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<title> Chief Bromden's Way Back </title>
To me Chief Bromden is the protagonist of the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. In this essay I will give you my view of the character Chief Bromden and how he gradually changes and works his way back into society. Randle P. McMurphy is the person who makes this rehabilitation happen.
	At first you do not regard Chief Bromden to be a character of great importance but being the person telling the story about the struggle between the inmate McMurphy and the employee Big Nurse. But at the end of the book the Chief emerges as the real protagonist and you realize that the book is really about him. We actually get to know more of the Chief's character than we do of the other characters in the story. Being the narrator, he is using all the other characters to tell the story about himself. 
	Chief Bromden is a huge, six foot seven inches tall, paranoid-schizophrenic half-Indian and we get to know about his mental state in a single stroke in the beginning of the novel: "They're out there" (pg. 9). He is an inmate of a mental hospital in Oregon, where also most of the action in the novel takes place. He has been on the ward for the longest time of all of the inmates and he has been diagnosed as incurable. He imagines himself to be small and weak and pretends to be deaf-mute in order to protect himself. To have fooled the others into believing he cannot hear gives him a great advantage. By having done so he gets to hear things which are concealed from the other inmates and he is therefore effective as a narrator. But the fact that he is insane makes it difficult for the reader to separate fact from fantasy at times.
	 When the novel progresses the Chief turns from being a passive observer to being a participant in the action. The Chief regains his strength thanks to McMurphy's fight against Big Nurse. McMurphy succeeds in helping to transform Chief Bromden back into a sane person with the strength to face the real world. A first step towards taking responsibility and not just giving in is taken by the Chief at the end of part 1; he raises his hand when McMurphy needs another vote to win the fight about the World Series. By taking this important step the Chief has left the security of the fog that usually surrounds and protects him. 
	A few pages later Chief Bromden compares himself with McMurphy and wonders "how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was" (pg.140). The Chief has never been able to do this himself and although he is tall and powerfully built, he sees himself as weak and small, because that is how he feels inside. He is still incapable of recognizing reality though, which in fact is that he is as strong as anyone.
	In part 3 the thought of a possible fishing trip causes the Chief to remember an event from his childhood and he recalls when he started to feel small for the first time and when people refused to recognize his existence. By realizing what first started it all makes him face the truth of his own situation. The very same night the Chief take another daring step and that is to speak for the first time in a very long time. As he regains the will to talk again the narration becomes closer to everyday reality and he is starting to regain his sanity.
	"Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, she's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em inna pens...wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock...one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest...O-U-T- spells out...goose swoops down and plucks you out" (pg. 239). This nursery rhyme from which the title of the book is taken is quoted by the Chief in the end of the book. The goose who flies over the cuckoo's nest is McMurphy and the one he plucks out is the Chief. This rhyme is being quoted by the Chief at a stage when he realizes that he is going to be strong enough to get away from the hospital. He also says a few pages later "I knew this time I had them beat" (pg. 241). This is when he is able to resist the fog, which before was the image of his insanity that used to hold him in a steady grip but is now gone.
	At the end of the novel he has been blown up to full size again by McMurphy, and he is now able to see how small McMurphy really was. This is illustrated just before the Chief leaves the asylum and walks out into the real world "I reached into McMurphy's nightstand and got his cap and tried it on. It was too small" (pg. 271). He has outgrown his need for McMurphy and is now able to stand on his own. The last sentence "I been away a long time" (pg. 272). indicates that the Chief has left the hospital and is now free and on his own.
	At the end of the novel the Chief's newly won freedom and strength convinces the reader that the Chief will succeed with his new life and there is no doubt about him having changed immensely through the course of the novel and the fact that this change happened leaves the reader with a feeling of hope.
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