one flew

Chief Bromden, the half-Indian narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, has been a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital for fifteen years. During this time, he has pretended to be deaf and dumb. When he was a child, three government officials came to see his father about buying the tribe's land so they could build a hydroelectric dam. Bromden, ten years old at the time, was home alone. When he tried to speak …

…by slashing his throat. McMurphy attacks Ratched; he rips open the front of her dress and tries to strangle her. In retaliation, she has him lobotomized. However, she has lost her tyrannical power over the ward. Her patients transfer to other wards or check themselves out of the hospital. Before he escapes from the hospital, Bromden suffocates McMurphy, so that he can die with some dignity rather than living out his life as a vegetable.