One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This flexible-use quiz is designed for reading comprehension assessment and activity needs in classroom, home-schooling and other settings. Questions connect to the text’s plot, characters, and themes — and align with the content and chapter organization in the rest of this study guide. Use quizzes as pre-reading hooks, reading checks, discussion starters, entrance/exit “tickets,” small group activities, writing activities, and lessons on finding evidence and support in a text.

Depth of Knowledge Levels: Questions require respondents to demonstrate ability to: 

1. Recall and Understand Content (e.g., who, what, where, when) 
2. Apply and Analyze Ideas (e.g., how and why)

1. What psychiatric symptom does the narrator, Chief Bromden, experience?

A) a deep and abiding depression

B) tremendous, unquenchable rage

C) insects crawling under his skin

D) a fog that forms all around him

2. Of what larger entity does Bromden believe the hospital is a part?

A) a nightmare he calls “the Scream”

B) a conspiracy to kill unusual people

C) a Combine that forces conformity

D) a Creature with 100-foot tentacles

3. How does Bromden describe the story he tells?

A) It is the truth even if it didn’t happen.

B) It is a hallucination within his own mind.

C) It is a fiction he wrote as part of his therapy.

D) It is a tale Mack told that Bromden wrote down.

4. What is Nurse Ratched’s ironclad rule?

A) Everyone must be kind to others.