Agents of Change: Nick Carraway and Chief Bromden

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ken Kesey: two authors separated by a great many things including their practicing time periods and political ideologies, nevertheless both centered their defining works of fiction around the folly of American culture and society, Fitzgerald during the jazz age and Kesey during the political movements of the 1960s. Both novels, similarly, were told as first-person narration and both told the stories of “great men” that acted both as the main characters of the story and the driving force of the plot. Both novels also chose to tell their stories not from the point of view of the great men themselves, but from the point of view of seemingly inconsequential characters caught in the wake of the events of the novels. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, this character is Nick Carraway, and in Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest it is Chief Bromden. Both of these characters therein become witnesses then, not just to the events of the novel or the machinations of their title characters, but to these major events of American history. They are not simply witnesses, they bear witness to the rise and eventual fall of the main protagonists from their places of grace, in a way foreshadowing the fall of the stages of American life they represent. They, and in turn the authors, act one part prophet and one part tellers of their cautionary tales as they relay the adventures – and misadventures – of their mains to the reader. Both novels use the eyes of these everymen to tell the stories of great men and great times in American history.

Both Chief Bromden and Nick Carraway stand in the shadows of great men with great ambitions, who stand as archetypes of the culture at the time. In The Great Gatsby this grand man is Gatsby himself, who is presented as a symbol of the overindulgent party atmosphere of the jazz age of 1922. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest it is Randle McMurphy, whose attempts to rally the insane asylum patients against their oppressors on-staff can be seen as a personification of the anti-establishment counter-culture movement of which author Ken Kesey was an integral part upon publication of the novel in 1962. Upon meeting Gatsby, Carraway states: "He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." (Fitzgerald, 39). Upon introduction, Bromden describes McMurphy as "He talks [with a] voice loud and full of hell... This guy is redheaded with long red sideburns and a tangle of curls out from under his cap, been needing cut a long time, and he's broad as Papa was tall, broad across the jaw and shoulders and chest, a broad white devilish grin, and he's hard in a different kind of way from Papa, kind of the way a baseball is hard under the scuffed leather." (Kesey, 7). Both men are described, in their own ways, as being larger-than-life in the way most admired at the time of their story and by the culture they represent. Gatsby is described as disarming and suave, almost to the point of being untouchable, representing the high wealth, indulgence, and strong focus on high-society that dominated the jazz era. Conversely, McMurphy is described as physically large and could easily be described as a brawler, someone who could handle himself and would never have to be under somebody's thumb if he didn't want to be. Both Bromden and Carraway stand outside this ideal though, as outsiders looking in at the archetype of what it is to be successful for each. In some respects Gatsby and McMurphy are Carraway and Bromden as they wish they could be, wealthy and driven or strong and imposing. As such when we see them, at least at first, we see them as our narrators see them: larger than life and full of vitality and invitation.

