I'm truly glad that I finally managed to get around to reading this remarkable piece of literature. It is a counterculture classic that has had a profound impact on countless people, far beyond those who first got their hands on it back in 1962. Its popularity was so great that it nearly single-handedly propelled Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters across numerous parts of the world, providing the financial means for those freedom-loving and iconic hipsters. These hipsters quickly became the more evident foundation for the flower children, the druggies, and the peaceniks.

But before all that, it had to gain popularity, and boy, did it hit a nerve.

The most obvious clue lies in the intense battle between Freedom and Institution. It's like Coyote versus the Man, Chaos versus Order.

Heck, it's even Mice Versus Men.

Nurse Ratched embodies order and needless institutional brutality, while McMurphy does everything in his power to enliven the lives of the people in this mental institution. Some of them will be there for their entire lives, while others might get better. But for all of them, Nurse Ratched rules with an iron fist. What's the point of preventing the inmates from having a little fun, like watching the World-Series? There is no point! And yet, this and so many other great conflicts arise, and we know there will be a showdown.

Most of the novel is quite humorous, and it's easy to root for the humorous trickster as he does everything in his power to suck the marrow out of life and sometimes even show the others that they have the power to live a good life despite their horrible situations.

See the sixties rolling in?

Well, this novel is also a tragedy. No matter how satirical and funnily moving it may be, its end message goes quite a bit beyond the grand escape.

I honestly find it rather disturbing how Ratched treats Billy and what his fate is, but I also find that McMurphy's revenge is just as bad. Is this the result of an immovable force versus an unstoppable object? Or is it a message of overcompensation in powerlessness? Or is it simply wrong? As in two wrongs don't make a right.

Chief Broom is easily my favorite character, however, and his final act of mercy is true mercy.

What can we bring home from this, though? That everyone is wrong? That the only good we can expect is a clean death?

It's very sad.

But that begs the question... what novel managed to pull this off so clearly that we can see and feel so much after just a single read?

To think that at one point this was one of the most banned books in the world. Silly people. The divide is real, but the seeds of our reality lie within these pages. We still need to work it out. Now more than ever.

We are the nuthouse.

"You're not an idiot. Huh! You're not a goddamn looney now, boy. You're a fisherman!"

This line from the story always gives me chills. I truly love the movie adaptation, it's an absolute masterpiece. However, the tragic ending always manages to upset me deeply.

For years, I've been wanting to read the book. And now that I've finally finished it, I can say that I loved it!

I was very surprised to find that the whole book was written from the point of view of the character Chief Bromden. This unique perspective added a whole new layer to the story.

Anyway, the book provided a lot more background information on the characters and had loads more dialogue compared to the movie. Although it's only slightly different, it still offers a fresh and engaging experience.

This is one of those books that you could debate about for hours. I highly recommend this excellent piece of literature to anyone who hasn't read it yet. You won't be disappointed!

Please provide the article that needs to be rewritten and expanded so that I can help you.

Thoughts after reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest:



1. Jack Nicholson in the movie version doesn't resemble the physical description of Ken Kesey's Randle Patrick McMurphy at all. McMurphy is described as a big, barrel-chested, red-headed guy with beefy hands and a big scar over his nose. Everyone is familiar with the story, aren't they? McMurphy escapes a prison farm sentence by feigning mental illness, imagining that a stay in a mental ward will be much easier than hard labor. Little does he know that he will encounter his toughest adversary in the ward's Big Nurse, Miss Ratched.



2. Oh, Miss Ratched. What a name it is. It evokes images of hatchet, ratchet, wretched, rat shed, rat shit… none of which are very flattering. Kesey, or rather Kesey's narrator (we'll come to him in #3), describes her as machine-like, with a doll-like face, a big bosom, and of course a starched white uniform. She embodies the expression "passive aggressive." Over the years, the book has faced criticism for being misogynist, and this hateful portrayal of castrating female authority is a significant part of it. (The other being that the only other main female characters are prostitutes.)



