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The ward is sheer horror.Chronics are either walkers, or wheelers, or vegetables. Chief Broom's world view is rocked by a creature like McMurphy, who fights even when he can't win, and who is sure to know who he is. (Rape seems to be the only weapon against female wolves. There is enough material for learning by doing. Is it anti-capitalist (as some comments by the narrator, Chief Broom, suggest). Good films can do that to me, take away the motivation for the original.For reasons unclear to me, I bought the book now. Is it anti-feminist, as per the attack by our anti-hero McMurphy. It must have created a storm when it came out.
In this case here, I had watched the film decades ago and remember that it was one of Jack Nicholson's best performances. (We are all rabbits and we need a good strong wolf to teach us our place). Its language and subject seem unusual for the time. Or just anti-authoritarian. But the technicians are learning.
The underdog always wins our sympathies.The book also plays on racist themes. Impotence is women's victory).Or is it a realistic attack on mental institutions and their practices.Frequently one is disappointed by a film after a book that one liked. One of the wolves incites them to grow above themselves. Is it anti-government in general. The treatment that the first receive can make them chronics. Is it an allegory on fascistoid systems.
Only Big Nurse Rat-shed was there before him.The institution's population is structured by status of illness: there are acutes and chronics. A leadership seminar: power struggle in a mental ward. Is a novelist justified in taking real language from real life even if it is offensive. The Chief takes a look at his own self in the mirror and wonders how it is possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.In the final reckoning, without wanting to post a spoiler, I concede that the Chief has been set free by McM's heroism.But even more final is that I can't honestly say that I like the novel.
The first may come out, the latter never. It never occurred to me that I might want to read the book on which the film was based. Inmates have no real chance to be heard, whatever they do proves that whatever is done to them is for the bettering of them.(You have no chance, make sure to use it).This place even shaves Santa Claus.We watch the world through the eyes and language of Chief Broom, the chronic inmate who pretends to be deaf and mute and is nearly 7 feet tall. I just can't figure out if I like it. Rarely is the film better. This leads to where it always leads when real power is one-sided and monopolized.What is this novel from 1962, which is included in several `best books' lists. He has been the longest `serving' patient.
The rabbits are sans wham bam, as they sadly concede. Inmates are encouraged to spy on each other, as in all proper fascist/communist systems. I never wanted to watch the movie again though, hence I have no idea if I still like it today. It so happens that the SA team or camp guards are black men, who are on the leash of the she-wolf. The narrator is a half Indian, which is supposed to absolve him from accusations of racism, maybe.
Alternative wolves fight over rabbit control. The words require no explanation.The Chief watches a new admission: `hero' McMurphy, upbeat, noisy, extrovert, jumping to the top of the patient pecking order, which is no big achievement for a rather sane petty criminal in an environment of harmless people. McM is not really such a nice character, and we side with him against Big Nurse in the course of the developing war only by default. Not really. We enter a micro-cosmos of fascism.
The staff in the institution has absolute power and uses it without checks or balances. Is it Kafka moving into real life. I would think that this language is justified and has its rightful place in a realistic description of society. It is worth while. It seems, according to Wiki, that the novel got adopted by the big movement of the sixties and became something of a movement icon.
There is an undeniable anti-black attitude with plenty of derogative vocabulary. Respect, ok, but like.
This is an accessible and hilarious book that tells the story of an insane asylum, and how some of its inmates get to experience real freedom. This book is terrific, its one of my all-time favorites. It ends on a tragic note with the death of one of the inmates, but other than that I found it to be a heartwarming tale told by an eloquent storyteller. The characters have real humanity, and are portrayed not only with grace and dignity but also with a genuine understanding of innate human flaws. I wish my English teachers in high school had made us read this book, it is deserving of every praise it gets. I can't really compare this to any other books I've read; it stands alone as a high point in literature and is a great novel. I haven't seen the movie, but I highly recommend the book.
This was the worst book I have ever received from ordering on-line. Amazon should no longer use this person. The book was late, dirty and used.I should have gone to the bookstore. Big mistake.
R.P. She is inflexible and represents the forces that be. Few books have the iconoclastic make up of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Most of the book was written while he was under influence of LSD which he took with government authorization -- how weird. The narration is solid and moves the story with ease. Definitely one of the classics from one of the classic icons of the 60's. McMurphy is put into the asylum after committing criminal acts to be evaluated. The other 60's metaphor is the head nurse who unreasonable and by the book.
The evil force eventually smashes McMurphy, but he is set free. The story is told through the eyes of a silent Indian who fools the staff into thinking he is deaf and dumb. The two clash and all those about the asylum are subjected to the good/evil, hippies/establishment forces. What Kesey creates with the asylum is a huge metaphor that works on several levels at once. With a 1960's type of metaphor McMurphy questions authority and fights it with humor. The real metaphor is in the ending. It will sit well in any library.
There's some futility in reviewing a classic, canonical, and authoritative work of art. It's McMurphy's actions--and the ward nurse's reactions--that truly guide the plot of the book. I work in a nursing home and rehabilitation center, and I have seen firsthand how difficult it is to care for people with mental and behavior disorders and diseases. And if a review is positive, isn't it expected. But more fundamentally, the book asks us to consider how well one can truly know another person. These concerns are included as the subjects of this book--established and licensed authority and attempts at coup, what are or are not taboo behavior and ideas, all of which eventually leads us to make judgments and draw a line between sane and insane, prudence and folly--and these ideas are part of what makes the novel enduring.The structure of the novel is likewise unique. Society has already decided that the novel bears merit, and who are we to write, many years later, anything to the contrary. What can we know of the truth secondhand from such a cagey narrator.Some of the novel's criticism of chronic healthcare is still relative today.
The first-person, past-tense narrator (Chief Bromden) is in a mental institution pretending to be deaf and dumb. How reliable can we consider this narrator to be, especially when another character (Randle Patrick McMurphy) seems to be the protagonist. Sometimes the decisions we make are not between sane and insane, but between safety and danger, dignity and indignity.The book pokes serious holes in early psychology and psychiatry, especially the brutal history of the latter. I cannot recommend the book more.
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