Yongue, Patricia L.2022-12-132022-12-131975-0519752060370https://hdl.handle.net/10657/12926Bromden, the narrator of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the novel's protagonist rather than McMurphy. As the child of an Indian father and a white mother, he embodies the conflicts created by the American experience in his schizophrenia; unable to cope with his mechanistic environment, the "Combine," he withdraws completely and becomes a "deaf and dumb" Indian. On the mental ward he is treated according to the medical model of psychiatry. Since the reason for his illness is an existential rather than a medical one, this treatment remains without success. McMurphy, the anachronistic Western "hero," functions as a catalyst for Bromden. He cures the "deaf and dumb" Indian by accepting him as he is and by helping him to restore the connections with the past, the below, and the above (heritage, earth, and spirit) which had been cut off by the mechanistic and spiritually empty "Combine."application/pdfenThis item is protected by copyright but is made available here under a claim of fair use (17 U.S.C. Section 107) for non-profit research and educational purposes. Users of this work assume the responsibility for determining copyright status prior to reusing, publishing, or reproducing this item for purposes other than what is allowed by fair use or other copyright exemptions. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires express permission of the copyright holder.Thesisreformatted digital