An excerpt from “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” written by Ken Kesey, if you please. (Well, scratch that, it’s probably more along the lines of ‘if I please’, although I do take requests!) To your left, meet McMurphy of the quick temper and tightly curled-red hair. At a glance to your right there’s Harding, he of the delicate hands and voluptuous vocabulary. Our contenders have met that morning after the ‘relatively’ swift intake of Mr. McMurphy, breakfasted, and have just finished group therapy where Miss Ratched and a goodly percentage of the inma- er, my mistake, patients have finished verbally tearing apart a Mr. Harding. The setting is in a mental institution, circa not-to-long-ago.
McMurphy puts his cigarette back between his teeth and folds his hands over the wooden chair back and leans his chin on them, squinting one eye against the smoke. He looks at Harding with his other eye a while, then starts talking with that cigarette waging up and down in his lips.
“Well say, buddy, is this the way these leetle meetings usually go?”
“Usually go?” Harding’s humming stops. He’s not chewing his cheeks any more but he still stares ahead, past McMurphy’s shoulder.
“Is this the usual pro-cedure for these Group Ther’py shin-digs? Bunch of chickens at a peckin’ party?”
Harding’s head turns with a jerk and his eyes find McMurphy, like it’s the first time he knows that anybody’s sitting in front of him. his face creases in the middle when he bites his cheeks again, and this makes it look like he’s grinning. He pulls his shoulders back and scoots to the back of the chair and tries to look relaxed.
“A ‘pecking party’? I fear your quaint down-home speech is wasted on me, my friend. I have not the slightest inclination what you’re talking about.”
“Why then, I’ll just explain it to you.” McMurphy raises his voice; though he doesn’t look at the other Acutes listening behind him, it’s them he’s talking to. “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out a whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it –with chickens– is to clip blinder on them. So’s they can’t see.”
Harding laces his long fingers around a knee and draws the knee toward him, leaning back in the chair. “A pecking party. That certainly is a pleasant analogy, my friend.”
“And that’s just exactly what that meeting I just set through reminded me of, buddy, if you want to know the dirty truth. It reminded me of a flock of dirty chickens.”
“So that makes me the chicken with the spot of blood, friend?”
“That’s right, buddy.”
They’re still grinning at each other, but their voices have dropped so low and taut I have to sweep over closer to them with my broom to hear. The other Acutes are moving up closer too.
“And you want to know somethin’ else, buddy? You want to know who pecks that first peck?”
Harding waits for him to go on.
“It’s that old nurse, that’s who.”
There’s a whine of fear over the silence. I hear the machinery in the walls catch and go on. Harding is having a tough time holding his hands still, but he keeps trying to act calm.
“So,” he says, “it’s as simple as that, as stupidly simple as that. You’re on our ward six hours and have already simplified the work of Freud, Jung, and Maxwell Jones and summed it up in one analogy: it’s a ‘peckin’ party.’ “
“I’m not talking about Fred Yoong and Maxwell Jones, buddy, I’m just talking about that crummy meeting and what that nurse and those other bastards did to you. did in spades.”
“Did to me?”
“That’s right, did. Did you every chance they got. Did you coming and did you going. You must of done something to make a passle of enemies here in this place, buddy, because it seems there’s sure a passle got it in for you.”
“Why, this is incredible. You completely disregard, completely overlook and disregard the fact that what the fellows were doing today was for my own benefit? That any question or discussion raised by Miss Ratched or the rest of the staff is done solely for therapeutic reasons? You must not have heard a word of Doctor Spivey’s theory of the Therapeutic Community, or not have had the education to comprehend it if you did. I’m disappointed in you, my friend, oh, very disappointed. I had judged from our encounter this morning that you were more intelligent–an illiterate clod, perhaps, certainly a backwoods braggart with no more sensitivity than a goose, but basically intelligent nevertheless. But, observant and insightful though I usually am, I still make mistakes.”
“The hell with you, buddy.”
“Oh, yes; I forgot to add that I noticed your primitive brutality also this morning. Psychopath with definite sadistic tendencies, probably motivated by an unreasoning egomania. Yes. As you see, all these natural talents certainly qualify you as a competent therapist and render you quite capable of criticizing Miss Ratched’s meeting procedure, in spite of the fact that she is a highly regarded psychiatric nurse with twenty years in the field. Yes, with your talent, my friend, you could work subconscious miracles, soothe the aching id and heal the wounded superego. You could probably bring about a cure for the whole ward, Vegetables and all, in six short months, ladies and gentlemen, or your money back.”
Instead of rising to the argument, McMurphy just keeps on looking at Harding, finally asks in a level voice, “and you really think this crap that went on in the meeting today is bringing about some kinda cure, doing some kinda good?”
