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

Study and Homework Help

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Study and Homework Help

Quiz

1:  Who is the narrator of the novel?

a. Big George

b. Randle McMurphy

c. Chief Bromden

d. Billy Bibbit


2:  McMurphy is a war hero who

a. Led a group of escapees from a Korean War prison camp

b. Commanded a submarine during World War II

c. Led a successful raid against a North Vietnamese ammunitions dump in the Vietnam War

d. Drove an ambulance in the Vietnam War


3:  Why does Chief Bromden fakes muteness and deafness?

a. It enables him to spy on Nurse Ratched

b. He has grown accustomed to being ignored

c. He fears language cannot accurately convey human thoughts

d. He likes the drugs that they give him for it


4:  What does the control panel used by Chief Bromden to escape represent?

a. His belief in the necessity of authority

b. McMurphy’s resurrection

c. His recovery from paranoid schizophrenia

d. An overthrow of control


5:  What does Harding mean when he confesses to McMurphy that he is different?

a. He is homosexual.

b. He is a Republican.

c. He is insane.

d. He is psychic.


6:  Why does Charles Cheswick commit suicide?

a. He discovers that Nurse Ratched won’t sign his release

b. He feels betrayed by McMurphy’s conformity

c. He has learned his wife is unfaithful

d. He discovers he is a Chronic


7:  How is Doctor Spivey controlled by Nurse Ratched?

a. She knows he is addicted to morphine and she is blackmailing him.

b. She and his wife are good friends.

c. She provides him with sexual favors.

d. She provides him with morphine for his addiction.


8:  Why is Billy Bibbit in the hospital?

a. He is afraid of the opposite sex

b. He has attempted suicide

c. He has threatened a doctor

d. He thinks he is famous


9:  What is the meaning of the recurring motif of the cat and the dog?

a. The conflict between the incarcerated and the free

b. The conflict between men and women

c. The conflict between tame and wild

d. The conflict between natural and mechanical forces


10:  Who says the following: “Feet and inches? A guy at the carnival looked her over and says five feet nine and weighs a hundred and thirty pounds, but that was because he’d just saw her. She got bigger all the time.”

a. Randle McMurphy

b. Dale Harding

c. Chief Bromden

d. Nurse Ratched


11:  Who says the following: “I don’t deal blackjack so good, hobbled like this, but I maintain I’m a fire-eater in a stud game.”

a. Billy Bibbit

b. Randle McMurphy

c. Chief Bromden

d. Max Taber


12:  Who says the following, about whom: “And yet he sees to do things without thinking of himself at all, as if he were a martyr or a saint.”

a. McMurphy, about Dr. Spivey

b. Chief Bromden, about Billy Bibbit

c. Nurse Ratched, about McMurphy

d. Max Taber, about Harding





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