The book is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a gigantic and docile half-Native American inmate who is thought to be deaf and mute. Bromden focuses on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy , who faked insanity to serve his sentence in the hospital, rather than in prison, for battery and gambling.
The head administrative nurse, Mildred Ratched , rules the ward with a mailed fist and with little medical oversight. She is assisted by her three black day-shift orderlies, and her assistant doctors. McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines, leading to constant power struggles between the inmate and the nurse.
He runs a card table, captains the ward's basketball team, comments on Nurse Ratched's figure, incites the other patients on the ward to conduct a vote on watching the World Series on television, and organizes an unsupervised deep sea fishing trip. His reaction after failing to lift a heavy shower room control panel which he had claimed to be able to — "But at least I tried. The Chief opens up to McMurphy and reveals late one night that he can speak and hear.
A disturbance after the fishing trip results in McMurphy and the Chief being sent for electroshock therapy sessions, but even this experience does little to tamp down McMurphy's rambunctious behavior.
One night, after bribing the night orderly, McMurphy breaks into the pharmacy and smuggles bottles of liquor and two prostitute girlfriends onto the ward. McMurphy persuades one of the women to seduce Billy Bibbit, a timid, boyish patient, with a terrible stutter and little experience with women, so that he can lose his virginity. Although McMurphy plans to escape before the morning shift arrives, he and the other patients fall asleep instead without cleaning up the mess and the staff finds the ward in complete disarray.
Nurse Ratched finds Billy and the prostitute in each other's arms, partially dressed, and admonishes him. Billy asserts himself for the first time, answering Nurse Ratched without stuttering. Ratched calmly threatens to tell Billy's mother what she has seen. Billy has an emotional breakdown and, once left alone in the doctor's office, commits suicide by cutting his throat.
Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for the loss of Billy's life. Enraged at what she has done to Billy, McMurphy attacks her and attempts to strangle her to death and tears off her uniform, revealing her breasts to the patients and aides watching.
He has to be dragged away from her and is moved to the Disturbed ward. Nurse Ratched misses a week of work due to her injuries, during which time many of the patients either transfer to other wards or check out of the hospital forever. When she returns, she cannot speak and is thus deprived of her most potent tool to keep the men in line.
Most of the patients leave shortly after this event. But there are always those who wish to escape the cuckoo's nest. View all 3 comments. Dec 13, Julie rated it it was amazing Shelves: worthy-of-another-read , oregon , reading-road-trip , debut , you-ll-need-a-hankie , favorite-books , books-with-birds-on-the-cover.
Reading Road Trip Current location: Oregon I took a hard fall last week on a couple of steps and injured my right foot. I can't drive, and I'm walking with a cane, and, to make matters worse, it snowed for a couple of days, and both my front porch and my back porch are now covered with ice. Now I can't drive or walk, and I can't even stand on my back porch and admire nature.
I can only sit in a chair with my foot propped up, listening to my daughters verbally abuse each other, looking out on scenes from the Arctic Circle. I mean. I'm ready to bite off my own hand right now, to free myself from these cuffs, and I've got central heat and a stocked frig.
But how brilliant was Mr. Kesey to go over the top and give us the most exaggerated example of what it feels like to be stuck in an actual cage? And not just stuck in a cage, but watched over by an evil witch who misses nothing through her looking glass? All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.
He's a man of great gusto and great sexual appetite, this Randle Randy? McMurphy, and the only thing bigger than his erections is perhaps his laughter. Maybe he couldn't understand why we weren't able to laugh yet, but he knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.
Over the course of the next few weeks and months, this McMurphy breathes new life into these inmates. Sure, he sometimes takes advantage of them with his unfair wagers, but he brings music and laughter and gusto , too. He's a man who has arrived as an unlikely savior. What follows will break you. Well, it broke me. This is the 48th book in my 50 state Reading Road Trip project, and I dub it the winner.