“What other reason would we have for submitting ourselves to it, my friend? The staff desires our cure as much as we do. They aren’t monsters. Miss Ratched may be a strict middle-aged lady, but she’s not some kind of giant monster of the poultry clan, bent on sadistically pecking out our eyes. You can’t believe that of her, can you?”
“No, buddy, not that. She ain’t peckin’ at your eyes. That’s not what she’s peckin’ at.”
Harding flinches, and I see his hands begin to creep out from between his knees like white spiders from between two moss covered tree limbs, up the limbs toward the joining of the trunk.
“Not our eyes?” he says. “Pray, then, where is Miss Ratched pecking, my friend?”
McMurphy grinned. “Why, don’t you know, buddy?”
“No, of course I don’t know! I mean, if you insi–”
“At your balls, buddy, at your everlovin’ balls.”
The spiders reach the joining at the trunk and settle there, twitching. Harding tries to grin, but his face and lips are so white the grin is lost. He stares at McMurphy. McMurphy takes the cigarette out of his mouth and repeats what he said.
“Right at your balls. No, that nurse ain’t some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is a ball-cutter. I’ve seen a thousand of ‘em, old and young, men and women. Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes — people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst. You ever been kneed in the nuts in a brawl, buddy? Stops you cold, don’t it? There’s nothing worse. It makes you sick, it saps every bit of strength you got. If you’re up against a guy who wants to win by making you weaker instead of making himself stronger, then watch for his knee, he’s gonna go for your vitals. And that’s what that old buzzard is doing, going for your vitals.”
Harding’s face is still colorless, but he’s got control of his hands again; they flip loosely before him, trying to toss off what McMurphy has been saying:
“Our dear Miss Ratched? Our sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy, Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter? Why, friend, that’s most unlikely.”
“Buddy, don’t give me that tender little mother crap. She may be a mother, but she’s big as a damn barn and tough as knife metal. She fooled me with that kindly little old mother bit for maybe three minutes when I came in this morning, but no longer. I don’t think she’s really fooled any of you guys for any six months or a year, neither. Hooowee, I’ve seen some bitches in my time, but she takes the cake.”
“A bitch? But a moment ago she was a ball-cutter, then a buzzard — or was it a chicken? Your metaphors are bumping into each other, my friend.”
“The hell with that; she’s a bitch and a buzzard and a ball-cutter, and don’t kid me, you know what I’m talking about.”
Harding’s face and hands were moving faster than ever now, a speeding film of gestures, grins, grimaces, sneers. The more he tries to stop it, the faster it goes. When he lets his hands and face move like they want to and doesn’t try to hold them back, they flow and gesture in a way that’s real pretty to watch, but when he worries about them and tries to hold back he becomes a wild, jerky puppet doing a high-strung dance. Everything is moving faster and faster, and his voice is speeding up to match.
“Why, see here, my friend Mr. McMurphy, my psychopathic sidekick, our Miss Ratched is a veritable angel of mercy and why just everyone knows it. She’s unselfish as the wind, toiling thanklessly for the good of all, day after day, five long days a week. That takes heart, my friend, heart. In fact, I have been informed by sources — I am not at liberty to disclose my sources, but I might say that Martini is in contact with the same people a good part of the time — that she even further serves mankind on her weekends off by doing generous volunteer work about town. Preparing a rich array of charity — canned goods, cheese for the binding effect, soap — and presenting it to some poor young couple having a difficult time financially.” His hands flash in the air, molding the picture he is describing. “Ah, look: There she is, our nurse. Her gentle knock on the door. The ribboned basket. The young couple overjoyed to the point of speechlessness. The husband open-mouthed, the wife weeping openly. She appraises their dwelling. Promises to send them money for — scouring powder, yes. She places the basket in the center of the floor. And when our angel leaves — throwing kisses, smiling ethereally — she is intoxicated with the sweet milk of human kindness that her deed has generated within her large bosom that she is beside herself with generosity, be-side herself, do you hear? Pausing at the door, she draws the timid young bride to one side and offers her twenty dollars of her own: Go, you poor unfortunate underfed child, go, and buy yourself a decent dress. I realize your husband can’t afford it, but here, take this, and go. And the couple is forever indebted to her benevolence.”
He’s been talking faster and faster, the cords stretching out in his neck. When he stops talking, the ward is completely silent. I don’t hear anything but a faint realing rhythm, what I figure is a tape recorder getting all this.
Harding looks around, sees everybody watching him, and does his best to laugh. A sound comes out of his mouth like a nail being crowbarred out of a plank of green pine; Eee-eee-eee. He can’t stop it. He wrings his hands like a fly and closes his eyes at the awful sound of that squeaking. But he can’t stop it. It gets higher and higher until finally, with a suck of breath, he lets his face fall into his waiting hands.
“Oh, the bitch, the bitch, the bitch,” he whispers through his teeth.
