This is the chain of events that led me to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:
- I read a segment of The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe) for a college writing class and loved it.
- I read The Right Stuff in its entirety and fell in love with Tom Wolfe.
- I read The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test because Tom Wolfe wrote it, and I was intrigued by Ken Kesey in the story.
- I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because Ken Kesey wrote it, and I loved it.
In Cuckoo’s Nest, a mentally-ill American Indian, “Chief Broom,” narrates the goings-on of his psychiatric ward in the heyday of electroshock therapy and lobotomies. Via his exaggerated perspective and his hallucinations (the Combine, the fog, the machinery in the walls), you see the greater forces, flaws, and effects of the system.
When Randall McMurphy, a rabblerouser and consummate gambler, joins the ward as a new patient, he bets the other patients that he can shake the impenetrable composure of their nemesis, Miss Ratched (“the Big Nurse”) within one week, and he in fact spends the rest of his institutionalization doing exactly that. The previously perfectly running mental ward becomes the key battleground in psychological warfare between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. To the other patients, McMurphy functions as a raunchy, roughneck Jesus, coming to them on their own turf, challenging the powers that be, and working for the deliverance of his followers. In the end, McMurphy succeeds: He erodes the Big Nurse’s influence, and he effects the release or escape of those who want to leave. But, like Jesus, McMurphy pays a tragic price for their salvation.
When Randall McMurphy, a rabblerouser and consummate gambler, joins the ward as a new patient, he bets the other patients that he can shake the impenetrable composure of their nemesis, Miss Ratched (“the Big Nurse”) within one week, and he in fact spends the rest of his institutionalization doing exactly that. The previously perfectly running mental ward becomes the key battleground in psychological warfare between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. To the other patients, McMurphy functions as a raunchy, roughneck Jesus, coming to them on their own turf, challenging the powers that be, and working for the deliverance of his followers. In the end, McMurphy succeeds: He erodes the Big Nurse’s influence, and he effects the release or escape of those who want to leave. But, like Jesus, McMurphy pays a tragic price for their salvation.
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| Ken Kesey |
Kesey’s prose is artistically colloquial, relying heavily on dialogue for precise characterization - McMurphy’s congenial cockiness, Harding’s effeminate intellectualism, Billy Bibbit’s childlike innocence, etc. Through the narration, Kesey also captures Chief Broom’s quiet pride despite the indignities forced upon him, a symbol of his Indian ancestors.
The conclusion is sad and heroic and horrific and lovely, so much so that I’m reluctant to see the movie for fear that it will distort the sentiments Kesey intended. I think I’ll wait a year or two.
The conclusion is sad and heroic and horrific and lovely, so much so that I’m reluctant to see the movie for fear that it will distort the sentiments Kesey intended. I think I’ll wait a year or two.
