One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recap

On an Oregon psychiatric ward narrated by Chief Bromden, a huge patient who pretends to be deaf and mute, the rigid order is upheld by the controlling head nurse, Nurse Ratched. Into this world comes Randle McMurphy, a boisterous con man who has faked his way off a prison work farm expecting an easy stay. Refusing to be cowed, McMurphy turns the ward upside down, betting against Ratched, rallying the beaten-down patients, and staging small rebellions such as demanding to watch the World Series, organizing a fishing trip, and holding a wild after-hours party. His defiance breathes life and courage back into the men, including the timid, stuttering Billy Bibbit and the anxious Bromden. But the power struggle turns deadly: after the party, a humiliated Billy takes his own life, McMurphy attacks Ratched in a rage, and he is lobotomized as punishment. Bromden, restored to strength by McMurphy's example, smothers his friend to spare him a living death and escapes the hospital.

The story unfolds on the men's ward of an Oregon psychiatric hospital, narrated by Chief Bromden, an enormous half-Native American patient who has fooled everyone into believing he is deaf and mute and who imagines society as a controlling machine he calls the Combine. The ward is ruled with quiet, absolute authority by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, who keeps the patients meek and orderly through routine, surveillance, and manipulation. Among the men are the sharp but self-loathing Dale Harding, the gentle, stuttering Billy Bibbit, the bluster-and-no-follow-through Cheswick, and others long since broken to the nurse's rule. Into this stifled world strides Randle McMurphy, a loud, gambling, rule-breaking con man who has gotten himself sent from a prison work farm to the hospital, expecting a soft billet. Almost at once he sizes up Nurse Ratched as an adversary and begins stirring the cowed patients toward life and defiance, setting the two on a collision course.

The struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched ends in tragedy and a bitter kind of victory. McMurphy's rebellions and his gift for restoring the men's confidence steadily undermine Ratched's control, but at great personal cost, as she uses the hospital's power against him. After a secret nighttime party on the ward, arranged so the shy Billy Bibbit can be with a woman, Ratched shames Billy so cruelly the next morning that he cuts his own throat and dies. Enraged, McMurphy attacks Ratched and tears at her, and for this he is taken away and lobotomized, returned to the ward as an empty shell to serve as a warning to the others. Chief Bromden, who has been made whole again by McMurphy's friendship and defiance, refuses to let his friend exist as a broken example of Ratched's power. He smothers McMurphy with a pillow to give him a merciful end, then breaks a heavy control panel through a window and escapes the hospital into the night, freed at last by everything McMurphy taught him.