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENE 15

This scene forms the climax of Part 1: the fiercest battle yet between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. It begins with Chief Bromden discussing the fog machine that clouds his view of the hospital. To him, this imaginary device is identical to a real device used when he was a soldier in World War II. Fog was blown over English airfields to protect them from German bombers; as you stepped out onto the runway, "You were safe from the enemy, but you were awfully alone." When you did meet someone, you saw him with terrifying clarity: "You didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at yours, because it's painful to see somebody so clear that it's like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely. You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself."

And we understand that those are the choices the Chief faces in his life in the hospital. He can try to see things as they are, even when they're painful and dangerous. Or he can lose himself in the safety of the fog. Right now the fog is winning. The Chief has learned how to cope with it; before, it panicked him and sent him into the Shock Shop. Now he's used to illness, and he knows that if he just gives into it, no one will bother him. "Being lost isn't so bad."

Lately the fog has been thicker than usual, thanks to the disturbances McMurphy has caused. The Chief says the fog machine has been turned on more frequently, but we're familiar enough with his illness (the fog rolls in when he's frightened, disappears when he's calm) that we understand that McMurphy has caused a disturbance within the Chief: McMurphy is a constant reminder that there is a world of danger, but also of freedom, outside the hospital.

The Group Meeting begins with Billy Bibbit under discussion. We see the problems his stuttering has caused him. Notice that the first word he stuttered was Mama--another signal of the destructive power of the matriarchy.

Lost in the fog, the Chief sees glimpses of the other patients around him, just as he once bumped into other soldiers on the fogged-in airfield. He meets Colonel Matterson, an ancient Army officer who speaks what at first seems like utter craziness. "The flag is... Ah-mer-ica. America... is the plum. The peach. The watermelon.... Mexico is... the wal-nut... Mexico is... the rainbow." With the clarity the fog gives him, the Chief now understands that the colonel's words made sense. Like the Chief himself, he speaks things that are true even if they didn't happen: the truth of metaphor, of poetry. But the fog that gives this brief moment of perception then steals it away. The Colonel disappears, perhaps for good.

Patients float by, Pete, Billy Bibbit, whose chances for love were spoiled by his mother, others. The Chief is powerless to help them, for the moment you try to help someone you become vulnerable yourself. The Chief is on the verge of being lost for good. "I'm further off than I've ever been." He'll become one of the Vegetables, like Ellis or Ruckley. As he drifts towards that fate, he remembers the forces that sent him to the hospital in the first place: the war, his tribal village's destruction by a government gravel crusher, his father's aging.

Then, suddenly, a voice breaks through: McMurphy. "He's still trying to pull people out of the fog," the Chief says. "Why don't he leave me be?" McMurphy is arguing about watching the World Series. He wants a new vote. This time a few of the patients have been impressed enough by McMurphy's attempt to lift the control panel, and are annoyed enough at Nurse Ratched that they back him up. As the vote is taken, the Chief imagines that McMurphy's red, work-strong hand is pulling each Acute out of the fog to stand with him.

McMurphy wins the votes of everyone who took part in the election, all twenty Acutes. In any true democracy that should give him a victory. But the Nurse goes by her own rules, which say that McMurphy requires a majority of everyone in the ward, including the Chronics who are incapable of understanding an election. He needs twenty one votes.

McMurphy begs one Chronic after another for help. Ruckley, Ellis, Pete, Colonel Matterson, George: none of them is willing. Then he approaches the Chief. Just as he was that first morning when McMurphy wanted to shake his hand, the Chief is terrified.

He wants to be left undisturbed in the fog.

Nevertheless, as McMurphy stands over him (notice how the Chief distorts their heights: McMurphy is shorter than the Indian and could never stand "over" him), the Chief feels his hand raising. At first he blames the act on McMurphy, as if he were like the Nurse, able to control people by hidden wires. Then he admits, "No, that's not the truth. I lifted it myself." While Nurse Ratched uses her power to force people to do what she wants, McMurphy's power is that he gives people the courage to do what they want. With McMurphy's help, the Chief has pulled himself out of the fog: a defeat for the Combine. But the angry Nurse announces that the voting is closed. There will be no World Series.

The Nurse watches from her glassed-in Nurse's Station as the Acutes perform their assigned chores. McMurphy's grinning irritates her, and her irritation grows when he tosses down his rag and goes to the television and turns it on to the baseball game. The Nurse switches off the set from the control room. But just as he did with the toothpaste, McMurphy turns defeat into victory by ignoring the Nurse's action. He doesn't move. He stares at the blank screen as if the World Series could be seen on it.

The Nurse can't tolerate this behavior. She comes close to losing control. And now the other patients, Harding, Cheswick, Billy and the rest, sit down with McMurphy to watch the non-existent game. Nurse Ratched is screaming. Says the Chief, "If somebody'd of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty year-old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations, they'd of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons." Ironically, by acting crazy, McMurphy and the men have shown that they are sane. By clinging to her rules past the point where they make sense, the Nurse has sunk to the patients' level and below.