McMurphy lights another cigarette and offers it to him; Harding takes it without a word. McMurphy is still watching Harding’s face in front of him there, with a kind of puzzled wonder, looking at it like it’s the first human face he’s ever laid eyes on. He watches while Harding’s twitching and jerking slows down and the face comes up from the hands.
“You are right,” Harding says, “About all of it.” He looks up at the other patients who are watching him. “No one’s ever dared come out and say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as you do about her and the whole business — feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.”
See? Only a few pages, hardly anything, really. Now, there is another excerpt, happens to tie quite well into this one, but it’s taken from quite a bit farther along in the book. There’s a suicide at the end of the excerpt, fair warning for those who wish to avoid such mentionings. The description is very short, perhaps three sentences total, all repetative. The reason it ties in so nicely should be self-evident by Nurse Ratchet’s actions.
The bit below is the morning after a party the Acute’s threw during the night, without permission (obviously), along with two female guests who snuck in with the help of an orderly by the name of Turkle. Everyone has passed out in odd places. Ratched has come in the next morning, realizes something is gravely amiss, and snaps two aides to attention.
“Washington! Warren! Come with me for room check.”
We rose and followed as the three of them went along, unlocking the lab, the tub room, the doctor’s office…Scanlon covered his grin with his knotty hand and whispered, “Hey, ain’t it gonna be some joke on ol’ Billy,” We all nodded. “And Billy’s not the only one it’s gonna be a joke on, now that I think about it; remember who’s in there?”
The nurse reached the door of the Seclusion Room at the end of the hall. we pushed up close to see, crowding and craning to peep over the Big nurse and the two black boys as she unlocked it and swung it open. It was dark in the windowless room. There was a squeak and a scuffle in the dark, and the nurse reached out, flicked the light down on Billy and the girl where they were blinking up from that mattress on the floor like two owls from a nest. The nurse ignored the howl of laughter behind her.
“William Bibbit!” She tried so hard to sound cold and stern. “William…Bibbit!”
“Good morning, Miss Ratched,” Billy said, not even making any move to get up and button his pajamas. He took the girl’s hand in his and grinned. “This is Candy.”
The nurse’s tongue clucked in her boney throat. “Oh, Billy Billy Billy –
I’m so ashamed for you.”
Billy wasn’t awake to respond much to her shaming, and the girl was fussing around looking under the mattress for her nylons, moving slow and warm-looking after sleep. Every so often she would stop her dreamy fumbling and look up and smile at the icy figure of the nurse standing there with her arms crossed, then feel to see if her sweater was buttoned and go back to tugging for her nylon caught between the mattress and the tile floor. They both moved like fat cats full of warm milk, lazy in the sun; I guessed they were still fairly drunk, too.
“Oh, Billy,” the nurse said, like she was so disappointed she might break down and cry. “A woman like this. A cheap! Low! Painted –”
“Courtesan?” Harding suggested. “Jezebel?” The nurse turned and tried to nail him with her eyes, but he just went on. “Not Jezebel? No?” He scratched his head in thought. “How about Salome? She’s notoriously evil. Perhaps ‘dame’ is the word you want. Well, I’m just trying to help.”
She swung back to Billy. He was concentrating on getting to his feet. He rolled over and came to his knees, butt in the air like a cow getting up, then pushed up on his hands, then came to one foot, then the other, and straightened. He looked pleased with his success, as if he wasn’t even aware of us crowding at the door teasing him and hoorahing him.
The loud talk and laughter swirled around the nurse. She looked from Billy and the girl to the bunch of us behind her. The enamel-and-plastic face was caving in. She shut her eyes and strained to calm her trembling, concentrating. She knew this was it, her back to the wall. When her eyes opened again, they were very small and still.
“What worries me, Billy,” she said, –”is how your poor mother is going to take this.”
She got the response she was after. Billy flinched and put his hand to his cheek like he’d been burned with acid.
“Mrs. Bibbit’s always been so proud of your discretion. I know she has. This is going to disturb her terribly. You know how she is when she gets disturbed, Billy; you know how ill the poor woman can become. She’s very sensitive. Especially concerning her son. She always spoke so proudly of you. She al–”
“Nuh! Nuh!” His mouth was working. He shook his head, begging her. “You d-don’t n-n-need!”
“Billy Billy Billy,” she said. “Your mother and I are old friends.”
“No!” he cried. His voice scraped the white, bare walls of the Seclusion room. He lifted his chin so he was shouting at the moon of light in the ceiling. “N-n-no!”
We’d stopped laughing. We watched Billy folding his arms into the floor, head going back, knees coming forward. He rubbed his hand up and down that green pant leg. He was shaking his head in panic like a kid that’s been promised a whipping just as soon as a willow is cut. The nurse touched his shoulder to comfort him. The touch shook him like a blow.
“Billy, I don’t want her to believe something like this of you — but what am I to think?”
