Appearance
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
It truly stands out and stays in your mind long after the final page is turned. -One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest- is told with a graveyard-ish humor and a realistic irony that makes one think of how society treats the mentally ill and how we define normal and sane.It depicts the fight between the Big Nurse and McMurphy, a patient at the mental-ward who may be faking his condition and is set through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seeming deaf-mute. There isn't really anything I can add that wouldn't cover what was already said about this glorious novel. It is wonderfully crafted, the ambrosia of the literary world, and is the type of book that makes you think, and then think some more. It really snowballs in the end, and you will race through the final pages even if the beginning is slightly long-winded.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
This book was comical, warm, wonderful, and insightful. It covered all the bases. I loved how Kesey wrote about a mental insitution in the in-depth way that he did, instead of writing about the stereotypical mental institutions. I rated this a five out of five stars, as it was well deserving! This is a book that anyone and everyone could and should read. Thank you for taking the time to read my review!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Although this is a huge cliche, I must say that this novel works on so many levels. From a character study to humor to power struggles, this novel has many different themes to read and enjoy.Chief Bromden is a 6'8" powerfully built Native American on the outside, but inside he's a scared child, paranoid of machinery that runs through the world that only he can see. He is the narrator to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and it is through his eyes that we see the story unfold. Almost all the action takes place in an Oregon Mental Institution, where 40 inmates troll under the autocreatic command of the Big Nurse. But then Randle P. McMurphy is admitted, a loudmouthed con man only there to escape the drudgery of the work farm. He quickly realizes what is happening and begins to challenge the nurse's authority, giving hope and sanity to the inmates at the same time.As long as you're not put off by the constant repitition of mechanical images about the "Combine" that only the main character can see (bear in mind he is insane) you'll see what a beautiful book this is. You'll see how McMurphy (for once a savior is not a blatant reference to Christ) becomes more than just a source of entertainment to the men, how he enriches their lives and sets them free, how the more he acts against the Big Nurse the less mechanics Chief sees. If you didn't read it in High School, by all means, read it now. 8.5/10
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Much has been made of the thematic nature of this great novel: the way society relentlessly grinds us into conformity; the way those in power abuse it to bring those under them into submission; the way one who is outspoken is often firmly chastised; etc. These are all valid themes and wonderfully symbolized by the very real characters in this novel.A lot less has been made of the fact that the book in many ways and all by itself is very therapeutic. I read it for the first time in my mid-teens, a period when most of us go through the difficult stage of trying to determine who we are, and worse, whether what we are becoming is acceptable. I'd look around at people my age and wonder how in the world they were so confident, so smart, so sure of themselves. Me? I was not unlike the Chief of this novel, wandering around in a fog half the time, trying to figure out what in the heck I was supposed to do or say or think at any given moment.But I read this book and suddenly--well, not suddenly--it helped to make things easier. What it makes clear is this: it's okay to be yourself. You don't have to hide things. It's okay to talk while your delicate white hands float in the air and form what you say, like Harding. It's okay to write letters and look concerned, even though everyone in the world thinks you're a Neanderthal, like McMurphy. It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to want to be alone, it's okay to be nervous around girls. What a relief it was when this finally sank in: I wasn't some kind of a psychopath, doomed forever to be a figure of ridicule while my back was turned. It's ohhh-kayyy! To me this was the great soothing message of the novel, and why I will forever be grateful to it.But before I go running off to the shrink, I'd better mention that on top of everything else, this book is just a flat-out, crackling great read. Right off the bat the classic confrontation is set up: the brash, untamed, loud McMurphy against the powerful, establishmentarian, icy Big Nurse. Set in an insane asylum, it is literally psychological warfare, with each of them carefully probing and then cutting at the other's weakness. As the novel goes on the stakes become increasingly steeper, until the very souls of the men on the ward are at risk. Fascinatingly, the novel ends with neither party having a clear-cut victory, and fittingly, the casualties are terrible.It is spectacularly written. An inmate, the Chief, is the narrator of the story. In his crazy mind, everything is mechanical and