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This essay is going to describe one of the characters in One flew over the Cuckoo's nest, namely Dale Harding. It will give a description of Harding's traits and his problems. The essay will also give an account of how he is conveyed to the reader. Passages from the book will be used or referenced to through out the essay to give a better understanding and wiew of the main points.
It is difficult to give a good description of Dale Harding because of the way he is conveyed to the reader. He is described through the eyes, ears and brain of Chief Bromden, so as readers we don't have access to Harding's mind. Chief Bromden doesn't describe Harding, he only gives us an account of the actions of Dale and the other people on the ward. This makes it hard to give a complete picture of Dale Harding but I am going to try. 

Dale is the best educated man on the ward, he talks about Freud, Jung and Maxwell Jones and their theories when he tries to persuade McMurphy that Ms Ratched only wants their best (page 56). You can sense that he is well educated in a lot of subjects like psychiatry and literature. He is a very intelligent man. So why does he put up with nurse Ratched's horrible and oppressive methods? The answer is that Harding lacks courage, he is a real coward. He can't even laugh out loud, his "laugh" or sound is hideous "like a nail being crowbarred out of a plank of green pine" (p. 59). If there is a fight with the nurse he flees and hides behind his intelligence, trying to find reasonable and logical explanations to the nurse's abuse. This is very obvious in the book especially after the Group Meeting when they have "discussed" Harding's problems. Mc Murphy says that it was cruel and they were like "a bunch of chickens at a pecking party" (p. 55). But Harding does not agree and he tries to convince McMurphy and mostly himself that nurse Ratched is doing this for their own good. He starts to talk psychiatric treatments and says that he is disappointed in McMurphy because Harding thought that he was intelligent man. Harding even says that "Ms Ratched may be a strict middle-aged lady, but she's not some kind of giant monster of the poultry clan, bent on sadistically pecking out our eyes" (p. 56). Hardin thinks that the patients are like rabbits, scared and harmless. When McMurphy says that Ratched is a "ball-cutter" Harding holds a long defence-speech for her (p. 58). Harding is doing this to convince himself rather than to convince McMurphy because he knows that Mc Murphy is right and he later admits it (p. 59). When McMurphy rebels against the nurse, Harding is standing on the side hoping that McMurphy will fail, he was president of the Patient's Council when McMurphy was admitted so there is competition. But as the book goes on he becomes more brave but I shall come back to that later.

Harding's problem is, as many of the patients problems, a sexual one. He has fled from society because he is ashamed of his feminine side and features. The most noticeble feature is his slender and beautiful hands who can be out of control sometimes and he starts to wave them all over. Harding is afraid of his wife, Vera and her accusations of him being homosexual and weak. Vera is a girl who likes to flirt with other men and this naturally makes Harding very upset. She talks bad about his friends, calling them the "hoity-toity boys" (p. 159). But Harding starts to realize that his real problem is his fear of being feminine. During the book he learns to overcome the fear and he becomes a stronger man. Is he a homosexual? There isn't a answer in the book so the reader has to draw his/her own conclusions.

The most important function that Dale has in the book is his logic and knowledge. Harding is the person that gives us readers the logical and rational explanations we are used to hear. The Chief doesn't give us a clear picture of the ward because of his hallucinations. Harding also explains to McMurphy how the ward and nurse Ratched work, how she directs her matriarchy. He tells how electroshock therapy works and what a lobotomy does to a person (p. 64). Harding is the person that a reader easily can identify with, he is the "normal" person on the instution. 

Harding changes a lot during the course of the book. He transforms from a intelligent person without courage to a intelligent person with courage. He overcomes his fears and starts acting like a whole man again. He even makes plans for McMurphy's escape. McMurphy is the person behind Harding's transformation, he sets an example which Harding follows. Harding even leaves the ward on his own terms which he expresses on page 257: "I want to do it on my own, by myself, (...) I want them to know I was able to do it that way." And he does just that.
Harding is a interesting character that really makes the book better, he is the one that readers can identify with. He goes through a transformation that a lot of people wants to go through.
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