3. The first-person narration by Chief Bromden, who is believed by everyone to be deaf and mute, is a stroke of genius and Kesey's most original touch. Bromden sees and hears everything, and having been in the ward for a long time, mostly sweeping with a broom (earning him the nickname Chief Broom), he can fill us in on the history. The only times he might not be providing us with accurate information are when we are presented with his medication-fueled (?) hallucinations. His memories of his Indigenous father and his white mother, and the way his father was forced/tricked to sell his land, are carefully interwoven in the book. And the way the Chief's life is influenced by RPM (think about those initials and what they suggest - something constantly in motion) is quite moving.



4. It is a classic Man Vs. The System book. Bromden says the entire hospital feels like a Combine, and there are a couple of nightmarish sequences where we feel as if we are choking on fumes in an enormous factory. The book was published in 1962, just before significant changes in the US. In a way, Kesey predicted the upcoming big social revolution.



5. Kesey's writing can be poetic without being overly precious. Here's an early passage about McMurphy:

He stands looking at us, rocking on his boots, and he laughs and laughs. He laces his fingers over his belly without taking his thumbs out of his pockets. I see how big and beat up his hands are. Everybody on the ward, patients, staff, and all, is stunned dumb by him and his laughing. There's no move to stop him, no move to say anything. He laughs till he's finished for a time, and he walks on into the day room. Even when he isn't laughing, that laughing sound hovers around him, the way the sound hovers around a big bell just quit ringing – it's in his eyes, in the way he smiles and swaggers, in the way he talks.

This is very effective writing. I love the detail about McMurphy having his thumbs in his pockets but lacing his fingers over his belly. And the description of the laugh that lingers like a just rung bell is simply perfect.



6. There are numerous secondary characters, and gradually they come into focus, especially Dale Harding, a well-educated man with a sexually frustrated wife (he may very well be gay); Billy Bibbit, a stuttering man who seems much younger than his 31 years and whose mother is a good friend of Nurse Ratched; and Doctor Spivey, the ward's rather spineless physician who gradually gains confidence, like the rest of the patients, after McMurphy's arrival. (A whole passage is dedicated to Ratched's hiring of the hospital's doctor and its cleaning staff.)



7. Speaking of that cleaning staff, I'm not a fan of the book's depiction of the Black characters, starting from the opening sentences: "They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them. They're mopping when I come out the dorm, all three of them sulky and hating everything, the time of day, the place they're at here, the people they got to work around. When they hate like this, better if they don't see me." The Black men are repeatedly referred to as "boys," and I'm not sure why. Is that how the Chief sees them? And what are these sex acts? Are they hallucinations? There's no other indication that these characters might be gay.



8. It's a very loud, boisterous book, but some of the most powerful passages are when McMurphy is figuring out the system (remember, he's a gambler and needs to assess the situation before wagering) and remains quiet. It's a good lesson that when a character doesn't speak, the reader begins to wonder what they're thinking. Planning to escape? Wondering if he can ultimately defeat the Big Nurse?



9. The last 100 pages fly by. From the fishing trip through the big all-night party, so much is happening. The men are out of the hospital for the first time in years (and we're suddenly released from that claustrophobic place); they're mocked by outsiders; one of the characters proves to be a great sailor; and the men get a taste of so-called normal life.



10. The end. You knew it was coming, didn't you? It's both inevitable, depressing, and liberating. Just the perfect ending to a justly famous book.

Last night, at around 2 am, I completed reading 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey. The story had a profound impact on me. I lay awake for a considerable time after that, staring at the bars of light on the ceiling. I held my eyes open until my pupils dilated enough to shrink the light. But then, when I blinked, it was as if I had to start all over again.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and sat up to turn on the lights. The book had done something to me, something powerful. It was as if it had punched me right in the face and shouted, "Do something, you idiot!"

Driven by this strange impulse, I gathered up a一堆 of sentimental items from around my apartment, stuffed them into a backpack, and hiked across town. I then went to the Morrison Bridge and threw the backpack off. The backpack made a loud 'thunk' as it hit the water, just like a body falling from a building. I watched it float downstream, a tiny dot weaving through the rippling reflections of the city lights. Eventually, it sank below the surface.

