A look into the stigma of mental illness in society by Lauren Niemeyer

Niemeyer 22
Chief Bromden is the son of the chief of the
Columbia Indians and a white woman. He
suffers from paranoia and hallucinations, has
received multiple electroshock treatments, and
has been in the hospital for ten years, longer
than any other patient in the ward. Everyone
else in the ward thinks of him as “deaf and
dumb.” Bromden sees modern society as a huge,
oppressive conglomeration that he calls the
Combine and the hospital as a place meant to fix
people who do not conform. Bromden chronicles
the story of the mental ward as the narrator of
the story.