Interactions in Cuckoo's Nest : Elements of a Narrative Speech-Act Analysis

Abstract

Interactions in Cuckoo's Nest:Elements of a Narrative Speech-Act Analysis Lars Bernaerts (bio) Something peculiar happens when Charlie Cheswick, one of the characters in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), asks the ward's head nurse about his cigarettes. The nurse controls the supply of cigarettes, and Cheswick does not relish that idea. However, his intended speech act, a complaint as well as a request, is ignored. Expressing the collective thought of the patients, he stresses that "[w]e want something done about it" (149). As he notices that his request does not have the desired effect nor the presupposed backup, he first increases the intensity of his request—shouting "I want something done! Hear me!" (149)—and then flies into a rage. Whether he puts his speech act in a polite formula or in a very intensive exclamation, it is not accepted as a conventional act. The scene is symptomatic not only of Cheswick's character development but also of the fictional interactions and textual dynamics in Kesey's novel. Looking at the scene from this angle, we catch a glimpse of the way in which our understanding can improve by an analysis of the speech acts of characters and narrators. From its foundation in the work of J. L. Austin until today, the theory of speech acts has been living several lives, one of which is in the world of narrative studies. Many scholars, such as Seymour Chatman and Susan Lanser, have integrated aspects of the theory into narratology, and a number of them, such as Mary Louise Pratt, Michael Kearns and Reingard Nischik, have granted it a prominent and permanent position in their narratological models. They basically argue that what authors, narrators and characters do with words—i.e., the illocutionary force [End Page 276] or point of the represented utterances—is a distinguishable and intrinsic part of the meaning of a text. What is done with words in literary narratives also deserves close attention because it is intertwined with more profound questions regarding the status of literary narratives. When characters and narrators reveal the complexity of speech acts, they might reveal something about the force of literary texts, about the potential power of the literary speech act. In other words, the speech acts in literary narratives have metanarrative and metatextual implications. Even if we regard this claim as all too strong, we can see how texts that foreground certain speech acts (e.g., as a motif, or in their title) elicit a speech-act reading; a narrative speech-act analysis would directly contribute to their interpretation. In this article, I wish to revisit the field of speech acts in narrative theory, first, in order to propose a stronger integration of speech-act analysis into narrative studies and, second, to explore new opportunities for the application of speech-act analysis within the context of postclassical narratologies. The novelty of my approach lies in the functional combination of available theoretical insights, rather than in the introduction of new concepts. That is why the next section presents an outline of some of the developments in speech-act theory and criticism, which will facilitate a sound selection of concepts and categories in the following paragraphs. These are the elements of a narrative speech-act analysis that will be presented: levels of speech acts and relations between speech acts, the theoretical specification of speech acts, values of tone and modality, inferred intentions and validity claims, institutional contexts and the context of reading. In the last section, I will zero in on two aspects of narratological investigation: characterization and fictional minds on the one hand, and narrative progression on the other hand. The case study I will be referring to is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey's novel about the events and interactions in the psychiatric ward of Nurse Ratched after the admission of patient Randle Patrick McMurphy. Often adopting the twisted perspective of the experiencing self, the homodiegetic narrator Chief Bromden recounts the story after the facts. As a character, Bromden embodies an arduous progression towards a psychological and political state of freedom and self-determination. Even though the novel...