One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

What a magnetically charged story in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Kesey writes a very dramatic and intriguing story with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. No wonder this is a classic title. Ken Kesey wrote so well, it is read for generations. Enter at your own risk, and you find yourself in the the middle of the ward. This ward has patients with many nicknames, depending on their mental health, such as vegetables, chronics, Acutes, and there are those who are in there voluntarily and others, like McMurphy, court-ordered. This book is one of those you don't want to put down. If you've haven't read this before, you should read it, and if you have, a long time ago, read it again. I have also watched the movie that stars Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and other budding stars, and it is as intriguing as the book. The book tells more of its details, and you learn that the narrator, telling the story is Chief, who was always assumed to be deaf and dumb, but was a very large and intimidating man. However, he and McMurphy, the wards newest patient, who is determined to be crazy as to not go back to jail, but also to show he isn't crazy, but just loves to create chaos, as to get what he wants, and it is an added benefit that he gets under the skin of the Big Nurse, Nurse Ratched. From the patient's point of view, she is tyrannic and is set in her ways, and does not allow others to create chaos. If they do, they get sent to shock treatment, or are sedated. The story brings the reader on a superb journey. This is a magnificent story that kept this reader turning the pages. The is one book, where the movie is very close to what is written. I recommend reading the book, and then look for the movie, as it is still on DVD. This book is also one of those controversial books and sometimes banned because it's intimate look at mental health, and the era where shock treatment is a standard for treating mental health. I like that the book showed the various personalities of the patients, and even the staff, and how they are referred to, from the Chief's point of view. It's an amazing story, brining a spotlight on the treatment of those who are mentally ill, in one way or another. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews. I look forward to reading many more books by this author.

Gonna out myself by saying I can relate to this story on some pretty visceral levels, because I've been there.I don't know how this book would read for someone without at least some intimate, relatable life experiences. Probably wouldn't have the same punch.This book was about me, and everybody in world, in all our horrible, wonderful, destructive, glorious, perverse, and shattered existence.It's about getting big again, as Mack said. Taking a stand against the gears that grind you to dust til you don't know whether you're coming or going.It's brutal and brilliant in its honesty, takes you by the scruff of the neck and makes you take a long hard look in the mirror, if you want to or not.One of the best books I've read. Certainly one that will stay with me, rattling around in my brain for years, hoping I can find the strength to grow again.

Another book that so many people read in high school that I somehow never had to read; I was hesitant, yet excited to read it all at the same time. I am glad I did.The story is told by Chief, the Big Indian. Through his eyes we see the ins and outs of life in the mental ward. The author uses the Chief's own inadequacy to set the tone for the other patients in the hospital; each goes through life with the pace of a crawl. The processes and procedures are in place to help them acclimate themselves to life outside the ward in hopes that some day they may rejoin society. Or that is what the staff tells them anyway.We are introduced to a few figures with relative authority over the goings-on within the hospital walls, though their power is usurped by one woman. The head nurse. Over years she has manipulated the people around her, scaring off doctors and ward staff that she did not feel she would be able to control. As we join the story, her pieces are in place. She has a doctor overseeing the ward that is too timid to deny her control and three hospital attendants that are as immoral as she.She has her way with the patients' minds. In group therapy sessions she asks the men to point out the shortcomings of others thus reinforcing their insecurities. These same insecurities are the reasons that for many of the men are in the mental hospital in the first place.She keeps them weak and afraid, exerting her control until one new patient comes along and begins to question authority. R.P. McMurphy has bucked the system in every environment he has entered. As a result he had seen every form of punishment except one: the mental hospital. He was, maybe for lack of a better excuse, labeled a psychopath and duly committed. Now he has a new set of rules to break.McMurphy may be euphemized as out-going, though others may prefer to call him obnoxious, pushy and loud. He is, in all respects, both the complete opposite of every other patient on the ward and the exact thing the nurse has worked so hard to avoid. With relative ease she has broken the spirits of every man before McMurphy and they both get creative as their rivalry grows.She has control over the men's daily routine and has guided their thoughts as well for so long. McMurphy obtains control over their sense of freedom, but will that be enough?The mental hospital was a great microcosm for society at large. The patients are everyday people. The nurse, more abstractly, is societal expectations and normal, "acceptable" behavior. The Chief could be you or me. He, more than the other patients, has acted in a way that is in line with what others have assumed about him and not how he wants to act. He conforms to what people tell him he is. McMurphy represents the small portion of the population that thinks outside the box. He is the free thinker who teaches us that it is ok, and should even be encouraged, for us to question authority.Too often we do things because that is...just what you are supposed to do. We get out of bed, get dressed, go to work, go home, have dinner, kiss our spouse and go do bed. We are "grown ups" now and that is what grown ups DO. But why? Why not shake things up? We have the ability to carry ourselves with the integrity of adults though we live freely from others' expectations of us.McMurphy champions the mentality (to keep with the setting of the book) that we need to maintain some sense of autonomy. You can control where I live and you can control what I do during the day, but I will not let you control how I think and feel. And most importantly the lesson he focuses on is that no matter how tough the going gets, never forget out to laugh. This is an incredibly powerful tool we can use to avoid being swept under the control of societal pressure and expectation. With our laughter we show others that we are still in control, but you have to mean it.This may be completely off base with what Kesey had hoped to portray in his book, and it may mean something else entirely to you. But that is, after all, the beauty of it. I am not head nurse. I am not here to tell you how to think and feel about this book. But I do recommend you read it and find out for yourself. As I got into the book it was good, but not great. By the end I was pleasantly surprised by how much I really enjoyed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.