Forgotten Dream

My artwork depicts Bromden’s hallucination/dream when he did not take the medication they gave him from pages 76 to 79. In this scene, Bromden sees one of the staff bring the dorm room down to an underground, dam-like structure beneath the ward. Bromden describes this world below the ward as being very industrial, like a factory or a “tremendous dam”(77). As the floor moves, Bromden sees many things, specifically workers, identical each other, running around, and furnaces. As the floor comes to a stop, one of the chronics, named Blastic, who was pointed out by the men in charge, is taken by a worker and “…with the other hand the worker drives the hook through the tendon back of the heel, and the old guy’s hanging there upside down…his pajama top falls around his head. The worker grabs the top and bunches and twists it like a burlap sack…” (78). This detail can be seen in the piece.

In this part, Bromden says “…there’s no blood or innards falling out like I was looking to see–just a shower of rust and ashes, and now and again a piece of wire or glass. Worker’s standing there to his knees in what looks like clinkers.” (79). He also says “One of the guys takes a scalpel from a holster at his belt. There’s a chain welded to the scalpel. The guy lowers it to the worker, loops the other end of the chain around the railing so the worker can’t run off with a weapon.” (78 - 79). These details are captured in the machinery spilling out of the hole in Blastic’s torso and the hook caught on his heel.

The main scene is placed in the background while the beds are in the foreground, showing the perspective of Bromden, being a witness to a horrible act but not able to interfere or do anything due to fear. The focal point has the most color as it was a scene so vivid for Bromden. Everything else fades into the background as Blastic’s death was the only thing Bromden could focus on. The hallucination is intentionally disconnected from the beds as it is unclear whether this moment was Bromden’s fantasy or reality. This is also represented by the hazy, blurred nature of the drawing. The disconnect also conveys how his death is not acknowledged. They can’t reach him, not even Bromden who is the only one to witness this.

The horrific nature of this scene is captured by the grotesque visual of the hole, stark when compared to the rest of the dark, dimmed scene. The only face you can see is ignorant of his actions and disinterested to the acts he commits. The worker’s face looks “handsome and brutal and waxy like a mask”, shown in the detachment of his features from the rest of his face. I decided to have the machinery falling out candidly to express how sudden the scene was. In place of blood, there are wires and glass, rust and ash. As suddenly as he died, the in-progress nature of the art expresses it.

This artwork portrays how Bromden’s mind alters how characters are perceived. Blastic is depicted as a character that was so far gone, he has no organs or things of human nature left, being reduced to wires like a robot, puppet, or doll. This scene is so significant because it was the first described death in the book. On the ward, the Chronics have no say in what happens to them. They live through the motions set out for them by the staff. Even what happens to them in the night and after death is out of their control. Blastic was forgotten, not mentioned again after this scene, as there are no real treatments for the Chronics, just drawn-out existence and inevitable death. As Bromden would say, they are taken back into the fold by the Combine when their time runs out.