View all comments. I have mixed feelings about that message. The battle between being true to oneself and giving into societal expectations is identified here as the battle between one's min "There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of. The battle between being true to oneself and giving into societal expectations is identified here as the battle between one's mind and the "Combine" as personified by the "Big Nurse" Ratched. The action takes place in a mental institution where most of the patients have voluntarily committed themselves, a key but often overlooked plot point, somewhere in Oregon in the early s.
Keeping in mind the time period is an important consideration in enjoying this text, as the book is extremely misogynistic only 1 minor female character is presented in a halfway decent light and the ideas of nonconformity were a much bigger deal in then they are today. To take the novel out of its original context is to loose some of the enjoyment of reading it.
Be careful to not judge it by today's standards. Ken Kesey was obviously a gifted writer, and he has some truly unique ways of crafting a text to resemble the scrambled mind of a person enduring electroshock therapy, and he was a clever user of figurative language. He was also gifted at crafting character, as the text has four to my mind that stand above and beyond the book they inhabit. The first is the novel's narrator, Chief Bromden, whose dry and insightful narration has the right mix of intelligence and self doubt to keep the reader on the edge of their toes.
Another delightful and well rendered character is the mental ward patient Harding whose intelligence and wit serve as a nice foil to McMurphy's vulgarity and broad humor. Harding is a man who loathes what he truly is, and watching him mask that pain and self awareness is one of the most touching aspects of the novel.
The "hero" and the "villain" of the piece, R. Patrick McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are nice personifications of abstract ideas and Kesey endows each with a depth and realism that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has paid even the remotest attention to human nature. The passive aggressive animosity and unhappiness inherent in Nurse Ratched is unnervingly real, and the chaos and self destructive behavior in McMurphy is equally impressive.
The reason I think these two characters stand out to readers is because there are bits of both of them in most of us. The war between those two poles comprises not only the major conflict of this text, but also of many of our lives.
There is a lot to digest in this book, and it will yield rewards on rereading it years later. Enter Kesey's world. It might not be a fun journey, but it is a worthwhile one! View all 26 comments. I needed some time to get used to the writing style, but letting the Chief an outside figure, who, due to his "deafness", doesn't intervene with the main storyline too much is certainly a stroke of genius, and after a while, I got used to his way of telling the story.
All the characters found a place in my heart, and they are what make the book so remarkable and memorable. I thought they were some unnecessary scenes, but they were really minor, so they didn't put a huge dent into my enjoyment. T I needed some time to get used to the writing style, but letting the Chief an outside figure, who, due to his "deafness", doesn't intervene with the main storyline too much is certainly a stroke of genius, and after a while, I got used to his way of telling the story.
The end certainly came unexpected and surprising to me, but I thought it was fitting and rounded the whole thing up. Despite it not being one of those books that absolutely blew me away, I know that it will stay in my mind for a very, very long time - maybe even forever. View 1 comment. This modern classic book overshadowed by the modern classic Jack Nicholson movie of the same name, still packs a punch at face value So lovable anti-hero versus evil domineering nurse, who is allowed to abuse her power because This modern classic book overshadowed by the modern classic Jack Nicholson movie of the same name, still packs a punch at face value Apparently despite women and Black people by far the worse abused by American mental health institutions over many decades - we have to side with and feel for all these poor White men, including the doctor on the ward at the mercy of this 'evil women' and her Black henchmen.
Even worse the White men are given somewhat fleshed out characterisations including the doctor , while Nurse Ratched, her Black staff and all the supporting female cast are one-dimensional cut-outs.
Big hoo hah, that the narrator is Native-American I mean for Heavens sake they called him 'Chief'! Oh but it was the sign of the times? I give a 6 out of 12 for this debut novel, a study of the boundaries and similarities between insanity and sanity! A bit weird having a female nurse and Black Men as the bad guys, when this was written in 's America, where both had limited power!
View all 7 comments. The monotypic, iconoclastic novel illustrating the evils of unbridled government oppression in institutional forms within a democracy , both subtle and ruthless. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest evinces the fortisimmo force of literature as a "monument of wit" that "will survive the monuments of power. After working at a mental institution, Ken Kesey wrote this easily accessible novel, published in Set in an Oregon mental ward, the novel's centers on the battle between Randle McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, the former a rebellious, gregarious low-level convict who saw the ward as an easy way to serve his few months of prison time, the latter one of the most memorable and monstrous villains in all of literature.
