Chapter 17
McMurphy keeps up his tricks, however. The Big Nurse assigns him to cleaning the latrine, and he does a miserable job at it, even going so far as to leave messages for the Nurse stuck in the toilet bowls. The men continue their strike of watching the TV during the afternoons, when it's turned off, and McMurphy regales them with jokes and stories, still trying to get them to laugh.
Topic Tracking: Humor 3
Bromden is amazed that McMurphy can be so strong; he doesn't let anyone else's opinion of him define who he is. There are times when Bromden sees him painting a picture or writing letters to people.
"And later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was." Chapter 17, pg. 140
One night Bromden dodges his medication, and gets out of bed. He goes over to a window, and watches a dog run past, on the prowl for something. One of the aides comes over, along with the nurse with the strawberry-colored birthmark, to put him back in bed. Bromden imagines the nurse at home, trying to get rid of the mark by praying, and scrubbing at it with a wire brush, but it stays there in the end just the same.
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