One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Study Guide

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest begins on a Monday morning. The morning cleaning crew at the mental hospital, the black boys, are finishing up their cleaning duties, hating every moment of their miserable jobs, the early hour, and the start of a new week of the mindless, vile drudgery of cleaning up after the mentally ill. The narrator is "Chief Broom," one of the inmates at the mental hospital. The Chief is a massive Native American man, who pretends to be deaf and mute. After some harassment by the cleaning crew, he is given a mop and told to get to work cleaning a spot. (read more)