The book's primary metaphor is that of the government as "The Combine," as it's called by the story's narrator "Chief" Bromden, as a mechanism for manipulating individuals and processes. Kesey personifies The Combine in Nurse Ratched, a hellhag who uses a bagful of disciplinary tactics, most so subtle that the mental patients can't see they're being controlled and some so heinous it's unimaginable they could be used as a punitive measure without some sort of due process e. The novel is, by turns, infuriating, intelligent and hilarious.
View all 11 comments. Painful and heartbreaking to witness humanity's struggle to have a decent life while living within the boundaries others set for them.
Not to be a rabbit, that is the ultimate goal! Truer than ever Dec 20, Manny rated it really liked it Shelves: not-the-whole-truth. Like most people who grew up in the 60s, I loved this book and, even more, the film version with Jack Nicholson. In fact, I think it's the most coherent criticism I've ever seen of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and does a wonderful job of subverting the message. Throughout mo Like most people who grew up in the 60s, I loved this book and, even more, the film version with Jack Nicholson.
Throughout most of the movie, you are indeed tricked into seeing the world through Winona Ryder's eyes: she's a free spirit, who's been incarcerated in a mental hospital despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. In fact, she's saner than everyone around her, especially the Nazi-like staff. But you know what? In the end, she makes a surprising discovery.
She's out of control, and these appalling fascists are actually trying to help her. She'd somehow missed this important fact. Much as it pains me to say it, I suspect that Winona Ryder might be right and Jack Nicholson might be wrong.
It's extremely disappointing. View all 32 comments. One of my favourites. Aug 23, K. Shelves: time , core , hospital-drama. The cuckoo, upon hatching, throws the other birds out of the nest out of instinct. Source: Wiki [image error] I was 11 years old when the movie by Milos Forman was shown.
Jack Nicholson starred as Randle Patrick McMurphy , a criminal sentenced on a prison farm for statutory rape and transferred to an Oregon asylum because of his insanity plea.
Both of which I saw also. Freaking, movie addict! The character of sane-yet-confined-in-the-mental-institution McMurphy is the first irony in the movie. As he is sane, he fights against the wrong methods and stands up against Nurse Mildred Ratched aka Big Nurse who, being an obsessive compulsive lady, wants to have everything in order and done by the tick of the clock. Hers is the second irony in the story as, unlike the prison in say Shutter Island , there is no conventionally harsh kind of discipline here.
The setting is also not as dark as the scary cells in The Silence of the Lambs. In fact, in this asylum, the patients watch the TV, play cards, roam in the basketball court and at one time they even go out for fishing!
The rest of the story shows their constant power struggles as they try to outwit each other. The ending is tragic and almost feels like not the right ending because it does not offer any hint of resolution to the revealing message. So, he, Ken Kesey knew and probably experienced some of these things. One can get lost in amazement reading book or watching movie McMurphy and Nurse Ratched especially with their Oscar-worthy performances.
However, what makes this book different in a great way, is the narration. Nellie has a crush on Heathcliff or Edgar and the feeling tainted her actions as a housemaid and her story as narrator. Similarly, the Chief is unreliable because he is a schizophrenic but Kesey made use of this to come up with a strangely beautiful interesting narrative.
Come to think of it, had this been narrated in a straightforward manner, i. For its shocking revelation and its brilliant loony narrative, reading this book should send shivers down your spine… View all 27 comments.
Aug 19, J. I am happy to have changed that! I don't know why I didn't think about whose viewpoint the story was being told from when I watched the movie, but this perspective in the book added another dimension to a story I thought I knew well. Well-written and engaging. View all 13 comments. Jul 09, Dr. Appu Sasidharan rated it it was amazing Shelves: medical-fiction-and-nonfiction , favorites.
