Title: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Author: Ken Kesey
Subject: English
Assignment: Review
Date: 08-01-18

Introduction

For my second media file, I chose the book: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest written by Ken Kesey. I wanted to write a review in which I briefly and insightfully explain the story line, the characters, their problems, the themes, the deeper meaning of the book and last but not least my own opinion.

Enjoy my second media file!

Review

One flew east,
One flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

A detailed string of incidents and observations. The story is set in a mental asylum in the 1950’s. The story is told in first person view by an Indian American named Chief Bromden. He is a patient in the mental hospital who pretends to be deaf and mute. The hospital is controlled by a nurse called Miss Ratched, who rules her remain with her iron fist. Everything runs according to her plan or not at all. But this order is thrown under peril when, the redheaded Irish-American Randle McMurphy arrives at the ward. Instantly he poses a threat as he tries to help the other patience game back to individuality but nurse Ratched has worked so hard to strip hem up. McMurphy tries to show the others that that miss Ratched is not just some all-powerful being, by trying to make her crack and react in some way to prove that she is human. But Ratched only seemed to be amused by her patients.

McMurphy throws a party where he helps a patient named Billy lose his virginity. The next morning when the ward is found disarray, nurse Ratched shames Billy to a certain point where he is so hysterical that he takes his own life. After more violent outbursts, McMurphy reaches his breaking point and tries to strangle nurse Ratched. In retaliation, she has him lobotomised and he returns to the ward half paralysed.

However, nurse Ratched already lost her tyrannical power over the ward, the patience’s transferred to other wards or checked themselves out of the hospital. When Chief Bromden decided to escape the hospital, he suffocated McMurphy in his bed. Enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live with a symbol of nurse Ratched’s power. McMurphy had helped Bromden to recover the immense strength that he had believed he’d lost during his time in the mental ward. In his eyes, the only way to set Murphy free, was by taking his life.

This is also where Ken Kesey sets the readers free by almost ending the book.

What I really like about the book is that, while reading the story I could see the resemblances between the war and the times in the hospital. The nurse stands for a harsh dictator. She’s corrupted by power and uses her authority to oppress the patients into doing what she wants. She has a lot of ways to keep everyone under control and strike fear into other hearts and establish that she is in charge. She basically holds the freedom of every single patience, including McMurphy’s.

In my opinion is this book a great symbol for how often we lose our individuality, because of what society expects from us and how we look badly upon those who don’t quite fit into everything. This story gives us two options: the first one is to be formed and peacefully lose what makes us special; the second one is to not confirm and have others painfully remove our individually. Or is there may be some other way where we can all be ourselves that the writer just didn’t see? Anyway, there is a big life lesson in the story: don’t lose yourself in all the expectations.

Surprisingly, the story comes with little drawings and sketches that had been done by Ken Kesey. They were quite interesting and a little creepy as well. Which apparently, he drew of actual patients in the psychiatric hospital that he used to work in.

I lost it at the ending. It was hard to read about a lobotomy and having it done to a character that I had learned to appreciate. The idea of him being alive without a part of his brain and ‘returning’ but not really, because he was half brain dead wasn’t pleasant to read. I think we all prefer reading about puppy’s or vacations then braindead people.

One other negative point about the book is that at times it would get a bit confusing trying to keep track of all the characters. A striking featurs of the writing style us that the accents of the characters are phonetically written out. I was very annoyed by the helpers of the big nurse. They don’t talk normal: they swallow words halfway down, distort them and cuts them off.

To make an end of my review I would say that I have once read the phrase: power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You can say that it counts in this story. The big nurse is to be compared to a dictator and manipulate people to get what she wants.

However, would I recommend it, yes! especially if you like books about power or how to manipulate people, because that are the biggest themes in this book. Or if you like books where you have some kind of shudder over you back and goose bumps, because of the horrors in the story. I would give it a 7 out of a 10!

Funny thing to know about this book: in 1975, the story was made into a movie but Ken Kesey hated the film version and even sued the producers because they didn’t used the viewpoint from Chief Bromden to frame the story.