One Flew Over the Cuckoo nest: Quote 1

“There’s a path running down through the aspen, and I push my broom down the path a ways and sit down on a rock and look back out through the frame at that visiting doctor talking with the residents. I can see him stabbing some point in the palm of his hand with his finger, but I can’t hear what he says because of the crash of the cold, frothy steam coming down out of the rocks. I can smell the snow in the wind where it blows down off the peaks… It’s a real nice place to stretch your legs and it take easy.” Page 122

This quote is about different realities and what is reality for a “crazy” person. This is an important idea in the book because Bromden has a very different perception of reality; he comes in and out of fogs often, because of the many shock treatments he has received. Here he is looking at a painting one moment then suddenly transported into the painting experiencing it the next. The quote deeply describes the was Bromden sees things, sometimes as things that don’t really exists, his reality is sometimes distorted because of what they have done to him in the institute.