I share this story with you because, in a sense, throwing that bag of stuff off the bridge is the best analysis I can offer of Kesey's book. So much has already been said about it, and I wonder what else I can add.

Chuck Palahniuk summed it up beautifully in the forward for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. He explains that 'Cuckoo's Nest' tells a story similar to the most popular novels of the last century. It focuses on the modern paradox of attempting to be human in the well-oiled machine of a capitalist democracy, where one must either be a savior or a slave. Palahniuk points out that the book presents a third option: "You can create and live in a new system...not rebelling against or carving into your culture, but creating a vision of your own and working to make that option real."

Is there really anything else left to say? Reading this book is like being inside Fight Club. You take one punch after another, yet you keep crawling back for more because it makes you feel things you never knew you could feel. As long as you stay conscious, don't give up, and don't let your eyes glaze over, this book will seep into the very edges of your consciousness. It will give you new words for the questions you've always wanted to ask, show you how to draw a map of your own, and offer a glimmer of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, it is possible to rise above the machine of society and become human again.

Mai rar să nu existe individ care să nu fi auzit de \\"Zbor deasupra unui cuib de cuci\\".

If the name Ken Kesey means nothing to you, then surely at least the eponymous 1975 film makes you think of Jack Nicholson's grimace, an emblem of \\"abnormality\\", which is why the people at Polirom \\"portrayed\\" him on the cover of the edition (well, and because the film is much more famous than the novel...).

The novel has a dream effect (in a scientific sense), isolating the reader in a hospital where the concept of \\"normality\\" takes on different values. Therefore, the \\"story\\" is neither boring nor thrilling. Neither light nor heavy. It is simply a \\"story\\" that you can only feel and move on. This is the effect the novel has on the reader.

As for the author, the roots of the novel are much more diverse. After voluntarily participating in an LSD experiment organized by the US government (he was a guinea pig) and after working for a relatively short period in a psychiatric hospital, Kesey had the necessary resources to begin his literary career. The debut was a masterpiece, and the \\"innocence\\" of the writing fully justifies it.

Moreover, this \\"innocence\\" is often found in American culture. I made a parallel between the final act of the Indian Bromden (who, unlike in the film, is the narrator) and the effect that \\"Catcher in the Rye\\" had on American society. One of the theories tells us that Mark Chapman left \\"Catcher in the Rye\\" after assassinating John Lennon, claiming that he did it precisely to preserve his innocence.

The same motivation can be attributed to Bromden's act, whether voluntary or not.

The ending remained open for me, not because it leaves the narrative thread in vain, but because it leaves room for a whole series of interpretations: what is the Organization? Did our \\"deviant\\" brothers win or not? Is the hospital lounge a microcosm for the world we live in?

All these questions, in the interpretation of Patricia Janeckova in \\"Once upon a time in the west\\", had the dream effect I mentioned above.

\\"She realized that McMurphy was growing into something more in their eyes than he had been before, as long as he stayed up there where the boys couldn't notice the flaws she caused him, becoming now almost a legend. A man you don't see can't show his weaknesses, she decided, and began to plan his return to the ward.\\"

\\"Until now I hadn't realized that mental illness could have an aspect of power. Think about this: maybe the crazier a person is, the more powerful he can become. Look at the example of Hitler. Vice gives an advantage to the mind, doesn't it? Food for future thoughts...\\"

Until next time... \\"To the happy few!\\"

My friend Ed was recently engaged in updating his books with reviews on here, and this particular book happened to pop up in my feed.

It turns out that this is my husband's all-time favorite movie/book. I suddenly realized that I had never bothered to pick up the book. Although I've watched bits and pieces of the movie countless times as my husband has watched it over and over again, I had never truly experienced it firsthand.

I'm truly gutted.

Why on earth have I not just sat down and watched the film that was adapted from this book? I must be completely off my rocker.

Randle Patrick McMurphy, that guy who pretends to be crazy to get out of a work detail. He enters the mental hospital and takes it by storm.

He gets the "inmates" to start smoking, drinking, having women, and going fishing. He manages to bring them back to life and make them into the men they once were.

