The first section of this novel begins with the line, “They’re out there,” which establishes the paranoia of the novel’s first-person narrator, Chief Bromden. Bromden, it becomes apparent later, is also schizophrenic. Bromden describes African-American employees wearing white suits, dirtying the hall by performing “sex acts” and mopping “up before I can catch them.”
Chief’s conviction that the ward is controlled by the Combine is evidence of his paranoia. He alludes to the Combine when he describes the employees’ eyes “glittering out of the black faces like the hard glitter of radio tubes out of the back of an old radio,” inferring that the employees are merely cogs in a much larger and much more foreboding machine.
Chief introduces Big Nurse, a woman he describes as carrying a large wicker basket in which she does not carry lipsticks, makeup, or other feminine beauty products. Chief believes that she uses the bag to carry replacement parts for the Combine. Chief depicts her as an individual who can increase her size at will, exhibiting her power over the other employees and the patients of the ward. He comments on Big Nurse’s large breasts, which she attempts to conceal. He remarks that a “mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.”
Chief is so paranoid of the Combine that he fears that the electric shaver the orderlies use on him actually implants machinery in him. He hides in the closet, but the orderlies find him. He finds solace in his memories of bird hunting with his Indian father, and eventually succumbs to the fog that he believes is generated by the Combine.
