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Michael Elmer

Mr. Loomis

Survey of American Literature

2 March 2007

Like the Hard Glitter of Radio Tubes

How Mechanical Imagery Affects Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“[We] …are machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws

beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the

hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot” (19).

Big Chief Bromden’s descriptions of how he sees the world offer readers a view of the

world inside his head and supply additional information that is not fully apparent in from simply

observing the actions of characters in the story. The Chief uses mechanical imagery in order to

convey the metaphorical and symbolic meaning in the actions and words of not only himself, but

also other characters. These include his descriptions of the Black aides’ accustomization to the

Big Nurse’s desires, his multiple narratives about various mechanically-involved incidents in his

personal life, or the section of the book devoted to a description of the ward’s daily routine –

described as the inner workings of a mechanical device of sorts. (Complete with humming walls

that suggest the building itself has ticking gears and buzzing rotors contained within its

architecture.) Kesey, through the Chief, “…employs a consistent range of images to express his

almost manic condemnation of the system” (Malin 432) – the mechanically-inclined system

known as “The Combine”.

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The Big Chief utilizes motorized metaphors in the telling of his story because they are

incredibly unique to his character. It is my belief that machines have played important roles in

Bromden’s life during psychologically significant times. As a youth on a football team, he was

taken to a cotton mill overloaded with large machines during his team’s trip to California (38-

40). A youth’s first journey out-of-state is a highly significant event in his growth, and The

Chief’s happen to prominently feature machines. Also, machines saved the life of The Big Chief

during the Second World War when the airstrip his squad landed on was protected from Nazi

bombers by a fog machine (116). This prominent role of machines at such a significant point in

his life easily explains why the chief thinks in terms of mechanical and electrical engineering.

Additionally, The chief has taken several electronics classes (30), which have provided him with

enough technological know-how to turn these thoughts into his reality, and have made such

dreams feasible possibilities.

One of the first, and arguably the simplest use of metaphorical machinery is the Chief’s

description of how after “years of training…all three black boys tune in closer and closer with

the Big Nurse’s frequency” (32). And how the black aides are able to “…disconnect the direct

wires and operate on beams” (32). This phrase would appear just to be the ravings of a maniacal,

paranoid schizophrenic without the realistic statement of the needlessness of written or verbal

orders followed by a small bit of the Chief’s perspective on how the aides can “…[perform the

nurse’s] bidding before she even thinks it” (32). This changes the entire paragraph from a

madman’s rant into the craftily constructed metaphor of a deep thinker. Jack Hicks sums up the

truth behind the Chief’s visions well when he notes that: “Chief Bromden’s aberrations are a

form of peculiarly heightened truth… His paranoid vision of the Big Nurse [is] accurate in its

symbolism” (170).
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Despite appearing to be very intelligent and careful in the selection of his metaphors, the

Chief still allows his mechanical schizophrenia to creep into his narrative, such as in the incident

where he describes how, after acting as though he had taken his nightly medication, he removes

the pill from beneath his tongue and breaks it open. He claims to see a small electronic

component hidden within the drug that instantly turns to white powder upon contact with air.

This reinforces the reader’s belief that the Chief is indeed, insane, since we certainly know that

the contents of pills are almost always a fine white powder. (This is, however, a pointless issue.

Barry Leeds has already indicated in Ken Kesey that “The capsule, no matter what its ostensibly

beneficial effect, is a device intended by society to control the inmates, to render them docile and

bovine, and to rob them of [that]… which might threaten…the established order” (19).) Mr.

Kesey was no fool, and he made sure whilst craftily piecing his narrative together, with the

inclusion of this little tale in the novel, that readers would not mistakenly believe the Chief to be

solely a wise and cryptic man, rather that they would know he is – in his simplest, most basic

form – a lunatic.

In the novel, the preceding quote about the mechanical pill is embedded into a fairly large

section of the book that describes the daily routine on the ward as one of mechanical efficiency,

with the unfortunate patients, the staff, and even the building itself described as machines. We

are told that “efficiency locks the ward like a watchman’s clock. Everything the guys think and

say and do is all worked out months in advance…” The Chief makes the ward appear as one

gigantic machine, bent on the repair of the “broken” patients inside of it. Eventually, after

leading up with descriptions of how “powerful magnets in the floor maneuver the personnel

through the ward…” (33), and how the patients’ “…hearts [are] all beating at the rate the OD

cards have ordered. Sound of matched cylinders” (34), and his frequent references to whirring
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and humming noises he hears coming from the walls at certain times of the day, Chief Bromden

comes right out and boldly claims that “The Ward is a Factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up

mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches…” (40).

This line is unbelievably important for two reasons: First, this core belief of Bromden’s

proves that The Big Chief creates all of his mechanical rationalizations to explain the things he

finds hardest to believe, such as the given example where he simply cannot accept that society

wants to cure him and others like him because it cares about them. The Chief must construct a

mechanically-based fantasy about some sort of an omnipotent industrial institution in order to

simply make the concept of the psychiatric ward valid within his own mind. Leeds calls the

concept of The Combine, “…the most frightening product of Bromden’s hallucinatory

perceptions” (20), successfully identifying it as a figment of the imagination created to

rationalize the Chief’s hopes and fears. Secondly, the quote provides a semi-logical basis for all

of the Chief’s beliefs about, and conclusions pertaining to, an enormous, unfeeling mechanical

society, known as The Combine. The Big Nurse’s Motives are made clear to the Chief by his

simple portrayal of her as a tool of The Combine, as is the prompt, fearful obedience of hospital

employees to her commands and the ease with which she levies her distinctive brand of

totalitarianism upon the Ward.

Through the use of intense mechanical language, with a heavy emphasis upon

metaphorical symbolism, Ken Kesey brings “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” from the insane

to the sane and back again. Some would even go as far as to say that “…the images are the real

meaning of the novel” (Malin 432). Nonetheless, Kesey’s novel stands as a triumph of and a

tribute to American engineering, both mechanical and literary, with each form of success being

heavily dependent upon the other.

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Works Cited

Hicks, Jack. “In the Singer’s Temple”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Text and Criticism.

Ed. John C. Pratt. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York: Signet. 1962

Leeds, Barry H. Ken Kesey. New York: Ungar Publishing, 1981

Malin, Irving. “Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest: Text and Criticism. Ed. John C. Pratt Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1981.