The evil in this book, Nurse Ratched, is truly terrifying. I usually have a soft spot for villains, but this woman scares the daylights out of me. She has to be one of the top baddies of all time. I still get goosebumps just thinking about her.

I've always been rather hit or miss when it comes to books that are labeled as classics. That's probably why I haven't tried some of them until now. But after reading this one, I'm beginning to reconsider. Because if they are all like this, I'm definitely missing out. Thanks, Ed, for pointing out this most wonderful book to me.

I was listening to this book on audio CD, but I encountered a lot of difficulties. As a result, I had to take numerous breaks between listening sessions. Consequently, I fell a little behind in my progress.

I read this book for the Goodreads book club's "Diversity in All Forms" theme. If you're interested in joining the discussion, here's the link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I found this book truly captivating. Right from the start, I was particularly intrigued by the nicknames that everyone had. These nicknames seemed to symbolize their positions and importance. For example, the "BIG Nurse" (her nickname) indicated that she was someone who craved attention because her name held great significance. On the other hand, the term "Black Boys" was an insulting name, suggesting that those characters were the lowest-ranking employees. The list of such nicknames for the employees went on and on. They even did the same to the patients when they divided them into two groups.

I was quite surprised by the sexual comments and remarks in the book. I had not anticipated that at all. :p

I thought it was extremely powerful when Chief talked about how he never chose to pretend he was deaf. Others made that decision for him. In the army, those ranked higher than him looked down on him. Then, when he went to "the home," the staff assumed he was too dumb to understand what they were saying. It's fascinating to see how our perceptions can influence how we view others. We often have a preconceived notion of who they are and fail to truly recognize all their abilities. This is a very common phenomenon, especially when it comes to people with disabilities. We tend to focus on their obstacles rather than their achievements and skills.

All in all, I'm very surprised that this is the first time I've read this book. I'm also amazed at how much I enjoyed it. :) I highly recommend it to everyone!

Arabic & English Review:

The novel that should be read in all eras and will never fade <3

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a profound and thrilling novel that must be read or the wonderful movie adapted from it must be watched to see another world of exciting and revolutionary amusements for those who rule our world with their rules. It is a direct attack on authoritarian systems and the suppression of freedoms.

The novel takes place within the walls of a mental institution. Here, the leader Bromden, from the Red Indian tribe, tells how R.P. McMurphy, an Irishman, was sentenced to prison and when he was sent to spend some time in the hospital under supervision to check his mental health, everything changed.

R.P. McMurphy, a rebel against the laws, a rejecter of rules and control, and a gambler, begins to live with his new situation among the patients, who are divided into the acutes who can still talk and discuss, and the chronics who have no hope of cure and the elderly.

McMurphy starts his journey by getting to know the acutes like Billy Bibbit, Martini, Harding, Cheswick, Scanlon and others, and begins to attract attention with his rebellious and revolutionary way, which leads to a collision with the controlling nurse Ratched, and the enmity between them begins like the enmity between the system and the rebels.

Amid the bets that McMurphy makes with the patients and the deepening of his relationship with them, he begins to arouse their emotions and the bets turn into an attempt to arouse the nurse and break the system, which leads to a series of collisions between the cruel, sadistic and quiet nurse Ratched and McMurphy, who collides with the system and the rules.

It's a wonderful and thrilling novel about how a small individual represents a society that rebels for survival with its freedom. The novel is a mirror of society and of the American side that oppressed the Red Indians, the original inhabitants, and how to plant ethnic division between the whites and the blacks and use the blacks as a tool for them to lash out because of the anger that was planted inside them. The story and the narration are flawless, but the translation was sometimes a bit boring, and the ending is a shocking reality with hope and revolution inside us that will explode when we lose everything.

There are slight differences between the movie and the novel and one surprise if it is in the movie. The movie deserves to be among the top 10 movies in history and it will remain among the top three movies I have ever seen in my life, a great pleasure and a great performance from the whole team.

- If Patches in the Arab movie had a more evil look than his words, then Louise Fletcher had the most evil look among the actresses.