“Duh-duh-don’t t-tell, M-M-M-Miss Ratched. Duh-duh-duh–”
“Billy, I have to tell. I hate to believe you would behave like this, but really, what else can I think? I find you alone, on a mattress, with this sort of woman.”
“No! I d-d-didn’t. I was–” His hand went to his cheek again and stuck there. “She did.”
“Billy, this girl could not have pulled you in here forcibly. She shook her head. “Understand, I would like to believe something else — for your poor mother’s sake.”
The hand pulled down his cheek, raking long red marks. “She d-did.” He looked around him. “And M-M-McMurphy! He did. And Harding! And the-the-the rest! They t-t-teased me, called me things!”
Now his face was fastened to hers. He didn’t look to one side or the other, but only straight ahead at her face, like there was a spiraling light there instead of features, a hypnotizing swirl of cream white and clue and orange. He swallowed and waited for her to say something, but she wouldn’t; her skill, her fantastical mechanical power flooded back into her, analyzing the situation and reporting to her that all she had to do was keep quiet.
“They m-m-made me! Please, Miss Ratched, they may-may-MAY–!”
She checked her beam, and Billy’s face pitched downward, sobbing with relief. She put a hand on his neck and drew his cheek to her starched breast, stroking his shoulder while she turned a slow, contemptuous look across the bunch of us.
“It’s all right, Billy. It’s all right. No one else is going to harm you. It’s all right. I’ll explain to your mother.”
She continued to glare at us while she spoke. It was strange to hear that voice, soft and soothing and warm as a pillow, coming out of a face hard as porcelain.
“All right, Billy. Come along with me. You can wait over here in the doctor’s office. There’s no reason for you to be submitted to sitting out the in the day room with these …friends of yours.”
She led him into the office, stroking his bowed head and saying, “Poor boy, poor little boy,” while we faded back down the hall silently and sat down in the day room without looking at one another or speaking. McMurphy was the last one to take a seat.
~Snip~ It’s probably best to cut this short, I think; it is rather long, and two paragraphs taken away will probably ease your eyes. Condensed, they go like this; Our narrator, Chief Bowden, observes McMurphy getting his bearings for the long road ahead (for Nurse Ratched, y’see, has control over length of stay in the ward with Mr. McMurphy, and he’s been bucking her at almost every turn). Phones are ringing, nurses are detailing the trouble through the hospital’s channel of proper authorities, and the doctor has just arrived and is currently listening to Dear Nurse Ratched explain poor Billy’s lamentable situation that the patients put him through. Note the sarcasm, as the one that put Billy in such a state is Ratched herself. Nurse Ratched speaks.~Snip~
“I left him in your office. Judging from his present state, I suggest you see him right away. He’s been through a terrible ordeal. I shudder to think of the damage that must have been done to that poor boy.”
She waited until the doctor shuddered too.
“I think you should go see if you can speak with him. He needs a lot of sympathy. He’s in a pitiful state.”
The doctor nodded again and walked toward his office. We watched him go.
“Mack,” Scanlon said. “Listen — you don’t think any of us are being taken in by this crap, do you? It’s bad, but we know where the blame lies — we ain’t blaming you.”
“No,” I said, “none of us blame you.” And wished I’d had my tongue pulled out as soon as I saw the way he looked at me.
He closed his eyes and relaxed. Waiting, it looked like. Harding got up and walked over to him and had just opened his mouth to say something when the doctor’s voice screaming down the hall smashed a common horror and realization onto everybody’s face.
“Nurse!” he yelled. “good Lord, nurse!”
She ran, and the three black boys ran, down the hall to where the doctor was still calling. But not a patient got up. We knew there wasn’t anything for us to do now but just sit tight and wait for her to come to the day room to tell us what we all had known was one of the things that was bound to happen.
She walked straight to McMurphy.
“He cut his throat,” she said. She waited, hoping he would say something. He wouldn’t look up. “He opened the doctor’s desk and found some instruments and cut his throat. the poor miserable, misunderstood boy killed himself. He’s there now, in the doctor’s chair, with his throat cut.”
She waited again. But he still wouldn’t look up.
First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives — gambling with human lives — as if you thought yourself to be a God!”
“The End”
…Well no, not ~really~. I’m sure most of you’ve seen the movie, so you know there’s a bit more to go. Let me just say that Ratchet had the last laugh against Randal McMurphy, but that McMurphy passed around some spine to the other fellows, and it did them a bit of good after they took it.
I’ll finish the rest o’the typing tomorrow, there’s going to be quite a bit to do with control in there, I think, and how to spot it, (it’ll be mainly musings, a run of conscious consideration) unless a different way to write should come to me in my dreams. Should be interesting. It’s two thirty in the morning and I really should’ve been tucked in my bed hours ago. The post can stand to be broken up, I think.
