Favorite Character
My favorite character in the novel One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest is Pete Bancini, or as people like to call him in The Combine, "Old Pete". He is a chronic patient who suffered brain damage from birth, he is my favorite character because he is simple, and different. I guess one could consider his brain damage a gift, so simple minded that he could not be molded into slot like everyone else in the Combine as well as the Outside. He is different from everyone else there, he is in control of himself, the black boys did not have any control over him and normally there is no need to have any control over him because he has the mindset of a six year old. However, he understands what The Combine does and what Nurse Ratched does and he tries to warn everyone about it "Everyone hushed. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish hollering to shame." (51, Kesey). Old Pete interrupts everyone during group therapy when they are naming all their failures and shameful acts, he understands Nurse Ratched is TRYING to mess them up even more by having them remember and relive all their worst memories and nightmares. When the black boys try to jerk him out the room, he punches one of them in the face and breaks down into tears, the other two black boys realize they can't not control him like they can the other patients and are scared to try and usher him. Old Pete tries to tell everyone it's all baloney, that The Combine is not fixing them but breaking them down more instead; he is tired and frustrated that no one sees that. "I was born dead. I'm tired. I'm give out trying. You got chances.....You got it easy,,,I've been dead fifty-five years." (54, Kesey). He never punched anyone after that incident and hushed when he was told because he gave up, he is tired of trying to speak the truth and bring the other patients to realization of the work The Combine is doing. He knows that he is an hopeless cause because he was "born dead", he couldn't help but be in there, but the other patients didn't have to be, they were once whole, once normal and ok, they have the chance of getting better and getting out to live their lives but they're choosing not to be. They can't see what The Combine is molding them into, that they're keeping the patients hospitalized on purpose. Old Pete "conformed" to Nurse Ratched and her orders not because he has been molded as well but because he saw that his warnings were useless, they weren't getting through to the other patients so he just simply gave up trying.
