<doc.id=0235.a4>
<title> One flew over the cuckoo's nest. Character: Mr Harding </title>
It's a story about a mental hospital. The main character Randall Patrick McMurphy chooses to pretend he is mad. He does that to avoid a state work-farm. From the moment he enters the mental hospital, he manage to change everything. Nothing does ever return to the way they were. He fights with the Head Nurse about the leading position of power among the interns. McMurphy doesn't just succeed to bend the rule but also to start a changing process in the interns' personalities. He often converses with one of the protagonists, of the name Mr Dale Harding. Mr Harding is an educated man and often tells Mr McMurphy how things work at the hospital. 

Characterisation 
The narrator is one of the patients. He is a huge Indian named Chief Bromden. He pretends to be deaf and dumb so no one would bother him. He is very frightened and likes to keep the distance from the others. In this way he is able to observe everything that occurs within the ward. The advantage is that he doesn't needs to be involved himself. The Chief narrates everything that McMurphy does. The reader learn to know the other protagonists by following McMurphy's conversations.

Character
Before McMurphy becomes one of the interns, Mr Harding is a very accurate and well-behaved man. From their first interchange of words, the reader realises how eloquent Mr Harding is. Although he is an educated intelligent man, he is a very weak and nervous person. What reveals his insecurity is "his hands which get loos and glides around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees". (quotation p.21) Mr Harding is afraid all the time. He is completely submitted to the Head Nurse. He thinks, like the rest of the interns, that she is dangerous and evil. She does have the total control over them with the power to submit them to Electro Shock Therapy. During the first talk with McMurphy, Mr Harding pretends, at first, to like the Head Nurse. Although he soon admits his real feelings. (p.50-52). Mr Harding knows how to behave not to upset the Head Nurse. "He (Mr McMurphy) starts to stand up, and Harding touches his arm. 'Friend, that is exactly the kind of statement that gets one branded assaultive." (p.66) Mr Harding's self-esteem grows when he realises he can inform McMurphy how things function at the hospital. Mr Harding's self-esteem improves throughout the story. 

Mr Harding is married to a good looking young woman. The relationship is infected, she thinks he is half a man, and he considers her illiterate. From the therapy meetings it turns out that Mr Harding is jealous, but in the same time gives her "reason to seek further sexual attention" from other men. He also, sometimes, feels inferior to his wife. (p.39) She makes him nervous and he knows she couldn't care less about him and his friends. (p.141) He sees himself recovered when he'll be able to go back to his wife as a real man. (p.241).

At the end of the story he is transformed. He is not the same frightened man and he breaks hospital rules. Ones he lies to a supervisor to protect his fellow interns. (p.236) During the same night he steels pills from a locker. (p.238-239) He is aware of his inappropriate actions but he doesn't care. He has lost his respect for the Head Nurse. (p.251) When McMurpy is away being submitted to lobotomy operation, Mr Harding takes over his roll. "Harding had even got the tub room back open and was in there dealing blackjack himself, trying to make that airy, thin voice of his sound like McMurphy's auctioneer bellow." (p.251) In the end Mr Harding is able return to his wife in the outside world. (p.252)

Mr Harding represents the silence masses of the society. The masses that are adjusted to the society and follows directives without questioning the authority. It's human not to question the existing rules because it feels safe. He is intelligent but brain-washed by the system. It's almost like Mr Harding is suppressed partly by a matriarchy dominated world. All that is needed to weak him up, is a new influence. He is that intelligent, that once he opens his eyes, he realise how things really are. At the end he experience real inner-strength, because he has learnt to trust his own feelings and intelligence and stand up to a sick authority. Maybe even in society men like McMurphy has to be sacrificed, so that the larger masses of the society weak up and becomes aware of the reality.
</doc>