Throwback Review This novel tells us the story of despotic Nurse Ratched, who works in Oregon State mental hospital, and McMurphy, a patient who questions the rules imposed on the inmates by her in the hospital. It is considered one of the most controversial medical novels ever written and was banned multiple times for several reasons.
Multiple actresses turned down the role of Nurse Ratched when this novel was made into a movie. Everyone was scared to play her role as they were afraid Throwback Review This novel tells us the story of despotic Nurse Ratched, who works in Oregon State mental hospital, and McMurphy, a patient who questions the rules imposed on the inmates by her in the hospital.
Everyone was scared to play her role as they were afraid that it would affect their image. It was ironic that Louisa Fletcher, who at last played the role, won the Academy Award for best actress along with her costar Jack Nicholson who won it for the best actor. This book is, directly and indirectly, telling us a lot about healthcare problems during that time. It has a remarkable position in history as it changed the way Americans approached mental health. This is not a perfect book as there are many mistakes while the author tried to recreate a mental institution in the s.
Still, the author's personal experience due to his job in a Psychiatric hospital helped him a lot in creating this novel. This is indubitably one of the best Medical novels I ever read.
Its silver screen version is also one of the best movies I have ever seen. This renowned classic is a slow-paced read and an intense character study, set in the enclosed environment of a psychiatric hospital.
Nurse Ratched rules her ward with a tyranny and a close-scrutiny that has the patients bent to her will and fearful of any misstep they might make to upset her. That is until a new character joins their ranks and threatens to usurp Ratched's rule. In their fight for dominance the inhabitants of the ward begin to understand a little something about personal freedom This renowned classic is a slow-paced read and an intense character study, set in the enclosed environment of a psychiatric hospital.
In their fight for dominance the inhabitants of the ward begin to understand a little something about personal freedom and the part they have been entrusted to play in the well-oiled machine of the ward. The casual racism and the horrific treatment of the psychiatric patients was so hard to read about, but was a necessary evil in delivering the power inherent in this tale.
Without the reader garnering a deep understanding about the horrors that abound on a psychiatrist ward and the norms that were accepted during this time period, this would not have remained such an influential, relevant and much-studied text. It was interesting that a perspective was garnered through the eyes of one of the patients. This lent an untrustworthy air to the events relayed and the reader could not be certain of all they were told.
This, as well as the philosophical nature of the text kept the reader an active participant of the story, as they had to work hard at untangling the narrative to get to the truth buried inside this series of anecdotes.
Despite the subtle power in all aspects this tale, I enjoyed, on a baser level, some scenes more than others. Those that moved beyond the confines of the ward lost some of their interest, for me, despite how moving and educational they still remained. They became a little less compelling when action took a more central focus and character studies and societal insights were removed to the background.
The ending, however, returned to the philosophical insights I earlier appreciated and I ended up really appreciating how this novel made me think about all the subject matters and events discussed in an entirely new light. View all 22 comments. So, I re-read this book for my postwar fiction class.
Read it first when I was 21, working at Pine Rest Christian Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI as a psych aide, very shaped by it in many ways, I now realize in reading it some 40 years later. I think because how can I know for sure? I liked this book better this time than I did when I first read it. As I said, it shaped my view of myself, of institutions, of psych hospitals and psychiatry in general, of madness, of Society, of the need for Fre So, I re-read this book for my postwar fiction class.
As I said, it shaped my view of myself, of institutions, of psych hospitals and psychiatry in general, of madness, of Society, of the need for Freedom, man, and the process of self-knowledge itself.
I think now it feels very much like a period piece, an experience of the late Beats to early hippie sixties, from On the Road with the Merry Pranksters to Woodstock, or to maybe something Kesey realized Woodstock would never deliver. It feels horrific and cartoonish and a little too easily separating the good from the bad for much of it, but then it changes very very quickly at the end spoiler alerts all over the place and becomes more sixties nightmare than romantic dream of peace and freedom.
Yes, for me it was also reading as autobiography, as, like Randle in some respects, I also made a mess of my life and others leading from the joyful end of the sixties to the terrible end of the seventies. I think I may have cried at the end of the book when I completed it at 21, still romanticizing Randle McMurphy as a symbol of freedom, nature, and the visceral life I had not known as a young Calvinist going to church twice on Sundays.