We are both rebels :)

"Between now and then, there has been an aggression towards the representatives of power in school, service, prison, and I think his behavior after the rigging of the elections today is a significant indication of what we can expect from him in the future."

English Review:

"Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest."

A story told by Chief Bromden about R.P. McMurphy who was found guilty of violence to avoid spending time in jail and got himself transferred to a mental institution.

McMurphy is a rebel, a rule breaker and a gambler, but he faces the whole system represented by Nurse Ratched, the sadist and cruelest person, which becomes a rivalry between him and her rules.

The ward contains two kinds of patients: "Acutes who believe they can still be cured, and Chroncis who will never be cured." McMurphy becomes friends with the Acutes group which includes Billy Bibbit, Harding, Cheswick, Martini, Sefelt, Fredrickson and Scanlon.

While Nurse Ratched takes control of their lives with hard discipline and makes them feel ashamed, McMurphy, the anti-hero kind, tries to free them from her control, make them rebellious and face her, which makes them enemies as everyone tries to take over the other.

The author discusses the mental ward as the society and the dictators who try to control us and punish those who try to break their rules.

* The movie is in my top 3 of all time. If you haven't seen it, you should see it as soon as possible. Great performance from everyone. The movie and the novel have changes in minor events.

A Masterpiece Novel, sad finale but great.

There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of.

A novel that celebrates the counterculture and the aspects on the fringes of society, "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a book that mythologizes the individual (even the dishonest or vulgar individual) over the restraints of society. I have mixed feelings about that message.

The battle between being true to oneself and giving into societal expectations is identified here as the battle between one's mind and the "Combine" as personified by the "Big Nurse" Ratched. The action takes place in a mental institution where most of the patients have voluntarily committed themselves, a key but often overlooked plot point, somewhere in Oregon in the early 1960s. Keeping in mind the time period is an important consideration in enjoying this text. The book is extremely misogynistic, with only 1 minor female character presented in a halfway decent light. Also, the ideas of nonconformity were a much bigger deal in 1962 than they are today. To take the novel out of its original context is to lose some of the enjoyment of reading it. So, be careful to not judge it by today's standards.

Ken Kesey was obviously a gifted writer. He has some truly unique ways of crafting a text to resemble the scrambled mind of a person enduring electroshock therapy, and he was a clever user of figurative language. He was also gifted at crafting character. The text has four characters that stand out. The first is the novel's narrator, Chief Bromden, whose dry and insightful narration has the right mix of intelligence and self-doubt to keep the reader on the edge of their toes. Another delightful and well-rendered character is the mental ward patient Harding. His intelligence and wit serve as a nice foil to McMurphy's vulgarity and broad humor. Harding loathes what he truly is, and watching him mask that pain and self-awareness is one of the most touching aspects of the novel. The "hero" and the "villain" of the piece, R. Patrick McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, are nice personifications of abstract ideas. Kesey endows each with a depth and realism that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has paid even the remotest attention to human nature. The passive-aggressive animosity and unhappiness inherent in Nurse Ratched is unnervingly real, and the chaos and self-destructive behavior in McMurphy is equally impressive. The reason I think these two characters stand out to readers is because there are bits of both of them in most of us. The war between those two poles comprises not only the major conflict of this text, but also of many of our lives.

There is a lot to digest in this book, and it will yield rewards on rereading it years later.

Enter Kesey's world. It might not be a fun journey, but it is a worthwhile one!

The simplest way for the government to control a group is to feed them this simple idea that you deserve exactly what comes your way.

To do this, you only need a number of dark and secret rooms and a significant amount of violence. Just remember, always smile and remain calm and composed. Let your servants carry out the dirty and violent deeds. Moreover, the people must always be engaged in something. It doesn't matter what. The goal is to take away their ability to think. If you can arrange it so that they have nothing to do but their thoughts are constantly occupied, even better! Truly, don't forget about the women either! Woman means life! Keep them separate from the men. Don't let this life flow through the men and become exhausted. The man becomes a thirsty, sick, and scared being, and retreats into himself. His poison is to a large extent self-inflicted.