impersonal. Wires, transistors, metal, girds, rust, smoke and oil are what things are made of. He knows the Big Nurse listens to everything with the radio equipment in her purse. He hears the machinery humming in the walls. This functions as a superb literary device, symbolizing his paranoia, but at the same time it creates wonderful imagery. Here is the nurse, early in the novel, angry that disorder--personalized by McMurphy--has come to her ward: "Her nostrils flare open . . . She works the hinges in her elbows and fingers. I hear a small squeak . . . she's already big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel. Her lips are parted, and her smile's going out before her like a radiator grill. I can smell the hot oil and magneto spark when she goes past." So can we.The novel is loaded with memorable wit, much of which seems to have entered the daily lexicon. "I wash my hands of the whole deal," says Ruckly, the nutcase in Disturbed. "I'm TIRED," says Pete, after the nasty bickering he sees his friends engage in. Most memorable of all is the comment uttered by the relentless McMurphy, disgusted by his ward mates' timidity. "But I tried, though. Goddamnit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?" Is it possible to say that one has had a satisfactory life simply by being able to say that he has tried? I think so.In the end, the lessons to be learned from this novel are exemplified by the two greatest characters, McMurphy and Harding. (No, the Big Nurse is not one of them, being nothing more than a common symbol of ubiquitous societal rigidity). McMurphy goes out in a blaze of glory and despair, destroying himself, and sadly, destroying others. But it is Harding who goes out on his own terms. "I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out that front door, with all the traditional red tape and complications . . . I want them to know that I was able to do it that way."Certainly among the ten or so best novels of the latter half of the twentieth century. If you haven't yet read this one, do yourself a favor.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
This edition of Ken Kesey's first novel contains the author's sketches of the book's characters. The large format makes for easier reading.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Your horses are hungry, that's what she did sayCome sit down beside me, an' feed them some hayMy horses ain't hungry, they won't eat your hay-ay-aeeSo fare-thee-well darlin', I'm gone on my wayThis is one verse of McMurphy's comically mangled version of that fine old chestnut, The Wagoner's Lad, which he sings in the shower on his first full morning in the laughing academy--a ballad he booms out with such pitch and power that he just about joggles the wiring in all the walls. So sez Chief Broom at any rate and I for one believe him. It still cracks me up that this is the particular song Mister Red-On-The-Head sings as a kind of prelude to his plan to put a burr in the bloomers of Nurse Ratched--a plan that ultimately hinges on man bloomers of his own as a matter of fact, and what hilariously five-alarm man bloomers they are too: "coal black satin covered with big white whales with red eyes." Ah, the betsy bug episode--what larfs, eh? I had more or less forgotten how satisfying the reading was in this great big book. And the writing too. Out of sight out of mind I guess but what a joy when it all comes flooding back, wha'? The story is unfolded in this wonderfully sinuous and continuous present tense by Chief Bromden in what amounts in the end to a long and lovely and heartbreaking reminiscence by one of the great undersung characters in all of fiction. Yup, that gentle giant spins a yarn fit for devotees of the nut cutlet everywhere. Look here at this transfixing little word picture from the time when the Chief is up in the middle of one moonlit night getting a faceful of fall through an open window:"Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window--cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He'd run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off--the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk--that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales."Ain't that a sight for sore eyes? If you've seen the flick Milos Forman made it's hard not to picture the big dude they got to play Chief Broom but that's all right I reckon coz the feller they ended up with, Will Sampson, was so good and such a ringer for his fictional counterpart that whoever had the casting here ought to be commended too by God. As a moony yoof I was generally mad for this novel, couldn't get enough of it to be frank, lashed into it on umpteen occasions and swallied it whole and happily each and every time. It tickles me no end now indeed how much of this writing I actually remember with delight--whole paragraphs flash back to me big and bold as life as I re-read them. Don't know about you folks out there but I truly love when that happens with the written word. Reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a lot like living only more so somehow. Plus given the dead man walking atmosphere currently fogging up my dadblanged place of work it is a blessed relief to be locked inside a different loony bin for a spell. Kesey's tale is at the close a melancholy one perhaps but there's a generosity of spirit amid all the yearning and desperation here that I find just impossible to resist.