He was wild, unbridled, laughed heartily, lived lustily, joked inappropriately, raged passionately, loved life; he was my Uncle Lee, my Dad's brother-in-law, who was unlike any of my family members, smoking 4 packs a day, drinking constantly, swearing hilariously, fighting with my Aunt Ag publicly, frighteningly. He picked the young me up when he saw me and sang, too loudly, "Davey, Davey Crockett, king of he wild frontier!
I wanted his sense of freedom, as he drove truck all over the country. Now I read Randle as, yes, a symbol of Freedom and Nature and Laughter vs Ratched's sterile Institutional authority, but now not so innocent, as I realize I think about myself.
I read it with some self-reflective regret as he crashed and burned and hurt others as in some ways I crashed and burned for a few years there. I did and do come, too, to appreciate Randle for the good he tried to do even as so much bad happened because of and in spite of him. At first I thought this was a cartoon--Nurse Ratched is so evil as to not be believed are there any believably good women in this book? Ratched is Rat-shit, a ratchet wrench for cogs in a machine, monstrously Anti-woman, and then there are Candy and Sandy, the prostitutes.
In that sense, it feels like a very male, most definitely adolescent fantasy of "The Man" or Society, or the Adult World never trust anyone over 30! It's a romp of sorts, for much of the book, as Randle takes on the evil Big Nurse with an intent to destroy her in the name of fun and freedom. What is Society to the Beats and Hippies?
Squareness, Order, 5, white picket fence suburban homes with 5, identically dressed suburban children playing on identically manicured lawns cue David Lynch's Vision of suburbia in Blue Velvet, opening sequences, here. And what does the straight life, the life of business and capitalism and science and technology lead to, as we recall in postwar America? To the Holocaust, to millions dead in countless wars, to suicidally unhappy rich people accumulating wealth beyond imagination, to the destruction of the Chief's Indian lands and culture for profit, trading Paradise for a Shopping Mall.
Why, they go on a road trip, as Randle does to go salmon fishing in the Sound with several lovable crazies from the psych hospital and Candy. Who's NOT in? Who doesn't want in his card game, his various challenges to authority why CAN'T they watch the World Series, damn it?!
Rules, argh!!! To say no is to become a Vegetable or to be part of the Problem, a Cog in the Machine, dude! But the power struggle turns dark, at the end spoiler alert, I said! Randle is not so innocent, no hippie freedom lover, he becomes violent and rapes and nearly kills Ratched, he is out of control with his freedom, no flower child, finally, and by the way, where did all the flowers go, finally?
To Vietnam, to Wall Street, and for me to divorce and some lost years. But we have hope when the Chief is on the road, at the very end, after many years maybe able to live his life in the woods again, and in many ways, I took my chance to remake my life as well.
I have my kids and loving wife and picket fence, with humble thanks that I am still here and able to still learn and still try to some good in the world if I can. But I was talking about Kesey's book, wasn't I? Well, I really liked this book, second time around. I liked the sketches in this edition from Kesey himself, the cover pages done by Joe Sacco, the preface on the sixties from Kesey, the introduction on madness and psychology seen through a sixties lens… all very good.
The images of the psych hospital early on were horrific, then there were an increasing number of darkly hilarious and often insightful episodes about institutional control that seem to be still relevant even if still comically exaggerated today, and finally the comedy turns amazingly and effectively to tragedy, though in the coda we are again a little hopeful that a return with Chief Broom to the Garden or, the Rez, in this case and Music and Art and Nature may still offer us some possibilities.
View all 18 comments. Jun 13, Ann rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: anyone. Shelves: literatureandfilm , justdamngood , good-bad-guys-bad-good-guys. This is one of the most fantastic novels of individualism pitted against the vast depersonalization of industrial society ever written.
Ken Kesey has an extraordinary grasp of the challenges faced by us all in modern civilization, and he is able to convey his ideas through some of the richest imagery I have ever read.
