Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

“Man, what they got going on in there?” McMurphy asks Harding.

“In there? Why, that’s right, isn’t it? You haven’t had the pleasure. Pity. An experience no human should be without.” Harding laces his fingers behind his neck and leans back to look at the door. “That’s the Shock Shop I was telling you about some time back, my friend, the EST, Electro-Shock Therapy. Those fortunate souls in there are being given a free trip to the moon. No, on second thought, it isn’t completely free. You pay for the service with brain cells instead of money, and everyone has simply billions of brain cells on deposit. You won’t miss a few.”

He frowns at the one lone man left on the bench. “Not a very large clientele today, it seems, nothing like the crowds of yesteryear. But then, c’est la vie , fads come and go. And I’m afraid we are witnessing the sunset of EST. Our dear head nurse is one of the few with the heart to stand up for a grand old Faulknerian tradition in the treatment of the rejects of sanity: Brain Burning.”

The door opens. A Gurney comes whirring out, nobody pushing it, takes the corner on two wheels and disappears smoking up the hall. McMurphy watches them take the last guy in and close the door.

“What they do is” — McMurphy listens a moment — “take some bird in there and shoot electricity through his skull?”

“That’s a concise way of putting it.”

“What the hell for?”

“Why, the patient’s good, of course. Everything done here is for the patient’s good. You may sometimes get the impression, having lived only on our ward, that the hospital is a vast efficient mechanism that would function quite well if the patient were not imposed on it, but that’s not true. EST isn’t always used for punitive measures, as our nurse uses it, and it isn’t pure sadism on the staff’s part, either. A number of supposed Irrecoverables were brought back into contact with shock, just as a number were helped with lobotomy and leucotomy. Shock treatment has some advantages; it’s cheap, quick, entirely painless. It simply induces a seizure.”

“What a life,” Sefelt moans. “Give some of us pills to stop a fit, give the rest shock to start one.”

Harding leans forward to explain it to McMurphy. “Here’s how it came about: two psychiatrists were visiting a slaughterhouse, for God knows what perverse reason, and were watching cattle being killed by a blow between the eyes with a sledgehammer. They noticed that not all of the cattle were killed, that some would fall to the floor in a state that greatly resembled an epileptic convulsion. ‘Ah, zo ,’ the first doctor says. ‘Ziz is exactly vot ve need for our patients — zee induced fit!’ His colleague agreed, of course. It was known that men coming out of an epileptic convulsion were inclined to be calmer and more peaceful for a time, and that violent cases completely out of contact were able to carry on rational conversations after a convulsion. No one knew why; they still don’t. But it was obvious that if a seizure could be induced in non-epileptics, great benefits might result. And here, before them, stood a man inducing seizures every so often with remarkable aplomb.”

Scanlon says he thought the guy used a hammer instead of a bomb, but Harding says he will ignore that completely, and he goes ahead with the explanation. “A hammer is what the butcher used. And it was here that the colleague had some reservations. After all, a man wasn’t a cow. Who knows when the hammer might slip and break a nose? Even knock out a mouthful of teeth? Then where would they be, with the high cost of dental work? If they were going to knock a man in the head, they needed to use something surer and more accurate than a hammer; they finally settled on electricity.”

“Jesus, didn’t they think it might do some damage? Didn’t the public raise Cain about it?”

“I don’t think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.”

McMurphy shakes his head. “Hoo-wee! Electricity through the head. Man, that’s like electrocuting a guy for murder.”

“The reasons for both activities are much more closely related than you might think; they are both cures.”

“And you say it don’t hurt?”

“I personally guarantee it. Completely painless. One flash and you’re unconscious immediately. No gas, no needle, no sledgehammer. Absolutely painless. The thing is, no one ever wants another one. You… change. You forget things. It’s as if” — he presses his hands against his temples, shutting his eyes — “it’s as if the jolt sets off a wild carnival wheel of images, emotions, memories. These wheels, you’ve seen them; the barker takes your bet and pushes a button. Chang! With light and sound and numbers round and round in a whirlwind, and maybe you win with what you end up with and maybe you lose and have to play again. Pay the man for another spin, son, pay the man.”

“Take it easy, Harding.”

The door opens and the Gurney comes back out with the guy under a sheet, and the technicians go out for coffee. McMurphy runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t seem able to get all this stuff that’s happening straight in my mind.”

“What’s that? This shock treatment?”

“Yeah. No, not just that. All this…” He waves his hand in a circle. “All these things going on.”

Harding’s hand touches McMurphy’s knee. “Put your troubled mind at ease, my friend. In all likelihood you needn’t concern yourself with EST. It’s almost out of vogue and only used in the extreme cases nothing else seems to reach, like lobotomy.”

“Now lobotomy, that’s chopping away part of the brain?”

“You’re right again. You’re becoming very sophisticated in the jargon. Yes; chopping away the brain. Frontal-lobe castration. I guess if she can’t cut below the belt she’ll do it above the eyes.”

“You mean Ratched.”

“I do indeed.”

“I didn’t think the nurse had the say — so on this kind of thing.”

“She does indeed.”

McMurphy acts like he’s glad to get off talking about shock and lobotomy and get back to talking about the Big Nurse. He asks Harding what he figures is wrong with her. Harding and Scanlon and some of the others have all kinds of ideas. They talk for a while about whether she’s the root of all the trouble here or not, and Harding says she’s the root of most of it. Most of the other guys think so too, but McMurphy isn’t so sure any more. He says he thought so at one time but now he don’t know. He says he don’t think getting her out of the way would really make much difference; he says that there’s something bigger making all this mess and goes on to try to say what he thinks it is. He finally gives up when he can’t explain it.

McMurphy doesn’t know it, but he’s onto what I realized a long time back, that it’s not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it’s the whole Combine, the nation-wide Combine that’s the really big force, and the nurse is just a high-ranking official for them.

The guys don’t agree with McMurphy. They say they know what the trouble with things is, then get in an argument about that. They argue till McMurphy interrupts them.

“Hell’s bells, listen at you,” McMurphy says. “All I hear is gripe, gripe, gripe. About the nurse or the staff or the hospital. Scanlon wants to bomb the whole outfit. Sefelt blames the drugs. Fredrickson blames his family trouble. Well, you’re all just passing the buck.”

He says that the Big Nurse is just a bitter, icy-hearted old woman, and all this business trying to get him to lock horns with her is a lot of bull — wouldn’t do anybody any good, especially him. Getting shut of her wouldn’t be getting shut of the real deep-down hang-up that’s causing the gripes.