A key factor that both Carraway and Bromden share as narrators is that they are both unreliable narrators. This is a part of what makes the connections of storytelling styles of both these decade-defining novels so interesting, the idea that the story we are told is not always the story as it is. Only after close and repeated readings do these flaws in the character's narratives come out, either because they intentionally mislead the reader or (more often) because neither Carraway nor Bromden is aware of all the facts of the situation they are embroiled in. Both novels are taken from the point of view not of the players, but of the pawns. In Bromden's case, it is these gaps in knowledge that form the "unstable perspective of a paranoid schizophrenic through whose tenuous disturbed reflections we judge the actions of significance of the novel" (Zubizarreta, 62-70). In 2010, Scott Donaldson wrote of Carraway: "Nick Carraway is a snob. He dislikes people in general and denigrates them in particular. He dodges emotional commitments. Neither his ethical code nor his behavior is exemplary: propriety rather than morality guides him. He is not entirely honest about himself and frequently misunderstands others. Do these shortcomings mean that Nick is an unreliable narrator? At times and in part, yes." (Donaldson, 157). In these ways, both Carraway and Bromden function not only as compelling characters and narrators, but also avatars of the American people. Like the American people, our narrators did not fully grasp or understand what was going on at the time it was happening. They were witnesses to immense events that happened around them, often out of context and with no frame of reference through which to judge them. They had to piece events together as best they could as they got new information, and pass that information on to the reader (sometimes discriminately). This represents the majority of the American people, the way the Everyman always feels in the wake of great men. Carraway could not have known that the economic boom and gross expenditure of the time would lead to stock market crash and depression (and in fact, though the novel seems at times to foreshadow this as a consequence of this lifestyle, it was written before the event had occurred) which Gatsby's murder at the end of the novel can be seen as a metaphor for. Gatsby's life echoes the arch of the times: paying dues during the war, gross spending and parting, crash. Likewise McMurphy's death at the culmination of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can be seen as the ultimate failure of the counter-culture and anti-government movement, with McMurphy literally martyred at the end of the novel for his efforts. “I don’t want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network instead)..." (King, 23). This quote, by author Stephen King, I best summarizes the failure of the baby boomer generation warned of in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Both Carraway and Bromden are unknowingly telling not only the tales of the falls of great men, but of entire societies and cultural movements as well. This is why both The Great Gatsby and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are seen as cultural touchstones in American literature. Through each narrator's eyes we get a snapshot of tumultuous eras of American history, each era characterized and simplified in one human life rather than in the multitude of people and events that created them. These are the representatives of culture, and in watching their rise and fall we better understand our own hills and valleys through our growth as a society. Chief Bromden and Nick Carraway act as anthropologists and ethnographers of these events, on-the-spot journalists who try to show the reader the entirety of a culture or a period in time based solely on a small percentage of examples. As with all pseudo-cautionary tales, we are meant to extrapolate from Carraway and Bromden's tellings the lessons of each culture. Gatsby met his end - in part - from wanting too much. There is the matter of his inordinate expenditure, but more than that he wants too much of his lover, Daisy Buchanan. "'Oh, you want too much!' she cried to Gatsby. 'I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.' She began to sob helplessly. 'I did love him once—but I loved you too.' Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. 'You loved me TOO?' he repeated." (Fitzgerald, 101). Daisy says as much herself, he wants too much. This is the turning point of the conversation the five main characters are having regarding Gatsby's affair with Daisy at this point in the novel, and the beginning of Gatsby's fall from grace. Had he not attempted to get Daisy to renounce her love for her husband Tom, would things have gone differently? The narrative does not tell us, as Carraway himself cannot know, but this fall as a result of wanting too much is again indicative of the stock market crash that ended the period of fanciful spending America partook in after the first World War. This is the personification of the jazz era and the moral center of the cautionary tale of the novel all summarized in one distinct elicited statement from Daisy. In the jazz era, we failed because we wanted too much. What then of Bromden and McMurphy? "The ward door opened, and the black boys wheeled in this Gurney with a chart at the bottom that said in heavy black letters, MCMURPHY, RANDLE P. POST-OPERATIVE. And below this was written in ink, LOBOTOMY. They pushed it into the day room and left it standing against the wall, along next to the Vegetables. We stood at the foot of the Gurney, reading the chart, then looked up to the other end at the head dented into the pillow, a swirl of red hair over a face milk-white except for the heavy purple bruises around the eyes." (Kesey, 230). McMurphy is defeated and castrated by the authorities of the mental word, still living but without anything that made him who he was. This too is an apt representation of counter-culture at the end of the sixties, the trends of which had already begun at the time of publication. McMurphy becomes the spat upon soldier, the last remnant of a movement he helped to start but could not see through to its end. Despite its counter-culture status, Kesey ends the novel on a note that you cannot fight the power the way McMurphy did and win. In this both narrators fulfil their final purpose: to carry on and tell the story as they did, to act as the disciples and prophets of great men so that others might learn in their stead.

Both Nick Carraway and Chief Bromden are reluctant and unreliable narrators, thrust into the events of each narrative due to events and circumstances outside their control. But through both me we see the world as it was through the lens of the everyman, and get to see history in the presence of those who changed it and might have changed it had they been there, if only for an instant. We gain, through them, the experience of the flavor of their times, each just a brief taste of American life for a moment in the vast scheme of it.

Zubizarreta, John. "The Disparity of Point of View in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Literature/Film                Quarterly. 22.1 (1994): 62-70. Print.

Donaldson, Scott. "The Trouble with Nick Reading Gatsby Closely." Trans. Array Bloom's Modern Critical                 Interpretations: The Great Gatsby. New York: Chelsea House Publications, 2010. 157-166. Print.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft. New York: Pocket Books, 2001. 108. Print.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Signet, 1963. Print.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925. Print.