Interested in getting direct access to the psychedelic drugs, Kesey took a job as a psychiatric aide at the same VA hospital. Ingesting various substances and working all night at the mental institution became the inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. According to Kesey, the narrator's voice, which many consider the masterstroke of the novel's success, came one day when he'd done a particularly strong dose of peyote and the first three pages poured from him, establishing a narrative tone that was used effectively throughout the novel. The three pages remained virtually untouched after numerous revisions.
             Chief "Broom" Bromden is the novel's narrator -- a large paranoid Indian who feigns deafness because people ignored him early in life. In time he decides that it is much more "cagey" to hide in shadows and avoid conflicts. Chief Broom is given the title both because his father was chief in a tribe of Colombian Indians and because on the ward he is given the duty of sweeping.
             Since the tale is told from his point of view, its descriptions of the ward and its inmates have been distorted. Early in the novel Bromden lets this be known, but insists, "It's the truth, even if it didn't happen." This distorted narrative technique allows Kesey the freedom to exalt the novel's protagonist and to grossly exaggerate the negative characteristics of the novel's authority figures, the central antagonists.
             Because he feigned deafness since entering the ward years earlier, Chief Broom is able to see and hear all. What gives the novel its hallucinogenic quality, however, is Bromden's perception of the ward as a mechanistic monster entirely under the control of the head nurse, Nurse Ratched.
             The ward, (or the Combine, as it is also called) is portrayed entirely by cold, mechanical descriptions. This is evident early on in passages such as the following description of Nurse Ratched:
             She's really lets herself go and her painted smile ...