Well done! I congratulate you. Now you can squeeze the last drop of blood from them! Don't worry. They will love you. Like a mother (father?!). Now their existence depends on you and you can choose for them what is in their best interest. Remember more weakness = more order = more security = more power

What?! Women? You should only fill them with a sense of guilt! But that's for next time and the next book...

Reading this book was a prime example of the perils of watching the movie first. I simply couldn't get Jack Nicholson out of my mind, and every line of dialogue seemed to be in his voice. This, in part, is a tribute to the quality of the movie, which I believe enhanced the book in many ways - both in terms of plot and characterization. While Kesey surely deserves credit for conceiving this entire story, I found his original version to be somewhat less engaging.

However, this is not meant as an insult, as the movie is truly masterful and the book is nearly as good. Both McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are iconic characters, and their conflict is superbly realized. The list of strong secondary characters is too extensive to detail. In terms of plot, Kesey has crafted a perfect parable for the countercultural narrative: that society brutally forces people into conformity, and rebellious laughter and rule-breaking are the only means to maintain sanity and humanity.

That being said, this is not merely a story about society in general. I must preface these remarks by stating that I typically do not focus on issues of representation in novels. Not that representation is unimportant, but I believe that literary merit is independent of social enlightenment. Nevertheless, I think that the racism and misogyny in this book are so blatant and consistent that they cannot be ignored. In fact, the issue of gender is emphasized so strongly that it must have been a deliberate choice on Kesey's part, rather than an incidental attitude of an author from a different era.

All of the heroes in this book (aside from the narrator) are white men, and they are oppressed - in a strange inversion of real life - by black people and women. The narrator, Chief Bromden, obsesses over the orderlies' blackness, mentioning it at every opportunity. They are the "black boys" with hands "big and black as a swamp" and faces of "slate." They are rarely referred to by their names and are never regarded as fully human: just mindless soldiers for the hospital.

Yet I believe that the misogyny runs deeper than the racism and is, in fact, one of the novel's central themes. Kesey emphasizes it time and again. One of the most famous quotes from the book is: "Man, you lose your laugh you lose your footing." But what is often omitted is what follows: "A man go around lettin’ a woman whup him down till he can’t laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he’s got on his side."

I hate to be overly Freudian, but Nurse Ratched is the embodiment of the castration complex: a joyless, sexless woman determined to emasculate the men. The idea of growing balls and having them taken away is repeatedly mentioned. One of the patients in the "disturbed" ward commits suicide by cutting off his own testicles. When Nurse Ratched threatens to have McMurphy lobotomized, he jokes that she wants to cut off his nuts. And so on.

Nurse Ratched's carefully hidden breasts are also one of the novel's main metaphors: her attempt to be completely sexless is equivalent to her attempt to control the men and make them weak. McMurphy's ultimate revenge comes when he strips off the nurse's uniform, revealing her breasts. She thus loses her power because "she could no longer conceal the fact that she was a woman."

The drama of Billy Bibbit also fits into this pattern and seems to suggest that, for Kesey, the proper relationship between men and women is for women to sleep with men, and that's all. Bibbit is temporarily cured by finally having sex (and the prostitutes are the only women portrayed positively) and is driven to despair by the thought that his mother - another older, sexless woman - might find out. The entire reason that our hero, McMurphy, is committed in the first place is for statutory rape - a fact that is seen as heroic, not depraved.

Now, to reiterate, this misogyny is so persistent and explicit that I do not believe it is incidental to the book's message. As Harding, the most articulate character, says: "We are victims of a matriarchy here, my friend, and the doctor is just as helpless against it as we are." The whole story then becomes a kind of metaphor for the struggle of men to resist the enervating force of women; and social conformity itself is seen as primarily the doing of womankind.

I'm not sure what to make of this. It is just possible that Kesey intended this as a form of satire on misogyny, although the text didn't strike me that way. In any case, despite this rather prominent theme, I still thought the book was captivating. Kesey did, indeed, raise awareness about how psychiatric patients are mistreated. And the novel is undoubtedly a classic of the counterculture movement. The movie wisely toned down this blatant misogynistic aspect, which is yet another reason why I think it is superior.