My favorite line in the novel, when Chief Bromden the paranoid schizophrenic narrator says, "But it's the truth, even if it didn't happen," sets the reader up from the very begin This is one of the most fantastic novels of individualism pitted against the vast depersonalization of industrial society ever written.
My favorite line in the novel, when Chief Bromden the paranoid schizophrenic narrator says, "But it's the truth, even if it didn't happen," sets the reader up from the very beginning for a story in which one's perception of situations more accurately reflects the truth than the outward appearance of things.
The story can be a bit confusing to follow at times, given that the narrator is a paranoid schizophrenic and it is often difficult to differentiate between reality and his hallucinations- but at the same time, his hallucinations sometimes more accurately reflect reality than reality itself.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone- I have read and taught it many times, and it always provides new insights and revelations. Also, the film starring Jack Nicholson is well worth seeing- it won many Academy Awards when it came out, but diverges quite a bit from a lot of the themes of the book.
One of the coolest things about the book is that it is told from the point of view of a paranoid schizophrenic; to do this in a film would be incredibly challenging and more likely to turn out cheesy than insightful and revealing as it is in the novel.
View all 12 comments. Feb 10, Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing. I thought this was one of the best books I had ever read years ago. I went to see the stage play in S. View all 17 comments. Shelves: overrated-books , emotionally-intense , not-for-me , classic , psycho. Really unpopular opinion coming your way. Escape while you can.
Does the rabbit live in a hole because the wolf decided so? What happens when the rabbit decides to challenge the wolf? Such thoughts are provoked by this widely read and loved classic novel. The messages buried in an unexpected setting a mental institution re Really unpopular opinion coming your way. The messages buried in an unexpected setting a mental institution revealing the grim aspects of such an institution , striking metaphors and symbolism which I detected early on in the first part of the story, the part I genuinely enjoyed.
Meeting Mc Murphy the rabbit that challenged the wolf felt like listening to the wisest philosophy teacher explaining juicy stuff about life with expertise, wit and charm and reading the story in the perspective of Chief Bromden, a patient feigning deafness made it even more interesting.
It's clear to me why several of my friends loved the novel. Let me link you to their excellent reviews: Partheeey's , Nina's and Ate Shelby's. Unfortunately, the significant themes of the novel for me were overwhelmed by the strong sexist and racist undertones until the actual meanings of the story got lost behind the chauvinistic approach.
The demoralizing climax added insult to injury and ultimately the reason I went for two stars. It would have been just a star if not for the redeeming although really depressing conclusion answering the most important of the above questions. I should have just read Harry Potter 2. View all 48 comments. Whilst, Ken Kesey's work is classified as a classic - it definitely does in no way correlate to that of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. It was vulgar and uncomfortable and, definitely, controversial at the time of its publishing - but, man, was it a complex, mind-numbing, page-turne 4.
It was vulgar and uncomfortable and, definitely, controversial at the time of its publishing - but, man, was it a complex, mind-numbing, page-turner of a story, questioning freedom and confinement in our society, and set in an psychiatric hospital - a setting often neglected in literature.
This was truly a great, great book, that I recommend. Forget perfect characters, sunny settings, and 'kind sir's and ma'ams'; this story was packed to the brim with complications, grit and a strange mixture of humor and darkness, with an ending that will leave you Brillant, and thought provoking, this was a knock out of a book.
This deeply affected Kesey, who later said Jed was a victim of conservative, anti-government policy that starved the team of proper funding. At a Grateful Dead Halloween concert just days after promoter Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash, Kesey appeared on stage in a tuxedo and delivered a eulogy while the Grateful Dead was playing the song Dark Star, and he mentioned that Graham had paid for Jed's mountain-top memorial.
His last major work was an essay for Rolling Stone magazine calling for peace in the aftermath of the September 11, attacks. In , health problems began to take their toll on Kesey, starting with a stroke that year.
Then soon after his stroke he was diagnosed with diabetes. On October 25, Kesey had surgery on his liver to remove a tumor. He never recovered from the operation and died of complications on November 10, , aged From Wikipedia.
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