CliffsNotes on

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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Book Summary

Ken Kesey Biography

Personal Background
Career Highlights

About One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Summary and Analysis

Part 1: They're Out There
Part 1: When the Fog Clears
Part 1: The New Man
Part 1: In the Glass Station
Part 1: Before Noontime
Part 1: One Christmas
Part 1: First Time for a Long, Long Time
Part 1: Come Morning
Part 1: All Through Breakfast
Part 1: There's a Monopoly Game
Part 1: There's Long Spells
Part 1: A Visiting Doctor
Part 1: It's Getting Hard
Part 1: There's a Shipment of Frozen Parts
Part 1: I Know How They Work It
Part 2: Just at the Edge of My Vision
Part 2: The Way the Big Nurse Acted
Part 2: In the Group Meetings
Part 2: Up Ahead of Me
Part 2: Whatever It Was
Part 2: They Take Me with the Acutes Sometimes
Part 2: I Remember It Was Friday Again
Part 2: Crossing the Grounds
Part 3: After That
Part 3: Two Whores
Part 4: The Big Nurse
Part 4: Up on Disturbed
Part 4: There Had Been Times
Part 4: I've Given What Happened Next

Character List

Character Map

Character Analysis

Randle Patrick McMurphy
Nurse Ratched
Chief Bromden
Dale Harding
Billy Bibbit

Critical Essays

The Role of Women in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: The Film and the Novel
McMurphy as Comic Book Christ
McMurphy's Cinematic Brothers in Rebellion

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Summary and Analysis

Part 4: I've Given What Happened Next

Nurse Ratched arrives and discovers that Bibbit and Starr have had sex. Bibbit blames Starr, the other patients for teasing him and, finally, McMurphy for his actions. Ratched threatens to tell Bibbit's mother and sends him to wait in Doctor Spivey's office where he commits suicide by cutting his neck.

Ratched blames McMurphy for the suicides of Bibbit and Cheswick, and he responds by physically attacking her after smashing through a glass door. He tears her uniform, exposing her ample bosom, and chokes her before being stopped by a group of aides, doctors, and nurses. He is sent to Disturbed, where he receives a lobotomy.

Several of the patients check themselves out before McMurphy is returned to the ward. When he does return, his friends deny that the lobotomized individual is McMurphy. Knowing that it is indeed McMurphy, Chief suffocates him and picks up the control panel to push out the screened window. Chief escapes, following the same path he saw the dog chase the geese. He takes a ride with a Mexican hauling sheep and decides to head back to visit the dam where his tribe once lived.


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