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Dramatic Irony
Part Three
Explanation and Analysis—Flashbacks:
As Bromden's fog clears over the course of the novel, he begins to have flashbacks to his childhood and the events that led to his difficulties with mental health. One example of this motif occurs in Part Three, when he thinks about when he first started letting others believe he was deaf:
Lying there in bed, I tried to think back when I first noticed it. I think it was once when we were still living in the village on the Columbia. It was summer....
... and I’m about ten years old and I’m out in front of the shack sprinkling salt on salmon for the racks behind the house, when I see a car turn off the highway and come lumbering across the ruts through the sage, towing a load of red dust behind it as solid as a string of boxcars.
Related Themes:
Part Four
Explanation and Analysis—Bromden's EST:
In Part Four, when Bromden is subjected to electroshock therapy, his narration is overtaken by flashbacks that he experiences as a stream of consciousness:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The machine hunches on me.
AIR RAID.
Hit at a lope, running already down the slope. Can’t get back, can’t go ahead, look down the barrel an’ you dead dead dead.
We come up outa the bullreeds run beside the railroad track. I lay an ear to the track, and it burns my cheek.
“Nothin’ either way,” I say, “a hundred miles....”
“Hump,” Papa says.
“Didn’t we used to listen for buffalo by stickin’ a knife in the ground, catch the handle in our teeth, hear a herd way off?”
Related Themes:
