The controversial novel “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” has been written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. The book was very successful in the sixties and seventies during the social rebellion that includes the Civil Rights Movement, the beginnings of the women’s movement, and the issue of the Vietnam. Ken Kesey highlights the conflict between society’s needs and individual pains. Significant part of the inspiration for this novel has been taken from Kesey’s experiences at the Veterans’ Hospital in Menlo Park. He visited this institution as a paid volunteer for government experiments with LSD drugs. He was given drugs and asked to record exactly how they affected him. Long talks with patience during the night shifts there provided him with much of the material for his most successful novel.
The novel describes the procedures and the peculiarities of a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest from the point of view of its patient, Chief Bromden. The main character, McMurphy, trapped in the hospital by faking the mental disorder only to get out of prison, however, no one in the hospital was sure if he was actually insane or he was just acting like one (Kesey 17). Nobody, except for Nurse Ratched. In general, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a book about a holy was between good and evil, where McMurphy stands for all good while Nurse Ratched being the evil.
At first, the nurses were not paying much attention to Randle’s behavior. After all, plenty like himself had come and gone through the hospital. McMurphy taught his fellow patients how to play blackjack with his special deck of cards with pictures of naked women on them. He was also constantly trying to teach the Chief, a huge Indian man who is the novel’s half-Native American narrator, to play basketball. He tried to get the hospital’s plans rescheduled in order for him and other guys to watch the World Series championship, and, what is one of the most remarkable issues, he snuck into the nurses’ control room to set the loud waltz music they always played (Kesey 132). Overall, McMurphy was the protagonist who messed up with Nurse Ratched’s perfect system, which used to work without glitches at times.
McMurphy gave hope to the patients by fighting against the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, which symbolized the never ending battle between the corporate world and the hippie counterculture. The main protagonist is actually a hero of the story as he fights firmly against oppressive powers, “the combine”, showing bravery defending the other patients and ultimately paying with his life.
The ending of the novel shows us the tragic “sacrifice” of the McMurphy by Big Nurse with electroshock treatments and a lobotomy that results with a vegetable condition for the main character. This situation makes his fellow patients escape the asylum. In the last scene, the narrator, Chief Bromden, has lifted the symbolic control panel that Randle could not even move an inch, throws it through the secured window, and escapes from the totalitarian institution. The final phrase, “I been away a long time,” shows the distance he passed from the very first reader’s impression of him and the power of McMurphy’s restorative action (Kesey 272).
In the early sixties, when this story was written, the civil rights movement and the women’s movement were in their infancy. The author, however, used quite unusual writing with sexist and racist language. What is more, the novel One flew over the cuckoo’s nest generally highlights women, especially African Americans, unsympathetically for readers.
Moreover, readers and Randle McMurphy are surprised with the fact that most of the patients on the psych ward are committed voluntarily due to the social pressure and shame of society. Not fitting into the social world because of sexual orientation, ethnic background, infantilization is what makes men to leave the normal hide from society than face its judgment of them (Awaaz 2014).
Works Cited:
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York: Signet, 1963. Print.
Awaaz, Youth Ki. MUST READ: One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Is A Roar Of Protest Against The Society And Its Rulers Comments. N.p., 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 30 Aug. 2016.