The Combine

Throughout the novel the Chief has a hallucinatory fixation on "The Combine," the group he had imagined that tries to enforce order and control those that don't fit into society. The chief refers to them several times, always during a moment when he wasn't completely lucid. When the Chief starts becoming freed by McMurphy, he doesn't mention the Combine again until he and McMurphy are drunk on the ward. It is here that he begins to wonder whether or not the Combine is all-powerful, and finally when hitchhiking he "[gives] him such a good story about me being a prfessional Indian wrestler the syndicate had tried to lock up in a nuthouse." Sure he could just be referring to a wrestling syndicate, but he still said syndicate no combine, I think that this, not him escaping from the ward, truly symbolizes him fully regaining his sanity.