One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I watched and tried to figure out what he would have done. I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.

"What worries me, Billy," she said — I could hear the change in her voice — "is how your mother is going to take this."

Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . . come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . . .

He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.

Alla you! Quit bugging me, goddammit!

While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water — laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.

I been away a long time.

Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.

It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference.... To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

This is what I know. 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, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that came in all twisted and different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold.

He who marches out of line hears another drum.

They're out there.

Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower.

Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice!

And you tell Mr. Harding right back — he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low — that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.

I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it.... I'm tired.

Later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

But just as soon as we got to the pool he said he did wish something mighta been done, though, and dove into the water.

Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

"But I tried though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"