I’m curious to know everyone’s thoughts on Chief Bromden as an unreliable narrator and whether we as readers are inclined to believe his version of reality. By pretending to be deaf and dumb he alerts the reader to the fact that he is capable of lying, but we also get the sense that in his personal account of his time in the ward he is being as honest as possible. Things get complicated as his accounts of the fog in Part I get more and more preposterous, culminating in the scene of the floating chairs starting on page 115; when Nurse Ratchet turns the dial and slows down time on page 68; and when Bromden has the dream about the furnaces on page 77. He believes he is seeing and experiencing all of these things, but the behavior of the other characters—the night watchman telling him he’s having a bad dream, or the other patients making fun of him for drifting off during a meeting—suggests that these are all incidents that occur solely in Bromden’s mind. I think the narrative is more effective this way though; it is the reality of his hallucinations that most vividly convey his suffering in the ward, more so than if the story were told from a purely objective point of view from a narrator we can depend on. Which leads me to the question of: what constitutes reality? Obviously that’s too broad a question to answer in a blog post but it’s curious, isn’t it, that the more time we spend in Bromden’s head the less sure we are of what reality is and how it correlates to perceived insanity, severe mental illness… or even more common diagnoses like depression and anxiety.
I would agree with Maddie’s point that the course of the novel reveals how much Bromden’s “insanity” is dependent on the current state of McMurphy on the ward. I found that most of Bromden’s insane episodes were preceded by an event that shook his faith in McMurphy, or reminded him of the oppressive power of the “Combine”. He acknowledges fluctuations in his emotional state and describes feelings of optimism or pessimism based on the things that go on around him. He views the ward as a microcosm of the larger war being waged between the forces of the Combine (embodied by Nurse Ratched) and the underdogs individuals working to retain their freedom (McMurphy). Even in his insane episodes, Bromden continually asserts this framework, which made me read him as a narrator with an unstable grasp on ‘reality’ in the simplest sense, but a remarkable amount of consistency about ‘reality’ in the abstract. I found the way he envisioned the world to be compelling because it struck me as true, so I didn’t feel betrayed by his delusions. Maddy pointed out that McMurphy is somehow a key to understanding Bromden as a narrator, and I would agree that McMurphy and the Nurse as symbols of Bromden’s ultimate worldview are crucial factors that determine his trustworthiness to readers. If he is describing them accurately, or at least perceiving them with some accuracy, then he is giving us a broad brush picture of the story that is fundamentally true.
I think this is a very interesting question. I feel as though has I have progressed through the novel, I find myself trusting Chief Bromden as a narrator more and more. I felt as though in the first chapter that I was very aware of Chief Bromden’s insanity and strange tendencies to creep and crawl and spy. However, once McMurphy was introduced I feel as though I saw a change in Chief Bromden’s narration and his accounts of the events occurring in the asylum became more clear. I think that McMurphy specifically has had a tremendous impact on Chief Bromden and his experience in the asylum. I think I saw this change most specifically when McMurphy noticed the fact that the Chief was not actually deaf or dumb. I think this surprised the Chief and I am not quite sure how much he is affected by McMurphy’s presence and confidence, but I wonder to what extent McMurphy is changing the Chief’s outlook on himself and self esteem and how this affects his narration. Personally, I think the presence of McMurphy in the asylum and the changes he is trying to instill are helping to make the Chief not only a more trustworthy narrator, but also perhaps a little less insane.
The three scenes that Chloe pointed out were the most obvious points where I was questioning Bromden’s sanity. For most of the novel, I was under the impression he was quite cunning and was much saner than he led the others in the ward to believe. Even in the scene with the furnaces, I still had faith in his reliability thinking it was just an abstract nightmare. However, in the scene with the fog and floating chairs, I found myself almost becoming frustrated with Bromden’s narration. It was clear this was simply a hallucination and I wanted to know what was really happening in the ward. I became disoriented reading and tried to discern a meaning behind who and what was floating. However, I later realized that this was very effective in making me, the reader, feel what Bromden probably does. My sense of reality was disoriented and the harder I tried to follow what was happening, the more frustrated I became. It was much easier to just read along without an attempt at analysis, like how Bromden gets “lost” in the fog.
I think as William called it, Bromden’s full narration creates an “authentic experience” of his own perceived/lived reality, whether or not that would align with an objective recounting of events in the ward. In response to Chloe’s question, this leaves me to believe that there is always more than one reality, each person holding on to their own reality just as firmly as the next person believes in their own. I like to consider this by imagining the same story but with McMurphy or Nurse Ratchet as the narrator. If Nurse Ratchet’s description of an event strayed from what we believed to be the truth, would we question her reliability or sanity? Do we almost hold Bromden to a higher standard in his narration because we are predisposed to think of him as unreliable?
I think this is a really great question. As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself how aware I was of the narrator, more so than any other book that I can remember reading recently. There is not a single moment that passes that we are not fully aware that this is Bromden’s story and we are seeing everything from his point of view. I also agree with Emory’s point. I think that, as Chloe says, the fact that we are in his head provides for a more authentic experience. I think it leaves us questioning his account and his surrounding, which I think is an intentional and effective literary tactic. It plays into the themes and setting of the novel, and gets us as close as we can to feeling as though we’re there.
I agree that Bromden is unreliable for the same reasons you listed, particularly based on the confusion created around the fog. However, I think that him openly speaking about his reality as it occurs to him in real time might be more reliable than if the narrator were to recount things that happened to them with the benefit of hindsight. I think his hallucinations and perspectives give us not only an idea of mental status in the asylum, but also a sense of genuineness. Further, I think the level of this unreliability throughout the novel gives the reader a perspective of the environment change brought on by McMurphy; we see the fog a lot in part one, but as McMurphy gives new life to the men in the asylum the fog plays less of a part. McMurphy obviously disrupts the monotony, which is what we’ve been discussing in class (and the book discusses) about whether or not segregating patients from social structures is the best treatment.