Chief Bromden In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

A good narrator can change a good story into a great one. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the author, Ken Kesey, takes an unconventional approach to choosing the narrator. Rather than selecting the main character or even no character at all, Kesey decided to use a side character such as Chief Bromden, often referred to as Chief Broom, is a quiet, yet peculiar character in the novel. He narrates the entire story from an observer’s point of view while pretending to be deaf and dumb. Bromden relates the events leading to the demise of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the main protagonist in the book. However, his narration makes for major drawbacks and issues when telling the story as the narrator, a position in which other characters would have fit much better. Chief Bromden just is not fit for the position Ken Kesey has bestowed upon him. Thus, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden acts as an unreliable narrator who should be replaced with a more relevant character in the novel.
The novel takes place in a mental hospital, full of men with various mental conditions. While the mental state of some patients is questionable, all the …show more content…
His relevance, mental condition, and isolation from society make it very clear that a more relevant character like McMurphy would make the novel a more complete and entertaining story. While Chief does know everything that goes on in the hospital and lots of the people in it, he is just not a dependable narrator to tell a complete story about McMurphy, as he just does not have enough information, and his perception is skewed by his isolation and illness. This made for an incomplete story that still leaves lots of lingering questions that Bromden can never answer. Therefore, in this case, the betting man McMurphy would make for Kesey’s best bet to narrate his work, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s